Word: sallal
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Dates: during 1962-1962
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Cairo newspapers derisively called him a ghost. But the ousted Imam of Yemen, Mohamed el Badr, seemed very real last week. Badr's enemies had repeatedly reported him dead ever since September, when rebel tanks commanded by Strongman Abdullah Sallal ringed the palace in San'a and opened fire at point-blank range. But the royal troops held out until the next day, when the Imam darted through a breach in the wall. A woman in a nearby house helped him replace his fancy clothes with a common soldier's khaki tunic, and Badr safely made...
...Sallal's "republican'' regime, Badr said scornfully: "It seems all you need to make a government these days is a broadcasting station and a declaration that you have formed a government." Furthermore, said the Imam, who has never been much interested in women himself, the new regime has the wrong attitude toward sex: "It encourages the unveiling of women, adultery, alcoholism, and every other kind...
Outdated Qat. Against this regime, Sallal and his friends were plotting for 20 years, ever since he qualified for training at a military academy in Iraq. "In Baghdad," he says, "I was dazzled by all the wonderful things that did not exist in Yemen. If I viewed Baghdad as progress, you can understand what Yemen is like." Involvement in plots often landed Sallal in jail. He spent ten years as a prisoner, seven of them in solitary confinement in a dungeon at Hajjah, where he was chained to an iron ball. His stomach still suffers from the diet, and Sallal...
Still unanswered is what kind of government Sallal will give Yemen. San'a was thronged last week with hopeful advisers-sleek Egyptians, close-mouthed Russians, eager Yemenite exiles home for a new start. Electric light and water went on and off irregularly, and the royal palaces and guesthouses were jammed with sheiks squatting on the floor smoking water pipes, barefoot soldiers with tommy guns and kohl-eyed women who had daringly torn off their veils. Sheiks who spat qat on the carpets were reproved: ''Yemen is now a modern republic...
...Says Sallal: "I'm fighting against hunger, sickness and ignorance in Yemen. That is my goal, and you can label it anything you want to. I want a constitution within a year or two, and elections within five years. By then we should have done something worthwhile." He adds with humor: "Western diplomats should help us-for them, Yemen must be the worst post in the world...