Coll 6/65 'Relations between Saudi-Arabia and the Yemen.' [‎108r] (215/917)

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THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT
l
SO
July 10 , 1934.
Section 1.
OJ
No. 1.
EASTERN (Arabia).
CONFIDENTIAL.
[E 4452/79/25]
/l. John Simon.—(Received July 10.)
^ Jedda, June 27, 1934.
WITH reference to my telegram No. 151 of the 24th June. I have the honour
to enclose herewith an annotated summary of the recent treaty between kaudi
Arabia and the Yemen. It will be some little time before I can send you a lull
translation, as it is a lengthy and rather difficult document and my chiet
interpreter’ is absent on local sick leave. I have prepared the summary from a
rough translation made by Mr. Furlonge with the assistance of the second
interpreter. I am anxious that it should reach you as soon as possible, in viev
of the exaggerated statements which have appeared in the press suggesting that
the two countries have concluded an agreement tantamount to an alliance. I
understand that Mr. Philby has gone even further and reported to the Daily |
Mail that Ibn Saud has established a veiled protectorate over the Yemen.
2. Despite many obvious defects, the treaty may be regarded as a lairlv
workmanlike document. It is in European form and the pious formulae, which
have done so much to obscure Saudi-Yemen relations in the past, have been
reduced to a minimum. It would be hard to say whether article 4, which
determines the frontier, is sufficiently precise to obviate future quarrels, but it
at least allocates the principal disputed areas. It is perhaps rather a pity that
even now certain points should be referred back to the status yuo before April
1933 and to Ibn Saud’s arbitral award of December 1931. On the whole, however,
it would probably have been impossible to do much better in dealing with regions
of which there are no accurate maps and where tribal considerations are more
important than geography.
3. There is nothing on the face of the treaty to suggest that it has been
concluded on other than equal terms. It is significant in this connexion that the
Imam figures in it as “ His Majesty the King of the Yemen, a title never given
to him in Saudi official language before this treaty was drawn up. Apart from
the preliminary conditions on which Ibn Saud insisted to the last, there is no
single provision which is not based on the strictest reciprocity. There is no
provision for an indemnity and, yace Mr. Philby, no present evidence that Ibn/
Saud has got one by some special arrangement outside the published texts. What'
it comes to is that he has, at any rate for twenty years, established his title to
both parts of Asir and secured Najran; and for these undoubtedly solid gains
he has paid a longish price in military expenditure and a certain price in men.
4. Whether the treaty can be regarded as in any sense an alliance is a more
difficult question. I myself am inclined to think that it amounts to little or
nothing of the kind. The peculiar position of the parties as the only tw r o really
independent rulers in Arabia, both ardent xenophobes, has driven them into
impressive affirmations of their Moslem and Arab solidarity. In this matter, if
no other, the mission of Arab mediators may have made themselves felt. My new
Iraqi colleague goes so far as to attribute the recurrent phrase about brotherhood
to the inspiration of the Amir Shakib Arslan, with whom it is a favourite
catchword. Great play is made with the doctrine that the people of the two
“ countries,” which are carefully distinguished, are one “nation;' but the word
which, for the want of a better equivalent, has been translated “ nation " is not
used so as to imply any political unity. It refers rather to that ideal unity of
Moslems and Arabs which it is the present fashion to acclaim.
5 . When all is said and done there is little to suggest a real pooling of
interests, except articles 15 and 17. The former of these is not very explicit.
The latter contains a singular definition of neutrality, compounded, I think, of
the three ideas that neutrality in the European sense is a duty, that a brother’s
a brother for a' that, and that it is just as well none the less to tie a brother up