have taken the trouble to print North Yemeni propaganda releases claiming "South Yemeni aggression, mass bombings of villages and indiscriminate murder". This screen of silence should not be taken to mean that the general staff of British imperialism is uninterested in the course and outcome of this apparently obscure dispute. The very opposite is the case. And socialists who take the struggle against British capitalism seriously must also take the trouble to unravel the complicated course of events in Arabia.
The region is of central economic and strategic importance for the Western powers by virtue of its vast oil resources in the North, along the Arab Gulf, and the sea route to the East through the Red Sea in the South. For more than a century Britain has been the dominant imperialist power in the area, and continues to hold sway. But since the early 1960s the Arab masses in the region have begun the struggle to rid themselves of imperialist exploitation. The three centres of this struggle have been North Yemen, South Yemen, and the Gulf area from Kuwait to Dhofar. The present war between North and South Yemen can only be understood by grasping the course of events in these three centres.
DEFEAT IN NORTH YEMEN Following the overthrow of the reactionary emirate in North Yemen by Republican forces there was a civil war in that country for eight years. The Royalists would not have been able to wage this war without massive military assistance from Britain. £200 million worth of military hardware was provided by the British ruling class via Saudi Arabia. Even after the Egyptian army withdrew from the Republican side, the Republic held out against the Royalist forces, but a swing to the right in August 1968 led to reconciliation with Saudi Arabia and hence with the Royalists. Since that time the Arab Republic of Yemen has been ruled by a RepublicanRoyalist coalition heavily influenced by Saudi Arabia, the main bastion of reaction in the Arab world.
REVOLUTION IN SOUTH YEMEN The masses in South Yemen were faced with a direct struggle against British imperialism's occupying forces and in 1967 they inflicted a humiliating defeat on the British in Aden. The struggle culminated in the establishment of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. By its example to the rest of the Arab world, the establishment of the new Republic was a crucial blow against imperialism and those regimes in the Arab world which practise alliances with it. (It is as yet extremely difficult to characterise the social nature of the new Republic; in view of the weakness of the state apparatus one might more profitably view it as a "liberated zone'.) More particularly, the South Yemeni Republic poses a big challenge to the North since its existence North Yemen. There are therefore plenty of forces in the region which would dearly like to see an end to the Southern regime. But for Britain and Saudi Arabia, the task of destroying the Republic of South Yemen is made a thousand times more urgent by developments in the Arabian Peninsula's third centre of revolunionary struggie - tne trucial FREE ALL IRISH POLITICAL PRISONERS! BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND NOW!
The mask of Whitelaw's Direct Rule has been torn aside and has revealed plain clothes murder squads, rubber stamp detention, and political prisoners. The Darlington 'conference' showed Whitelaw's inability of the Six Counties. The war is not over, the struggle continues.
The Anti-Internment League is today the movement which unites the largest number of individuals and organisations in Britain who support self-determination for the Irish people. The AlL is determined to of Ireland. We call on Irish exiles, trade unionists, students, and all who believe that Ireland's British Youth train at the Lenin School organised by PFLOAG states, Muscat and Oman along the Arab Gulf.
THE DHOFARI REVOLUTION I n June 1965, the struggle for the liberation of the Gulf was launched in Dhofar, the territory bordering the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen on its North Eastern side. The movement which began in Dhofar has had to confront daily attacks by the R.A.F., tribal divisions and innumerable other difficulties, but in spite of everything, it has won scores of military victories over Sultan Qabus's mercenaries and his British advisers".
The capital itself, Sallalah, was for several weeks besieged and shelled by the revolutionary forces, and so far three quarters of Dhofar has been liberated. New popular administrations have been set up in all the liberated areas, freeing the populations from pre-feudal social conditions.
Responsibility for these astonishing achievements lies with the organisation leading the struggle, the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf. (PFLOAG). This organisation, one of the most advanced political formations in the Arab world, held its third congress in Rahout in June 1971 and adopted a programme defining its global strategy.
The following were the principal decisions of the Congress: 1. It set itself the strategic task of liberating the whole of the Gulf territories from Kuwait in the west to the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman (including Dhofar) in the East. 2. It adopted armed struggle as the only means of smashing imperialism and the feudal and bourgeois classes in the region. 3. It embraced scientific socialism as the Front's ideological basis. 4. It condemned Britain's phoney federation of the emirates along the Gulf, the fake independence of Bahrein, Qatar and Oman, and all the traditional political structures in the region.
S. The Congress called for the strengthening of ties with the revolutionary movements in other parts of the Arab East, and throughout tae world.
THE IMPERIALIST RESPONSE In the face of this revolutionary struggle led by PFLOAG, Britain, the United States and their allies, the local stooge regimes, are summoning all their resources to hold on to this vital economic and strategic centre. This has not been easy in view of Britain's earlier policy of ruling the area by stimulating rivalry and bickering between the various emirates. Nevertheless, the ANTI-INTERNMENT LEAGUE Demonstration: Sunday, 12 November Assemble Speakers Corner (Marble Arch) 2.00 p.m. March to Trafalgar Square.
NO SPECIAL COURTS!
to gain support for his plans; the parties represented had the support of only a minority of the inhabitants take the Irish question back onto the streets of Britain; to raise a voice here against the British domination problem will only be solved through self-determination for the Irish people, to support us on 12 November. SPEAKERS include: Bernadette Devlin, Michael Farrell, and Eamonn McCann British ruling class, helped by the Americans, have managed to patch up relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between both these countries and the local emirates. Britain has even managed to win acceptance of its scheme for Federation along the Gulf. These are considerable achievements for imperialism, but remain preliminaries to the real task: the crushing of the mass anti-Imperialist movement in the area, and particularly, the destruction of PFLAG. And since the South Yemeni Republic acts as the base area and supply depot for PFLOAG, the guns of imperialism are being trained upon it as well.
After the reconciliation between North Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the latter is trying to impose by force of arms a similar solution in South Yemen, overthrowing the present rulers of that country. The Sana regime in the North has, therefore started to allow attacks against South Yemen by the mercenaries of the former sultans of South Yemen and various other emigre riff-raff from that country. Over the last few years there have been continual skirmishes along the border, but Saudi Arabia is not at all satisfied and is seeking to provoke full scale war. Latest reports from South Yemen indicate that this objective is now closer to being realised than ever before. The leaders of the British ruling class are looking forward to this dirty piece of aggression with enthusiasm. This is the meaning of the latest border clashes. SOLIDARITY The Arab League has sent a commission to "mediate' between the two sides ordinary piece of hypocrisy, since Egypt's Sadat is directly implicated in the effort to overthrow the South Yemeni government (through financial aid to one of the emigre organisations attacking the South Yemeni border).
Meanwhile the Soviet Union, on which the South Yemeni government is increasingly dependent for aid, is pressurising it to cut off or drastically reduce its support for PFLOAG, while the Peking leadership has gone so far as to recognise Britain's Gulf Federation.
The only road forward for the South Yemeni revolution lies through the extension and victory of the struggle led by PFLAG in Dhofar and throughout the Arab gulf. HANDS OFF THE PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF SOUTH YEMEN! VICTORY TO THE POPULAR FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF THE OCCUPIED ARAB GULF!
IMPERIALISM OUT OF THE ARAB GULF!
182 Pentonville Road, London N.I.
Name:
Address: Palestine militants have been maintaining a hunger strike and vigil outside the West German Embassy in London since the banning of the Palestinian General Workers' Union and General Students' Union in West Germany on 4 October.
Even before this, during the month of September, over a thousand Arab residents of West Germany had been expelled and almost two thousand were refused entry. Under the pretext of security' measures since Munich, the West German government has been using laws on the statute book since 1965 which allow it to stifle political activity among the immigrant workers: some 10 per cent of the working class of the country.
Arab workers and students served with deportation orders have had precious little chance to appeal. The police generally come in the night, give them a few minutes to dress, and in a space of hours they find themselves on a plane, some of them even to Israeli-occupied Palestine or into the arms of the Jordanian police INTERNATIONAL SCALE The witch-hunt against the Arab workers and students is now being carried on on an international scale - and not only by the right wing Zionists (see The Red Mole, 52) but by the imperialist governments too. The Nixon administration has announced that it is screening all Arab residents or visitors to the U.S. Linda Jenness, presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party, says in a statement published in The Militant: "Representatives of various Arab organisations in the U.S. have reported that FBI or other government agents have been following them around, holding them for interrogation, finger-printing them, and issuing threats of unspecified reprisals against them. Freedom of travel for all non-citizens, but especially Arabs, has been infringed, with the U.S. now requiring visas even for people simply stopping here to change planes in transit to some other country. All Arabs face special screening at airports ........These moves pose grave dangers for democratic rights in this country."
In West Germany and in the United States, the repression of Arab immigrants is just one aspect of the growing repression which the bourgeoisie is employing and will employ as its crisis deepens and the working class in these countries moves into new struggles. In West Germany, where immigrant workers are playing a major part in the developing struggles, the repression against the Arabs shows how bourgeois laws can be used to make the hidden dictatorship of the bourgeoisie more direct. SOLIDARITY International working class so lidarity is necessary against these moves by the bourgeoisie to defend its interests. In Bonn, Palestinian students have been on hunger strike since the end of September, together with Iranian supporters. There have been further demonstrations in other West German cities; in New York, where a hunger strike was staged at the UN building; in all the major imperialist capitals; and in the Arab world (the West German embassy in Algiers was occupied).
INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP (British Section of the Fourth International)
I would like more information about the IMG.
The Red Mole 30 October 1972 Page 7
Mugging With A Difference North London Poly: John Suddaby on