SUNSET AT ADEN WHAT WILL BE LEFT BEHIND WHEN BRITISH RULE ENDS?

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31029, 7 April 1966, Page 16

SUNSET AT ADEN WHAT WILL BE LEFT BEHIND WHEN BRITISH RULE ENDS?

(By

JAMES MORRIS

in the “Guardian.** Manchester I

(Reprinted by arrangement]

“Cheer up.” one feels like saying to the soldiers in Aden, as they frisk another stoic busload of Arabs, or check the innards of a taxi for hidden bombs—“ Cheer up, it’s nearly over now.” Aden is almost the last of the rearguard actions which have forlornly preoccupied the British Army for the last twenty years, and have been for a whole generation of Britons the prime constants of national foreign policy. Aden is very nearly the end of the Imperial story and here the Ra.i is going out neither with a bang nor a whimper, but only a tired and puzzled sigh.

We have promised independence to the place, you may remember, by 1968 and by then the big British base here is also to be disbanded: yet far from subsiding, terrorist | activity against us has been; worse' than ever in the lastl month or so, and scarcely a day goes by without its small and squalid tragedy. It is Very much an emergency still. Watchful troops patrol the streets all day, Europeans are distinctly chary about going out after dark, and in the last few days there has been an ominous shift in terrorist tactics from fairly haphazard grenade throwing to pointblank gun attacks. Battle When War Over This is rather a weird sensation —a battle that continues, it seems, when the war is over. It is like treading on a stair that isn’t there—or in military terms, like defending a position that doesn’t exist. The strategic function of the base having been absurdly nared down to self-protection. Thousands of splendid soldifers. qualified for almost any degree of glory, unworthily waste their skills defending themselves and their families against political zealots whose points have apparently already been conceded. There are, however, points beyond points. The handy general theory that President Nasser is behind it all strikes me as a little facile. There must be many varied enemies, hidden away in the urban labyrinths of Aden, or meditating in distant chancelleries, to whom a British promise of withdrawal is not enough. There are cynics who will believe it only when they see it. There are rival terrorist outfits, perhaps, alreadv jockeying for supremacy like the Vrgjin Zrai Leumi and the Stern Gang long ago. There are sadists who will be happy onlv if the British leave in ignominy, chastened and evasnerated. There are expansionists who still wish Aden and its hinterland to become part of the Yemen. Violent Distrust Above all there are many Arabs who are as concerned about the future shape of the South Arabian Federation as they are about the British withdrawal “per se,” and who wish nothing to be settled or solidified now, lest the mould should stick. These are the reformers who violently distrust the idea of a federation dominated by pseudo-feudal sultans, and are

determined that independent Aden should be aligned from the start with forces of Arab Nationlist socialism. So far the Arabian Peninsula has mostly baulked them: only la.t month President Nasser told a Suez audience that he would keep his troops in Yemen for twenty years rather than let that obstinate anachronism of a country slide back into royalism Aden is thus peculiarly important to the cause of Arab unity, itself heaven knows, an erratic runner. We are going; j we have said when we will be gone; it is what we are going to leave behind that is really the issue now—an issue that must seem remote indeed to those patient soldiers at the road blocks, as the sweat darkens the backs of their shirts, and they beckon on the next clients—“ You next, Albert, —you in the funny shirt. Let's have a shufti then." One uncertainty has given way to another, and there are all too many Adenis who look forward to our departure only with foreboding. Organically a Part For one thing the British are organically part of Aden —the ancient port was almost deserted when Captain Haines of the Indian Navy tock the place in 1839. He spent the last six years of his life in a Bombay debtors' prison, by the way, having allegedly fiddled the Aden accounts. We have many retainers or dependents here, from the Sultans of the Protectorate to shopkeepers, Government clerks or contractors, who fear they will get rough treatment when we leave —not to speak of reduced incomes. Some seers prophesy a period of murderous anarchy, with thugs of varying political convictions shooting it out

among the duty free tape recorders. There are even wild suggestions that the country potentates may go merrily to war with each other again, or march upon the city with their soldiery looting and lusting like old times Nobody knows. The Britishdevised Federation seems to many Arabs, as it seems to me. a fragile voyager to travel bv itself through a wolfish world, and 1 am myself prepared to bet my last South Arabian dinar that in twenty years' time the South Arabian dinar will be not worth paying me. Menacing Grace Yet in a dream-like way the life of Aden, the great entrepot, flows on heedlessly Flags still fly. bugles still blow, the big ships steam in and out fastidiously, as though thev don’t much like the cut of the place. While the patrols move with a languid but menacing grace through the streets off Steamer Point, guns always at the ready, the tourists stream eagerly ashore to do their shopping—oblivious to it all—to the automatic rifles cocked, the barbed wire everywhere, the new curfew at Sheikh Othman. the murder quite likely to be occurring just around the corner as they haggle. And in the evening, if you climb up to the Victorian clock tower on the hill at Tawahi, you may still hear the sunset prayers of the muezzin echoing across the unhappy town, and through the grim, grey rocks that overlook it—one sound that makes sense in Aden, and coincides as it happens with a resilient ritual from another culture, the sundowner. It remains one of the last sensual pleasures of imperialism to enjoy both at the same time.