Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. This is a lovely copy. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> THIS is the story of the struggle for Yemen. The centre of the story is the war between the Yemeni republic and the Yemeni royalists: the republic backed by and often supplanted by the Egyptians; the royalists supported by Saudi Arabian arms and gold. The war which began on 26 September 1962 when Abdullah Sallal’s friends revolted against the Imam Mohamed al Badr is still going on. Yemen is the only place where the two great competing forces of the Middle East engaged elsewhere in ideological and political struggle have been pitted against each other in physical conflict. But the struggle is broader than that. It extends to Aden and South Arabia; it involves the withdrawal of the British from Aden and the withdrawal of the Egyptians from Yemen; it affects the future of the whole region which the Yemenis like to call ‘natural Yemen’. The struggle will be influenced by and will in turn influence the future roles in this strategic corner of the Arabian peninsula both of the great powers the United States Britain and the Soviet Union and of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Yemen’s roots are deep. There were Imams in Yemen two hundred years before the Normans invaded Britain; if outside influences are withdrawn then the traditions and aspirations of the Yemeni people will determine the future in this part of the world. It is hardly possible to examine the present in Yemen in this way without raising questions about the past: one asks what these people were in order to understand what they are and to divine what they may become. The answers to these questions will show that the quality of Yemen is unique different from all the rest of the Middle East geographically climatically ethnically and historically. The answers unfold in romantic tales. (SP)