Word: badr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ambitions for political leadership in the Arab world were sharply challenged, most notably by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, the secular prophet of a new kind of Arab nationalism. The two strong-minded leaders clashed directly only once before Nasser's death in 1970. After Yemen's Imam Badr was ousted in a Republican coup, Nasser sent in Egyptian forces to support the new regime. Faisal backed a counterrevolution by Yemeni Royalists. Eventually, Badr renounced his claim to the throne and the Republican regime prevailed ? but Nasser suffered heavy losses, and the cost of the war came close...
Nasser's greatest failure as a sponsor of revolution was in Yemen, where Egyptian troops fought for five years in an ill-advised campaign to depose the Imam Badr and replace him with a republican government. "I was convinced that I was participating in a genuine war of liberation," Nasser said after the campaign had ended. "By the time I found out it was a tribal war, it was too late to get out with honor. I found myself stuck." Small wonder that some observers dubbed Yemen "Nasser's Viet...