File 756/1917 Pt 2-3 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 66-114’ [‎321r] (650/834)

No. 109 of the Arab Bulletin, that there was some scheme in the
air for the revival of the Turkish regime through joint action by
Fakhri Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , Ibn Saud, and the Turks in Asir and Yemen.
Between October and January, Sanaa and Ebhah must almost
certainly have been in communication with each other, and the
marked anxiety of Muhieddin Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. to avoid all contact with
the Yemen command after surrender, suggests that acute
differences of opinion had preceded the actual difference of policy.
The activity of a pro-Ibn Saud force to the east of Ebhah,
during the period intervening between the Armistice and the
evacuation, is also significant.
Ghaleb Bey’s force to the south, between Abs and Loheiyah,
with which the Idrisi had been most concerned while the fighting
lasted, he had the least dealings with when it came to the
surrender, except to receive the submission which the tribes of
those parts hastened to offer as soon as the news of the Armistice
was published. Ghaleb Bey, so far as he condescended to be
explicit at all in answer to invitations to surrender, said that he
must take his orders from Sanaa, and that moreover the Idrisi
was a rebel, and he would have no dealings with rebels. He
became therefore involved in the die-hard policy adopted by most
of the Yemen command, in collusion with the Imam Aehya, and
eventually (except for the garrisons of El Atn which made an
independent surrender) evacuated his men and material via
Hodeidah. #
There are various statements in an article on the Effects
of the Armistice in South-west Arabia” which appeared in
Number 109 of the Arab Bulletin (page 24), which, if the
foregoing views are correct, do not quite do justice to the Idrisi.
Is it a correct representation of facts to contrast with King
Husein, whose attitude is depicted as one of dignified restraint,
an Idrisi who is “active in his propaganda,” or to describe
Seyyid Mustafa’s denial of Idrisian intrigue among the Zahran
and Ghamid tribes as partial ? Seyyid Mustafa pledged his
personal word of honour and said, “ Let them produce the letters
if they exist.”
On the other hand the successive reports, at once inaccurate
and of a tenor favourable to King Husein, which emanated
from Mecca about events in Ebhah, do not suggest an attitude of
complete detachment on the part of the King. It must indeed
be very difficult for any Arabian ruler, however loyal he may be,
to hold entirely aloof from the “vortex of intrigue” referred to
in the same article, when such acute expectancy and uncertainty
is added to the ordinary chaotic vagueness of Arabian politics,
and this applies to both parties concerned.
Enough has been said to make it clear that there is at least
room for a difference of opinion as to whether “ on the basis of
self-determination, the Beni Mugheid should at the present
moment probably fall within the King’s sphere.” ^ Ibn Aidh and
those who act with him have the same preoccupation as any other