File 600/1905 Pt 1 'Aden Hinterland: Treaty with Dthala' [‎377v] (16/174)

estranged the sympathies of practically all the tribes under his rule. Were
we to withdraw, I fully believe that the Amir would have to leave his country
and would be lucky if he got out alive.
The only alternatives he would possess would be :—
(1) To intrigue with the Turks.
(2) To grant all the demands of the Kotaibis as to the levying of dues
V ^ on the Haberlain and to renounce his suzerainty over them.
* (3) To hire fighting men to assist him in retaining his position. His
own tribes would certainly not assist him without pay, and I
doubt whether they Would do so even if paid.
(4) To ask our assistance.
The Amir would certainly, m the first instance, ask for our assistance.
He would grant all demands of the Kotaibis, for the simple reason that he
is perfectly aware of his absolute inability to enforce his prohibition of their
collection of dues on the Haberlain or to render his suzerainty a reality
instead of a name. He would probably try to strengthen his position by
intrigues with the Turks.
I very much doubt whether, in the event of failure in all these directions,
he would attempt to fight the matter out. He himself has more than once
told me that, in the event of our withdrawing from Dthala, he would at once ,
make for Aden. In any case, his exchequer once exhausted, he would have
to leave the country.
He is so universally detested by the Arabs that there is no doubt that we
have lost considerable prestige by our attempts to bolster him up, and, more
over, to attempt to do so at the expense of the Kotaibis was a fatal error,
having regard to the position occupied by the Kotaibis with reference to the
1 Lower Yaffai as well as the other Kudfan tribes. I can only ascribe our
having done so to the fact that the country was comparatively new to us and
. that accurate local knowledge was therefore difficult to obtain.
3. I would point out, with reference to the additional grant of $100 per
mensem, proposed in the new treaty which is shortly to be entered into with
the Amir that, relying on our presence, he has not kept up any troops what
ever. He has merely a few Arabs armed with rifles numbering about fifteen.
Had we not been here he would have had to maintain a force to protect his
own territory without any pecuniary assistance from us.
If this be contrasted with the numbers maintained by the Sultans of
Lahej and Mokalla, it will be seen that the Amir has taken advantage of our
presence to save money and that since our arrival in the country he has never
been in a position to fulfil his treaty obligations. By this I mean that he is
bound to preserve order in his territory and to assure the safety of the trade
routes. If, however, he were called on suddenly to send a sufficient force at ^
once to maintain order on the route from Dthala to Sulek, which has been the
most frequent scene of outrages and which is entirely within his territory, he
would be absolutely unable to do so.
Burther, I have ascertained that the Amir has not even sufficient authority
in the actual valley of Dthala to enforce his orders, and that in order to do so,
he has to threaten the people that he will get us to come and attack them if
they fail to obey his orders.
He has, moreover, as I have reported, deliberately broken his agreement
as to the dues to be levied on goods, etc., imported from Aden to Dthala or
vice versa, not only once but twice, having practically from the date on which
he signed the agreement, *.e., 1888, never had the least intention of adhering
to it. I have had the very greatest difficulty in inducing him to return to the
scale to which he had agreed, and I have not the least doubt that he will take
the very first available opportunity of again raising the scale of dues. In
some cases I may mention that he was charging ten times the amount sanc
tioned under the 1888 agreement.
Further, it is a matter of common knowledge that the Amir has exerted
himself to the utmost to prevent any reconciliation between the Kotaibis and