Aden Emergency

Aden Emergency
Part of the Cold War
The location of the Aden Protectorate
Date 10 December 1963 - 30 November 1967 Location Western and Eastern Protectorates, Aden Protectorate, Middle East Result British withdrawal Creation of the People's Republic of South Yemen
Belligerents
United Kingdom Federation of South Arabia	NLF FLOSY Supported by Egypt Yemen Arab Republic
Commanders and leaders
Harold Wilson Gp Capt Michael Beetham Lt-Col Colin Campbell Mitchell	Qahtan Muhammad al-Shaabi Abdullah al Asnag
Strength
30,000 British personnel at peak[1] (3,500 in November 1967)[2] 15,000 South Arabian Army troops[3]
Casualties and losses
68 British military personnel killed[4], 300+ wounded, Unknown South Arabian Army casualties
Total: 2,096 killed[5]

The Aden Emergency was an insurgency against the British Crown forces in the British controlled territories of South Arabia which now form part of the Yemen. Partly inspired by Nasser's pan Arab nationalism, it began on 10 December 1963 with the throwing of a grenade at a gathering of British officials at Aden Airport. A state of emergency was then declared in the British Crown colony of Aden and its hinterland, the Aden Protectorate. The emergency escalated in 1967 and hastened the end of British rule in the territory which had begun in 1839. On 30 November 1967, British forces withdrew and the independent People's Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed.

Background

Aden was originally of interest to Britain as an anti-piracy station to protect shipping on the routes to British India. With the advent of the Suez Canal in 1869, it further served as a coaling station. Following the independence of India in 1947, Aden became of less importance to the United Kingdom.

The Emergency was precipitated in large part by a wave of Arab nationalism spreading to the Arabian Peninsula and stemming largely from the socialist and pan-Arabist doctrines of the Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser. The British, French and Israeli forces that had invaded Egypt following Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956 had been forced to withdraw following intervention from both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Nasser enjoyed only limited success in spreading his pan-Arabist doctrines through the Arab world, with his 1958 attempt to unify Egypt and Syria as the United Arab Republic collapsing in failure three years later. A perceived anti-colonial uprising in Aden in 1963 provided another potential opportunity for his doctrines, though it is not clear to what extent Nasser directly incited the revolt in Aden, as opposed to the Yemeni guerrilla groups drawing inspiration from Nasser's pan-Arabist ideas but acting independently themselves.^{[citation needed]}

The Emergency

By 1963 and in the ensuing years, anti-British guerrilla groups with varying political objectives began to coalesce into two larger, rival organizations: first the Egyptian-supported National Liberation Front (NLF) and then the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY), who attacked each other as well as the British. Hostilities started with a grenade attack by the NLF against the British High Commissioner on 10 December 1963, killing one person and injuring fifty.

By 1965, the RAF station (RAF Khormaksar) was operating nine Squadrons. These included transport units with helicopters and a number of Hawker Hunter fighter bomber aircraft. These were called in by the army for strikes against positions in which they would use 60-pounder high explosive rockets and their 30 mm Aden cannon.

The emergency was further exacerbated by the Arab-Israeli war in June 1967. Nasser claimed that the British had helped Israel in the Six-Day War, and this led to a mutiny in the South Arabian Federation Army on 20 June, which also spread to the police. In July 1967, order was restored following the Battle of Crater. This battle, which was part of Operation Stirling Castle, brought Lt-Col Colin Campbell Mitchell (AKA "Mad Mitch") of the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to prominence.

Nevertheless, deadly guerrilla attacks, by the NLF, soon resumed against British forces once again, with the British leaving Aden by the end of November 1967, earlier than had been planned by British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and without an agreement on the succeeding governance. Their enemies, the NLF, managed to seize power and establish the People's Republic of South Yemen.

The aftermath

Irrespective of the fact that the Suez Canal was shut by Nasser on the eve of the Six Day War,^{[citation needed]} it was to be closed anyhow in the wake of that war because it served as the demarcation line between the Egyptians and the Israeli occupied Sinai desert. And irrespective of the closure of the Suez Canal, the British naval base at Aden also closed in 1967. These factors would deprive the new oil-poor South Yemeni nation of valuable business and revenue, and precipitate severely disruptive economic circumstances for years afterward.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

References

Bibliography

• Naumkin, Vitaly, Red Wolves of Yemen: The Struggle for Independence, 2004. Oleander Press. ISBN 0-906672-70-8
• Walker, Jonathan, Aden Insurgency: The Savage War in South Arabia 1962-67 (Hardcover) Spellmount Staplehurst ISBN 1-86227-225-5

External links

• Emergency in Aden: An Analysis of the British Withdrawal from South Arabia
• www.britains-smallwars.com - "The Barren Rocks of Aden"
• Argylls in Aden http://www.argylls1945to1971.co.uk/A_and_SH_Aden1967.htm
• Foreign Office documents concerning Aden, Yemen and the Aden emergency of 1963-1967 [1]