Page 101 - Arabian Studies (V)

The Yemeni Poet Al-Zubayri 91
In 1948 Imam Yahya was murdered by a notorious tribal mal­
content just south of San‘a\ instigated by a group of conspirators
in San‘a’, and the well-known Sayyid ‘Abdullah al-Wazir was
proclaimed Imam there. Crown Prince Ahmad however managed
to raise the Zaydl tribes and crush the rebellion within a matter of
weeks, but the tribal sack of San‘a’ left bitter memories. The rebel­
lion was purely a bid for power in which the Liberals in Aden had
little or no part and in fact the murder of the Imam made them
extremely unpopular with Yemenis in Aden. Ahmad became Imam
assuming the title of al-Nasir li-DIn Allah. He ruled on traditional
lines until his death from natural causes in 1962, though he had to
put down two serious attempts on his life.
Yahya and Ahmad were outstanding personalities firmly
handling a naturally turbulent country. The immense volume of
propaganda against them has not only obscured their virtues while
magnifying their faults, but takes no account of the problems
which confronted them; little attempt has been made to assess their
successes and failures objectively.
The external policy of the Hamid al-DIn is relatively well under­
stood, but the internal political situation is very little known.
The Imams were backed by the Zaydl tribes of the north but had
at first no standing army. When a tribe got out of hand it could be
brought to heel only by setting other tribes against it. Imam Yahya,
with mainly Turkish officers, developed a standing army, but the
fateful military mission he despatched to Iraq before World War II
produced young officers imbued with subversive sentiments and an
Iraqi officer was brought to San‘a’—described to me as ‘the
dynamo’ of the 1948 Wazlr revolt. A second (educational) mission
sent by Yahya to Lebanon, but diverted after his murder to Cairo
by Imam Ahmad, contained ‘Abdullah Juzaylan1 and others who
were to become ‘the Officers of the Revolution’ (i.e. the military
coup of 1962) or officials of the Republic. The army might form a
counter-balance to the armed Zaydl tribes but was ineffectual in
defence against the Sa‘udls in 1934 and for action against the
British Protectorates. The leading Sayyid houses, men of both
sword and pen, regarded the mere *askari with some contempt—
Imam Ahmad himself used to speak slightingly of BimbashI
(Major) Jamal al-DIn ‘Abd al-Nasir (Nasser),2 not to be rated on
same level as the Shaykh of the Azhar! Whether by design or
through circumstance, the army was maintained at a fairly
low level. None of this was to the taste of the young officers
trained abroad. Ahmad’s severe measures against recalcitrant tribes
engendered grievances against the Hamid al-DIn in certain tribal
leaders. An impression of the times and Ahmad’s tough personality