(8 of 10)
¶ IRAQ suffered heavy losses in the two brigades it sent to the front in Jordan, and the Israeli air force took care of eleven Iraqi MIGs, but the moderate socialist regime of Abdel Rahman Aref emerged from the war without many scars. Iraq has two troublesome minority groups—the Kurds in the north and the Shia Moslems in the south—in addi tion to several troublesome cliques of generals. President Aref, who since May has been his own Prime Minister as well, is bumbling along by trying to please everybody, including Nasser and the Shah of Iran. His economy, however, is based on oil, which normally brings in 80% of all revenue, and the Arab oil ban against Britain and the U.S. will force cutbacks on the government's ambitious industrial-development projects. >LEBANON did not fire a shot at the Israelis, but it is suffering badly in the war's aftermath. No one expected the Lebanese to fight, but their Christian-Moslem coalition government made the right kind of noises against Israel, even threw out the American ambassador and downgraded the embassy to a legation. With the ambassador went the tourists, which are the mainstay of Lebanon's economic life. Beirut's luxury hotels, normally jammed, are empty except for the normal quotient of Arab diplomats and spies who take up many of the tables at the bars. The U.S. still prohibits American tourists from entering Lebanon, probably to put pressure on the government to restore full diplomatic relations. Even when the restrictions are lifted, the tourist business will still be off unless the larger problems that surround access to Jerusalem have been solved, since in the past fully 60% of Lebanon's tourists were merely stopping on their way to Jerusalem. Since the beginning of the present crisis, two dozen discotheques and six flourishing nightclubs have closed down, and Lebanon is losing several million dollars a day in trade and commerce. > SAUDI ARABIA was untouched by the war (the troops it sent to Jordan did not have to fight), and King Feisal stayed as far away from it as he could. The King and his princes have been careful to send large donations to help buy new equipment for the armies of shattered neighbors, but his failure to take part in the war deprived him of whatever claims he once had to being the leader of the Arab moderate bloc.
At home, the oil ban is costing Saudi Arabia $300,000 a day in lost royalties, and the country has already announced that it will lift the ban as "shortsighted and injurious to our overall economic position."
¶LIBYA was turned down by Nasser when it offered troops, and Libya's 77year-old King Idris, a conservative even among Arabs, is in trouble with Nasserite crowds at home. He has stopped all oil production (at a cost of $1,500,-000 a day), told the Americans to leave Wheelus Air Force Base (at some unspecified date in the future) and ordered the British army to abandon its small bases at Tobruk and Benghazi. Last week he also replaced Prime Minister Hussein Mazik, a competent moderate, with a man thought to be more acceptable to the left. Tripoli dock workers promptly declared a three-day protest strike. Diplomatic circles in the Middle East feel that there is a strong possibility of a pro-Nasser coup.