Word: imam
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From remote Yemen last September came word of a revolution that had toppled the centuries-old dynasty of Imam Mohammed el Badr. Leader of the coup was Colonel Abdullah Sallal, 45, newly appointed commander of the palace guard, who announced in the Yemen capital of San'a that his troops had killed the Imam and were in control of the primitive, Nebraska-sized country. Weeks later it was learned that Badr had in fact escaped the shelled ruins of his palace and taken refuge in Yemen's rugged hill country, whose warlike tribes have traditionally been loyal...
...little civil war in Yemen last week spluttered on like a defective fuse. The royalist tribesmen trying to put the deposed Imam of Yemen back on his feudal throne made hit-and-run attacks on strongpoints held by the "republicans" of General Abdullah Sallal and their Egyptian allies. In return Egyptian planes bombed the tribal encampments and even crossed the border to blast again the Saudi Arabian town of Najran, the main staging area for supplies sent to the royalists by the nervous monarchs of both Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Kings Hussein and Saud...
...exactly cowed by Sallal's threat, but it was anxious to quarantine the civil war in Yemen before it engulfed the whole Middle East-a distinct possibility, with Egypt's President Nasser lined up behind Sallal and Saudi Arabia and Jordan supporting the deposed Imam Mohamed el Badr. Last week, after nearly three months of hesitation, the U.S. became the 34th nation to recognize the Yemen Arab Republic...
Though Arab newspapers hailed the U.S. action as the creation of a "Pax Americana," the civil war was far from over, and the rival forces continued to broadcast grim communiques. From San'a came an unconfirmed report that the Imam's cousin, Prince Hassan, 31, had been killed in action. Not to be outdone, the royalists claimed the slaughter of precisely 888 rebels-including 88 Egyptians -in a two-day battle along the borders of northeastern Yemen...
...remote mountain valleys north of the capital city of San'a, the royalists encircled and began starving out two Egyptian garrisons of more than 1,000 men. Another group of dagger-wielding backers of the Imam clambered up rocky hills at dawn to catch Egyptian Brigadier Abdel Moneim Sinat and 200 of his paratroopers by surprise; they brought back Sinat's severed head as a trophy...