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The tribesmen's loyalty to the Imam is not always easy to understand. Many of the present royalist leaders suffered cruelly during the 14-year reign of Badr's father. Ahmad the Devil, whose way of pacifying the hill tribes was to take mass hostages and behead restive sheiks. Shrugged one sheik: "The Imams have ruled us for a thousand years. Some were good and some bad. We killed the bad ones sooner or later, and we prospered under the good ones." Another reason for fighting the republicans is that the hill tribes belong to the Moslem Shia sect, of which the Imam is the religious head. The Yemenis of the coast and the south be long to the rival Sunni sect (as do most Egyptians). Though President Sallal is himself a mountain Shia, it is his misfortune to be fighting the fierce mountain Shias with lowland Sunnis—who have never been famed for martial prowess.
The Imam Mohammed el Badr is a husky, hard-looking man of 36 who roves constantly along the northwest front in a Dodge wagon and never sleeps more than two nights in the same place. In a wadi under the stars one night, he told De Carvalho: "Nasser's biggest single target in Yemen is me." Waving at the skies from which Egyptian jets had pounced on his forces only that day, he sighed: "Now I'm getting my reward for befriending Nasser. We were brothers, but when I refused to become his stooge, he used Sallal against me. I will never stop fighting. I will never go into exile. Win or lose, my grave will be here."
By last week the war seemed deadlocked. However, Imam Mohammed is trying to recruit a mercenary air force, and is building up a small stock of antitank guns, recoilless rifles and mortars. Saudi Arabia, which has bankrolled the royalists so far with about $15 million, is itching to plunge into the fight. In the wake of repeated bombings of Saudi towns, Saudi Arabia's Premier Prince Feisal warned U.S. diplomats: "I cannot sit much longer with my arms folded while Nasser attacks not only my neighbor Yemen but also my own country."