Word: yemens
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ruling monarchs, Saud and Hussein were worried that revolution in Yemen might easily spread to their own lands.* Two armies of about 1,000 men each, most raised from Yemenite tribesmen in Saudi territory, invaded Yemen, but Sallal swiftly assembled his ragtag Yemenite army and, with the help of Soviet arms and Egyptian planes, drove the royalists back across the border into Saudi Arabia and Britain's Aden Protectorate. Twenty-five nations, from Russia to Indonesia, promptly recognized Sallal's regime. The U.S. and Britain, trapped between their alliances with the remaining Arab monarchies and their concern...
Meanwhile. Yemen is opening up to the outside world. TIME Correspondent George de Carvalho last week found Strongman Sallal in his San'a home, sitting shoeless on a mattress, surrounded by fellow officers, adding an occasional cigarette butt to the litter of orange peels on the mosaic floor. Sallal offered a justification of his coup, which turned mostly on reminiscences of the incredibly corrupt and backward rule imposed on Yemen by the gross, 300-lb. Ahmad the Devil...
Ahmad did his best to carry Yemen back to the 10th century instead of forward to the 20th. He grabbed choice lands and houses that struck his fancy, and jailed those owners who complained. He handled all the state funds, but never kept accounts or made a budget. The country had no daily newspaper, no long-distance phone, no credit system-not even a Coca-Cola plant. As nearly as anyone can estimate, Ahmad's annual income was about $16 million, his expenditures about $21 million. He raised money by adding charges to customs duties and levying internal tariffs...
...Crown Prince Badr tried to get the clocks moving again. An arms deal with Russia engineered by him brought T-34 tanks, Yak fighter planes and an arsenal of small arms to Yemen, although Ahmad cried: "I don't need them-I have my sword!" He never paid for the Red hardware and was content to let it rust into uselessness. As fast as Badr brought in Egyptian teachers, Czech technicians and Yugoslav pilots and maintenance crews, Ahmad deported them. The Red Chinese built a showcase highway from the port of Hodeida to the capital, but after nine months...
Only 1% of Yemen's population attended primary school-and 30% of this elite suffer from pellagra. Infant mortality up to two years of age runs 58%, one of the world's worst. In all Yemen there are only three hospitals, two high schools and a primitive military academy, but the six-man Yemenite Foreign Office used to concoct reports to the U.N. of totally imaginary hospitals and schools, including a College of Aviation...