THE WASHINGTON POST Sunday, July 16, 1967
Irony in Aden Fighting Is the Measly Prize
John de St Jorre
London Obar; VEZ
DEN-Except for sporadic terror-
isan, Aden is quiet.
British troops have put down the rebellion in the crown colony's Arab ghetto. Senior Arab officers have quelled the mutiny by police cadets. and troops of the federal army.
But the revolt of June 20, in which 2 dozen British soldiers were fas- sacred, casts a long shadow. It falls across January, 1968, when Britain will grant independence to Aden and the semiautonomous sheikhdoms that are linked with It in the shaky South Arabian Federation.
The hope for peace and a stable gov ernment is faint indeed, and what little there is rests on the federal army, a force of untested and questionable ability to control the militant though divided nationalists who seek the de- struction of the federal government.
Little to Fight Over
THE REAL IRONY is that there is lit- Federa
tion of South Arabia-Aden colony and 16 autonomous "up-country" sultanates
is no El Dorado, It has no oil or se- rious prospect of it, little farming or in- dustrial wealth, little important eco- nomic value at all apart from Aden it- self.
And in a shrinking jet world, even the port of Aden, well situated, cheap and efficient, is a diminishing financial and strategic asset.
British influence, now overwhelming. is largely ephemeral. Once the military base has gone, only the businessmen and civil servants on contract-a few hundred at the most-will remain.
The military presence swamps the civil. With a radio network (there are two separate full-time stations), clubs, beaches, cinemas, shops and a PR unit, the services have created a self-suffi. cient world of their own.
The old-time colonials keep their end up at the Union Club-past its best, but indisputably British.
Spawner of Grenades
LOCAL BOURGEOISIE seeking compromise and stability has yet to emerge. The seeds, in the shape of Aden's commercial and professional classes and the growing federal civil service and army, have taken root but are as yet tiny cases in a vast desert of have-nots.
In the meantime, overcrowded and
SAUDI ARABIA
YEMEN
ADEN
ER SOMALILAND
SOMALE
Gulf of Aden
Aden
Aden-British crown colony in south- western Arabia on the Gulf of Aden; a member of the Federa tion of South Arabia. Government
High Commissioner assisted by Council of Ministers and Legislative Council. Area-75 square miles. Population-250,000.
depressed Aden continues to breed gre nade throwers and, in the hills, the car- rying of arms remains a preordained, virtually inescapable way of life. Up- country, and even in the colony itself, guns are the convertible currency.
A British 'Creation'
THE BRITISH CREATED, rather
T than colonized, Aden, a minor and
almost derelict port in 1839 when it was annexed to the Crown, Aden has blos- somed into a busy shipping and trading center with a mixed population of over a quarter of a million-including al- most 100,000 Yemenis-squeezed into 75 square miles.
Although grossly underprivileged in comparison with other British colonies, Aden has passed through a fairly typi cal colonial experience, with all that that implies in the way of growing pul itical sophistication and rising expecta- tions.
But the rest of the Federation, with roughly double the population of Aden, into which the colony was frogmarched by the British in 1963, knows little of
with this. Association
the British through treaties which left external af fairs and defense in the hands of the imperial power-where they still re- main-was quite a different upbringing from direct rule.
The theory was that eventually a working relationship would emerge. The theory is still valid, but time has almost run out. At an unspecified date
in 1968, the British military base will
go and South Arabia will become inde- pendent.
Out of the morass of mistrust, vio- lence and complexity which character- ize South Arabian politics, two salient points stand clear. The first is strangely ironic.
Few people now, despite the deep di visions, talk of breaking up the Federa- tion. South Arabia may even prove to be Britain's only successful experiment in federal architecture. The others, like Central Africa and Malaysia, have col- lapsed, but while the stresses inside South Arabia have become worse and worse, neither the nationalists nor the sultans want to bring the house down. What is at issue is who should be mas- ter.
Narrowing Gulf
THE SECOND undisputed fact is that THE
the gulf between Aden and the hinterland is narrowing. Traditional rul ers are becoming national politicians and bureaucrats; Land Rovers and giant Berliet lorries are ousting the camel; the DC-3 is not so much an air- plane as a way of life, and transistors now hang navel-level amid the jumble of bandoliers, daggers, pistols and broad leather belts.
There is also a growing awareness of each other. The nationalists are begin. ning to realize that fighting British imperialism, whether in Crater or the Radfan, is no longer enough. Nor can the unsophisticated tribal and sultanic loyalties, still strong in many places, be totally ignored.
But the gap still appears unbridge able. The main contenders, in the sim- plest terms, are the "Feds" versus the "Nats." The federal government, which is already self-governing, consists mainly of the old rulers-sultans, sheikhs, emirs and shariffs-who divide their time between their own states and the new federal government seat at Al-Ittihad ("the Federation"), 20 miles from Aden.
In this government there is a leaven- ing of Adenis four ministers, all moderate, middle-class and politically damned since they were appointed by the British and have no significant fol- lowing.
It is difficult to justify the existence of the federal government (and the manner in which it was created) in modern, democratic terms, but there is no getting away from the fact that it does exist and that its case can sound
Reds Stall Hong Kong Boom
HONG KONG, from Page B1
aimed
is ambiguously
at alleged difficult to "counter-revolutionaries" Identify, however, the target in Hong Kong is more visible. It is the British- the infamous "British imperialists."
Ghost of Singapore
THE
HE ATTACK on the British is an offensive against a ghost. Britain's authority in the Orient collapsed with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1941 and its residual presence in this tiny colony is only a kind of accidental afterthought,
The Chinese Communist leaders are well aware of London's intentions to withdraw gradually from its once mighty bastions east of Suez, ending the era of Rule Britannia. For Peking, though, assaulting the British in their final hours in the Far East is a sym- bolic action that conveniently has a nationalistic appeal to all Chinese.
It was the British, burst out of their Island in the 19th century, who were the first foreigners to defeat the Celes- tial Universe that China considered it- self. That penetration into the Sacred Middle Kingdom, begun by the British In the Opium War of 1840, opened the way for the French, Germans, Rus- sians and other Outer Barbarians, leav. ing humiliating sears on Chinese na- tional pride. Perhaps the roots of
HONG KONG
Mao's intense chauvinism lie in the fact that his formative youth was a period in which China, dominated by assorted foreign spheres of Influence, was what he now calls a "semicolonial" country.
A Laugh for Moscow
KONG is an irritating re- Hminder of that period. In its way,
too, it also represents an ideological challenge to Mao. For here, on terri- tory rightfully belonging to his China, stands an enclave of mid-Victorian capitalism that works.
Indeed, Hong Kong has worked so well that even Peking uses it to earn some $600 million annually from ex- ports of food, textiles, banking opera- tions and other business. The incon- gruity of the world's foremost "Marx- ist-Leninists" relying for hard currency on the heirs of Adam Smith never fails to tickle the Soviet leaders, constantly berated as they are by Mao for their "modern revisionism."
nese during their occupation of Hong Kong.
News of the colony's financial solid- ity spread through Asia. Its largest Initial impact was in China, then suf fering from wild inflation as Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government crumbled. Many Shanghai industrial- ists, among others, shifted their capital to Hong Kong, bought choice gites and built factories.
Low taxes, cheap labor, free money flow and relatively honest government soon stimulated the prosperous, perse- cuted overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia to move their capital to Hong
the Kong. In
the colony process, changed from an entrepot of British trading firms to an aggressive center of light industry. Hong Kong-made ex- ports, valued at nearly a billion dollars last year, have increased sevenfold since 1954
Workers Exploited
Within recent times, Hong Kong's UT "FREEDOM without democra
principal asset has been its ability to inspire trust in a region of instability. That sense of trust received a big boost after World War II when the colonial government and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank combined to redeem at face value some $35 million worth of phony currency issued by the Japa-
"I didn't (huff!) really want to (puff!) blow the damn thing down anyway!"
cy," as a former governor once de- scribed Hong Kong's basic principle, has its drawbacks. While giving busi- nessmen freedom to make money, it has also left them free to exploit work- ers. And particularly in sleazy, mar- ginal Industries, management's treat- ment of labor is often archute.
In plastic flower factories, for exam- ple, workers are on a piecework basis, receiving no compensation when their flimsy molds break and getting little more than ådvice from government in their efforts to improve their condi tions through collective bargaining.
It was in a Kowloon artificial flower factory in May that a labor dispute first turned into a Communist-led riot. Within a week, the real issue was for- gotten as Mao's followers emerged to escalate the minor ruction into broader political drive that swept along in its momentum many of the staid. sensible pro-Communist bankers and businessmen who for years had served as Peking's representatives here.
A Terrifying Handful
T FIRST, the Hong Kong authori
а
Arab supporters of the
plausible, even convincing, when put across by a man like Sheikh Muham- mad Farid al-Aulaqui, the Minister of External Affairs.
"We in the federal government gen- uinely believe that we represent a large section of the South Arabian people and are not afraid to put it to a dem- ocratic test of 'one man, one vote," he
say's,
"The People Like It'
TP-COUNTRY, HOWEVER, a dichot
U
omy between the federal line' and more traditional views is revealed. Mohsin, deputy ruler of the Emirate of Dhala, put it succinctly: "After inde- pendence, the present system of govern- ment (ie. feudal rule will continue here; the people are used to it and like it."
Nervously tapping his new dictating machine, with a carbine at his side and a pistol and dagger in his belt, Mohsin was clearly unprepared to submit him- self to any kind of democratic process. And judging by the number of bullet and bazooka holes in his brother Sha'afal's palace in Dhala--the nearest equivalent South Arabia has to the Harris Pell, holes indicating unpopu larity he is a sensible man.
Others, like the deputy ruler of Au- dhali State, Naib Ja'bil, whose bother, Sultan Saleh, is the ruler and also Fed- eral Minister of Internal Security, are much more certain of their ground. A
Polyglot Rock Hugs Blighty
By Roy Perrott
London Observer
BOUT A QUARTER of a million years ago, a massive hump of limestone some two miles long erupted off the sea bed on the southern tip of Spain. This moment in geological times is when the frontier trouble be- Gibraltar and Franco really tween began.
The Spaniards were bound to feel from the first that the Rock was meant to be part of the mainland. Equally, no foreign maritime nation could fail to regard this towering senti- nel over the Straits, almost an island in silhouette, as other than fair game for capture.
Between these two conflicting views, the Rock has been quivering down the centuries. Siege and countersiege t the cycle has been more or less con tinuous, with occupiers of the moment starved or cannonballed out by incom ing tenants.
The British, on whose behalf Adm. Rooke planted the flag in 1704, with- stood fire ships, bombardment and hunger. They sweated heavy cannon longer to the top of the hill to get trajectory. They built defensive walls, roads, barracks and big dry docks im- portant enough, on the imperial route to India, for royalty to come out and open them.
A Parody of Home
A ties sought in negotiate a settle. A
ment with the colony's traditional left- ist leaders. They quickly discovered. however, that Hong Kong's "cultural revolution," like its inspirational exam- ple in China, had thrown up a wholly new array of hard-core Communists. Though they probably number no more than 5000, they have managed to frighten and paralyze a population of four million people in much the same way that a handful of guerrillas can terrorize a province,
men---to
Abandoning its peaceful overtures, the colonial administration has now mobilized its police and British mili
20,000 tary garrison-some fight a determined counterinsurgency. Hong Kong officials are counting oo the hope that Peking, true to its belief that "people's war" must be waged by the people themselves, will not inter- vene. Thus the prospect is a long, hot and possibly bloody summer of mean. ingless strife generated by fanatics trying to make their conduct conform to Mao's quotations.
AS GENERATIONS of settiers ar- rived, a tight little township, very cramped for space, sprang up on the western side of the Rock. The place began to get a faintly domesticated look, an odd mixture of an English coastal garrison town and all the places the settlers came from: Genoa, Malta, Spain, India, Portugal and Morocco.
Mediterranean influence is naturally strong, but it is overlaid by the British determiniation to make any colony look just like home. Both are now inex- tricably mixed. The policeman who heavyfoots it along Main Street at night, checking the door of the Indian bazaar or the Italian bakery, wears reg- ulation blue tunic and pointed blue helmet. But he may well be of Portu- guese extraction, and wher he gets back to the station, he chats to the sergeant in Spanish, the lingua franca of the town,
The telephone box under the palm tree is standard red government post office issue. Boots the druggist, Bar- clay's Bank and Lipton's grocery com
Front for Liberation build fences against British tanks in Aden.
fine-looking man, very tough, a natural leader with a well developed political sense, he claims--and in South Arabian terms there is more than a little truth in it-that he is a democrat.
The nationalists (the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen [FLOSY) and the National Liberation Front (NLF) are united in their opposi tion to the British and the federal gov. ernment-as it now stands-and the continuation of sheikhdom rule up-coun- try. But personalities, tactics and FLOSY's close links with the Egyptians divide them
are
While their differences
fairly clear, the strength of
no! their respective followings is FLOSY with its trade union backing (Abdulla al-Asnag, the movement's most impressive leader, first made his mark as a trade union official) is stili proba- bly the majority party in Aden, even though six of the 12 unions in the colony have broken away and now sup port the NLF.
But in the interior and in the federal army, the NFL appears to hold the whip hand. The NLF has always been uncompromisingly hostile to the sul tans, although ironically it is at one with the federal government in its op- position to Egyptian interference.
Thus while the nationalists are liter- ally at one another's throats (political assassinations are commonplace), the
Atlantic Ocean
SPAIN
Merin Seu
GIBRALTAR
Strait of Gibraltar
0
25
Miles
MOROCCO
pete for business with their Mediter ranean equivalents.
In 1964, before Gen. Franco began putting restrictions on traffic at the frontier in pursuit of his campaign to recover sovereignty over the Rock, British residents from the Costa Del Sol (the adjacent part of the Spanish coast) used to drive into Gibraltar once a month or more often, pick up their pension or allowance at Barclay's and then load the car with a huge cargo of English groceries.
The ancient marks of shot and shell on the Rock show how much hurt Spanish pride is vested in Gibraltar. When in 1984 the Spaniards intensified their frontier and customs checks, it was simply another cycle of the same old siege. Only the weapon was new frustration.
Well-versed in that emotion them. selves, the Spanish showed ingenuity in applying the screw while sticking more or less strictly to the bureau- cratic rulebook. The prosperous Gi- braltar bourgeoisie were proud car- owners, were they? Well, let them feel the refined torture of owning a car
with nowhere to go.
There would be no more plenie weekends in Spain for the Gibraltar- ians, unless they wanted to endure ten hours in the customs queue on the way; no more football match Ex- changes: no more sherry or building
United Press international
Between the Spanish town of La Linea in the foreground and Gibraltar is the no man's land border area.
B3
Associated Press
federal government is digging its heels in. The sultans increasingly see their survival as a central government di- rectly linked with their continued sta- tus as rulers back in the hills.
Elections Are Risky
U
TNFORTUNATELY, although in theory the two sides agree to na- fional elections under U.N. supervision on the basis of universal suffrage, it is unlikely that their good faith will ever be put to the test.
Shortage of time before independ- ence is one hindrance, and the national- ists' insistence on the prior dissolution of the federal government is another. A third would be the undoubted reluc Lance of some of the sultans to submit themselves to such an undignified and potentially disastrous exercise.
Probably the only unifying element In the whole fragmented business is the federal army. Drawn from all tribes, well trained and led by officers who, virtually without exception, have come up the hard way through the ranks, it is a force to be reckoned with, on both fighting and political fronts.
When the British have finally gone, this professional, wholly South Arablan army may fulfill its destiny. As one politically minded officer put it to me: "Aden is the head of the Federa- tion; the rest is the body. We must stay together whatever happens, either by free will or, if necessary, by force."
Gibraltar
Gibraltar-British crown colony at
the southern tip of Spain. Government-Governor assisted by Executive Council and Legislative Council.
Area-2 square miles. Population -- 28,460 (including gar-
rison).
material from Spain. Let them realize the artificiality of their economy on the Rock, its dependence on Spain.
conse
It is hard to say which side the re- strictions hurt most, since Gibraltar and the adjacent area of Spain had be
The strongly interdependent. Rock's Spanish workers took home about three times the normal wage for the same sort of work in Spain. The Gibraltarians normally spent around $17 million a year in La Linea, just across the frontier, and other nearby towns.
In 1965, the United Nations Trustee ship Committee invited Britain and Spain to negotiate, and the first of these talks began in May, 1960. The
both positions of
sides quickly emerged. Britain saw matters as an affair between herself and the people of Gibraltar, who have the right to self-determination a n self-govern.
ment. Spain saw the whole thing as a matter of recovering lost sovereignty over a piece of national territory seized by conquest. As for the people, why these were merely camp followers of a British military base.
Voting in September
RITAIN BROKE off the talks,
B which had dragged on for months,
when Spain suddenly declared limita tions on the surrounding air space that British military and civilian aircraft would he permitted to use. Britain offered to refer legal argument over rights to the Rock to the World Court. but Spain turned this down, Then Britain decided to refer it to the people of Gibraltar themselves. They will vote in September whether they wish to pass under Spanish sovereignty or to maintain the link with Britain while running their own domestic affairs.
Observers believe that 90 per cent or more will elect to stay British. They are strongly patriotic. They never seem to tire of turning out in crowds once a month to see the garrison regiment change the guard at the governor's residence.
They also like to be British financial- ly. With the income tax at only 20 per cent for a $14,000-a-year man, they do very well in legitimate business. Several private fortunes have also been made from professional smuggling.
But unless things get easier, money, like cars, could be an Achilles heel of frustration, Where do you spend it?
t
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