Page 115 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

Foreign Interventions and Occupations of Kamaran I. 105
Government had established an adequate quarantine service for
pilgrims at Jeddah in 1956. The Kamaran quarantine station under
Anglo-Dutch administration and the Egyptian-run lazaretto at
Tawr commanding the northern exit from the Red Sea were
described as ‘deux v6ritables forteresses sanitaires sur les routes du
peterinage’.121 Others have said that without a sanitary control at
Kamaran ‘the entire pilgrimage’ would have been endangered.122
‘Thousands of pilgrims have been grateful to Kamaran for
influencing governments to carry out improvements on board ships
for their comfort.’123
With the exception of the administration of the quarantine
station, there was very limited development on Kamaran island
during the period of British rule. Apart from those who earned a
living from their work in the lazaretto, the principal employment
was fishing and pearling: the latter was conducted from a village in
the north of the island which consisted of ‘a miserable collection of
huts’.124 In 1960, 500 inhabitants out of a total population of 1,800
sought work in Saudi Arabia.125 The present author visited the
island in 1974 when many people complained of the lack of
development during the fifty-two years of the British admin­
istration.

$an ‘a9 claims Kamaran from 1919
The British occupation of Kamaran was disputed by Imam Yahya
after the Turkish evacuation of Yemen in 1919, but it was not till
much later that Yemeni claims took a serious tone and endangered
British relations not only with Yemen but also with other Arab
states. Early in 1956 Imam Ahmad pressed claims to Kamaran
because of his suspicion that oil might be found there, following
the granting by the Aden Government of exploration rights to the
D’Arcy Exploration Company, a subsidiary of British Petroleum.126
Other Arab states took up the matter the next month when Imam
Ahmad met President Nasser and King Sa‘ud in Jeddah to discuss
among other subjects the British ‘seizure’ of Kamaran.127 While on
a state visit to Britain the Crown Prince, Muhammad al-Badr,
raised the question of Yemeni claims to Kamaran.128 Immediately
prior to the British departure from South Arabia and the handing
over of power to the National Liberation Front, the British
Commissioner on Kamaran conducted a referendum among the
population of the island who chose to join the new state of South
Yemen rather than the Yemen Arab Republic. Thus, when the
People’s Republic of Southern Yemen was bom on 30 November
1967, Kamaran became an integral part of the new Republic. The