Word: imam
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered his big new win-the-war offensive in Yemen. In preparation, the Egyptian expeditionary force was beefed up to 48,000 men, and a fresh array of Soviet-made tanks, heavy artillery and jet planes was massed in the north, where the deposed Imam Badr makes his headquarters in a cave near the Saudi Arabian border. Republican President Abdullah Sallal fired his moderate Premier and gave Yemen's tough General Hassan Amri a mandate to take charge...
...fact, everyone is fed up. The royalist tribes have had their villages bombed to rubble and lost an estimated 40,000 dead. The republican tribes resent their overbearing Egyptian allies, and are discouraged by lack of success in the field. Saudi Arabia's King Feisal, who backs the Imam, would be happy to see the Egyptians leave Yemen and an end to the subsidy of Maria Theresa thalers used by the Imam to bribe tribes away from the republicans and keep the mountain Zeidis contented...
Last week the truce game was over. Tribesmen supporting the Imam poured out of their mountain fastness to launch a successful attack on Razeh, near the Saudi Arabian border. The jubilant royalists claimed to have killed, wounded and captured more than a thousand Egyptians and republicans. At the same time, two tribes in the mountains 20 miles from San'a declared their support for the royalists and drove back an Egyptian force sent to subdue them...
...Thalers. The bloody civil war, which may have cost over 100,000 dead, is one that everyone is sick of and no one knows how to stop. During the ceasefire, negotiations broke down because the republicans refused to give up the republic and the royalists refused to abandon the Imam. And al most all Yemenis, of whatever political stripe, want to be rid of Egyptian troops, who behave more like an army of occupation than an ally...
...Imam Badr is showing far more political skill than before. His ragtag army is supplied with arms, munitions and money (heavy Maria Theresa thalers shipped in by camel caravan) from Saudi Arabia and British-administered South Arabia, neither of which wants Nasser as a near neighbor. The royalist radio last week skillfully tried to widen the split in republican ranks by promising amnesty to all nonroyalists once the Egyptians were withdrawn. Further, Imam Badr promised the people of Yemen a new form of government: "a constitutionally democratic system" ruled by a "national assembly elected by the people of Yemen...