Extracts from An Element of Luck by Michael A Crouch:
2. Full circle: "It should never have happened"
The author, having reflected on the British legacy to Yemen, recounts what it was like to revisit the unified country in 1993 and describes the mixture of emotions experienced on meeting old friends and a prominent erstwhile enemy. He lays the basis for his annual visits to Yemen thereafter. Again, footnotes at the end of the chapter provide further detail.
My relatively brief sojourn in South Arabia where, like Richard III 'half made up', had helped influence in a minimal way a part of the world that was itself part-formed, at least in twentieth century social and political terms. That had been the vital period in my life. I had met the wise men (and some wise women too) who had shaped a somewhat narrow minded and ignorant young man. I developed into someone who could learn to respect people and institutions for what they were, at least before some of them were destroyed in front of me.
It was the fashion among many politicians and not a few diplomats to regard British influence as the principal cause of strife in the Middle East. Such an approach, it seems to me, is as misleading (even as irrelevant) as blaming the colonists for settling in North America or in Australia. Such triteness also obscures much of what really took place on a daily basis, between the expatriate Briton and the local people. It was not a relationship of colonizer and oppressed, but a context of a mutual inter-dependence, of service, of living cheek by jowl in solitary isolation, of doing the best one could, according to expected standards of behaviour, with limited resources and a sense of humour.
The particular efforts of the British in South Arabia have been shown to have been fatally flawed on two levels. The first I personally experienced: the extraordinary political muddling in South Arabia itself, a misguided policy of forcing a system of political development on to a people who were patently not ready for it. Secondly, and worst of all, there was a blatant disregard of the civilized behaviour expected of certain senior colleagues of mine who saw that the means justified the ends. If you can suborn enough people with rifles and ammunition and encourage them to murder your opponents, then eventually it will all 'come good' (as we Australians say). Such an approach did not (and never did) have a hope of succeeding which, deep down, I think they knew.
The withdrawal of British forces from the one significant western presence in the Middle East (that is, from Aden) was partly justified in the case of South Arabia by the prevailing British government dogma: that support for traditionally based tribal institutions was wrong. The result was a sharp decline in South Arabia's advance into the modern world. a political semi-vacuum, a Russian centre for mischief-making and, by logical extension, the eventual opportunity for a modern robber-baron, Saddam Hussein, to build his personal power base.
The fact that the distaste for traditional forms of Arab rule did not extend to the sultanate of Muscat, the Gulf amirates or to Kuwait, where the rulers exercised control (and apparently still do) by various degrees of absolute control, makes a nonsence of this dogma which, at the very least, smacks of hypocrisy. Perhaps it would have been more honest of British politicians of both main political parties when in power to have made it clear that Britain was going broke in trying to maintain its old imperial commitments, but that was not the idiom of the time.
Another perspective to my indulging in the luxury of looking back, is a reference to someone I consider far more competent than myself in commenting on things South Arabian at the time: that distinguished correspondent to The Daily Telegraph, the late R.H.C. Steed. I found a cutting among my letters, before starting this account. He was writing in his usual thoughtful way about the effects of pulling out of Aden. On 7 March 1966 under the heading ADEN: A COSTLY RETREAT, part of what he said was:
The great majority of Adenis want Britain to stay in the base after independence, and thus ensure their safety and livelihood. They are the victims of the Egyptian and Yemeni terrorist campaigns which never would have been effective but for fear, now confirmed, that Britain would leave ... Yet if Britain had said a year ago firmly and clearly that she was staying on, the Adeni public and politicians would have cooperated against the gunmen and defeated them ... Mr Healey made a shocking, and admitted, error in confusing the local (anti-British) Aden government with the government of the South Arabian Federation (which is pro-British and which counted on the promised defence treaty with Britain after independence).
All the same, he cannot have shared the widespread confusion about the true position and role of a base. Yet he certainly appears to be exploiting popular misconceptions about Aden in picking it as the branch to be chopped off. ... All the indications are that, in both the short and long term, a decision which is obviously morally wrong will also prove costly in lives, money, security and reputation.
Maybe: strong stuff and still debatable, but containing enough of an uncomfortable truth to bring it all back. For me, it did just that but this musing on the Arabian past did not stop there.
John Shipman in London phoned me in Western Australia, early one morning, towards the end of 1992. Would I like to visit Yemen? My first reaction was better not. The last time I was there they had tried to kill me. Why go? John was vague but reassured me that the Yemenis were cordial towards the likes of me.
The invitation to visit the Yemen had come via Seiyed Rashid Alkaf, the chairman of the Yemeni Company for Investment in Oil and Minerals. Would a small group of ex-politicos care to visit the areas that they left so precipitously, 26 years before? Why? It was not really clear, other than that it represented a 'hands-across-the-seas' gesture, a sort of 'All is different now. Come and see for yourselves and tell the world how it has changed.' It was an amazing offer and I hesitated only momentarily. One really should never go back to the scenes of so much trauma and yet I would kick myself afterwards if I had opted out. I accepted. If I could be in London by April 1993 a 1st class return fare to Sana'a would await me.
I forwarded a brief curriculum vitae, as requested and thought over what I had heard about the two Yemens over the past few years. There had not been much news in the Australian press. The Economist had printed a few pieces on the unification of the two countries and the BBC had carried a recent report by a travel correspondent who complained about the lack of western sanitation facilities between Sana'a and Ta'iz. It was not much to go on. I turned to John Shipman, our group's coordinator, to beef up my scanty knowledge. John was still working for the British Foreign Office; he was immensely well informed on the Yemen and an Arabic speaker of the first rank.
Before 1990 the attempts to unify the Yemen Arab Republic (the north) and the People's Democratic Republic of South Yemen (what had been the British preserve) had come to nothing in the previous 20 years: there had been a right-wing government in the north confronting a very left-wing government in the south. There had been two border wars and three heads of state assassinated or executed. Whatever efforts had been made towards unification were demolished by that bloody revolution in Aden in 1986, to which I have referred previously. More border clashes and then, following the collapse of the USSR, an accord in 1988 that allowed movement of people between the two countries and a deal of cooperation over oil exploration.
Final negotiations had resulted in the new state being formed in 1990, a remarkable achievement given the disparity between the two political and economic systems. Our visit was to precede by some weeks the first country-wide elections for the inaugural consultative assembly. So much for what had been happening since that day in September 1967, when I had scuttled aboard a crowded Air India flight to Kenya.
Once in London, I collected my visa in a rush. I then walked down to the London offices of Air Yemenia to check out the flight. A charming Yemeni greeted me warmly, in excellent English, and enquired whether it was to be my first visit. I explained my background and how it was in the nature of a pilgrimage.
"It never should have happened and you should not have left like that," said Khalid Rashid. I was moved, almost to tears.
I met my ex-colleagues outside the Travellers Club in Pall Mall and we shook hands awkwardly in a rather British fashion. After a gap of 26 years the disparate backgrounds of our little group were to be expected of a collection of characters who had mostly to start again from our common experience. We had done very different things in the intervening years. John Shipman has already been introduced. Bill Heber Percy, foundation President of the British-Yemeni Association, had worked in the Oman during the 1970s, prior to farming in the Welsh hills. John Ducker had joined the World Bank. He, like me, had only flown into London the previous day, in his case from Kirghizstan.
3 April 1993: the Yemenia 727 touched down at Sana'a airport after an overnight flight from London. The jagged peaks of northern Yemen were interspersed with patches of cultivation. Yellow, ocre, dark brown, streaks of green, we taxied past the military area, where a cannibalized helicopter lolled before rows and rows of its fellows painted in dark camouflage brown, with the rosette of black, red and white to identify the Yemeni Air Force. A jet fighter was in the same livery. We halted. Steps were down. It was all quite unreal.
It was a pleasant temperature on arrival (Sana'a is over 7,000 feet above sea level) and our welcome was cordial. Almost instantly we were made aware that this was not to be a low-key tourist affair - our own transport to the VIP lounge, a white Mercedes to the plush hotel and, suddenly, we were whisked into the most unexpected but pleasant role of being greeted as a top-level delegation. Apparently the Yemeni government was anxious to obtain our recollections of where the border lay between Saudi Arabia and what had been the Eastern Aden Protectorate! Like most Middle Eastern situations, there was also a hidden agenda and the invitation to visit Yemen was explained. We were no mere sightseers, we were to sing for our supper. It was to be a pleasure.
The next few days in Sana'a maintained their surrealist quality: being whisked in a stretched limousine, formally dressed to meet senior government officials and to pour over frontier maps and record our recollections of past border incidents. Luncheon hosted by the foreign minister, Dr Al-Iriani, [7] being entertained by kind British Embassy hosts, the brief evening gatherings of the four of us to catch up on what had happened to each of us over the years. It was the stuff of dreams.
We played at being tourists, too: walks round the friendly streets of old Sana'a, the magnificent medieval buildings set against a hubbub of amplified calls to prayer and the roar of traffic. Outside the city, there were drives at breakneck speed over remarkable highways constructed through dramatic passes, castles crowning steep slopes cultivated by endless strips of terraces, crowded market places, military checkpoints, numerous lines of Toyotas packed with humanity and goods, sudden shabbiness and squalor, a hubbub of littered alleys, crossroads, chaos.
We were invited to visit the south and we were suddenly impatient to be off. After much discussion it was agreed we should be driven to Aden, from there to Mukalla (all bitumen now) to the Hadhramaut and back via Ma'arib to Sana'a. We were escorted by a couple of soldiery and two helpful civilians, one of whom was Mohamed ash Shami [8] of the President's Office (who incidentally was visiting these places for the first time). It was truly a voyage of discovery.
The other 'minder' Mohamed Abdo hailed originally from Aden. He had earned his credentials as a grenade thrower during the 1960s. He described, with a certain malevolent humour, how as a small boy he had been assembled with his school to welcome the British Queen on her visit to Aden in April 1953. This was at a time when each school day started with a daily commitment to,
"God, the Country and the Queen."
Her Majesty had apparently directed that each of the poor children should be given,
"A glass of milk with sugar in it, one banana and a pair of trousers,"
on the receipt of which he had run to see his mother excitedly, to say he had seen the Queen wave,
"And she is so white. And why am I not like her?"
It made a good story. He summed up his feelings towards the British during the troubles:
"We hated you ... but later, we feel the British had such good rules."
His feelings, I judged, were still equivocal towards the erstwhile oppressors. Perhaps he pined for his East German mentors?
The next four days were a kaleidoscope of impressions: Lahej, my first married home, the palace frontage submerged in modern decor. The desert between there and Shaikh Othman, now a mass of houses, towards Little Aden, more urban sprawl. In Al Ittihad (now Madinat-al-Sha'ab, the Town of the People), my second house, the bazooka repairs still showing in the stone wall. Silent Valley, the slanting sun behind jagged peaks casting shadows across the familiar regimental names and ranks - Royal Marines, SAS, South Wales Borderers, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and, of course, Pat Gray's headstone. There were graves of women, children, other young men who died for nothing. There was some comfort in the rows of unoccupied plots. I was greatly moved.
Tawahi, Ma'alla, Crater, those ex-services flats, teeming with life, washing hanging, noise, cheerful families gathered in cafés that spilled onto the pavements. Scruffy, yes, very, an extension of Crater, but cheerful, colourful, friendly. All except for the sad old Crescent Hotel. Ancient retainers raised quavering hands to dirty turbans. Perched on sofas crushed by innumerable behinds, we drank an over-priced beer, while the shades of earlier complaisant British drinkers seemed to jeer at us from the past.
The road to Mukalla and beyond was a long day of frantic speed, interspersed with abrupt halts, as the bitumen culminated in washaways. By early afternoon we were in Wahidi country and stopping at Habban. With Mohamed Abdo's help I traced the tall building where Lynette, baby Charles and I had lunched over 27 years ago. I had with me a photograph of Charles being held by 'Ali Misaed Babakri, in company with Mahdi bin Mohsin. There was a heart warming discussion with a relative of theirs; regretful rejections of their offers of hospitality and a promise to forward the photograph to our old friends in Saudi Arabia. Later we stopped in Mahfidh where an elderly Bedoui, Kalashnikov across his shoulders, enquired whether we were Russian. On being told me we were British we were embraced.
"Why did you leave us?"
"You tried to shoot us."
"That was a mistake!"
Amazing! The buildings and plots were marked out all the way to Mukalla, which is now a large metropolis, with a dual highway on reclaimed land and overhead street lights. The Sultan's palace (tidier than it had been in my day) is now the museum. Inside, all was as I remembered from those interminable meetings at the end. There were the same overstuffed plastic chairs, portraits of earlier rulers and photographs of British dignitaries. Very strange it felt. Across the road was the old Residency, sadly unkempt, though still in use by the administration. The same bronze mortars, the faded lozenge gap on the wall where the British Coat of Arms had been.
The Governor of the fifth directorate comprising Mukalla and the Hadhramaut, Awadh Abdullah al Murshadi, greeted us with warm courtesy. Then, in strode a stocky figure who, after the usual greetings, enquired (in Arabic, mine was just returning):
"Who was there at the end, in Mukalla?" John Shipman indicated me and himself.
"You remember the grenade over the hospital wall?" We did.
"I threw it," he said simply.
And the explosion in front of my vehicle that nearly took out John Shipman and Charles Guthrie? He also.
"Old enemies make good friends," he added. He was later to remark that God had made his aim bad.
This was Colonel Abdurahim 'Atik, Mamur (Commissioner) of Say'un and our host for the next two days. His hospitality and his wish to be a friend reached through to me: one more ghost had been laid.
The final stages of this so strange an experience took us from familiar haunts in the Wadi Hadhramaut out to the desert fringes of Al 'Abr (the original fort now in picturesque ruin) and of Zamakh. We were joined by an old friend from HBL days, Ahmed Nowah Barashaid, and by the Rasputin-looking brother of Abdullah bin Ndail. Interspersed by moments of great emotion as we were embraced by old friends, I experienced once more the contentment and camaraderie of those remote times, when a carefree youngster thought only of the present, as he strove to fulfil the expectations instilled by family, by colleagues and by those cheerful Bedou, each vying with the other to impress and to cajole. Fond memories abounded, bad memories submerged. Perhaps that is what our trip was really about.
Footnotes
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Now Prime Minister of Yemen
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Grandson of the Governor of Baidha who had been in charge at the time the British had been across the border and a thorn in our side
