Aden Emergency

The Aden Emergency, also known as the 14 October Revolution () or as the Radfan Uprising, was an armed rebellion by the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) against the Federation of South Arabia, a British Protectorate of the United Kingdom, which led to the proclamation of the People's Republic of South Yemen.

Partly inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism, it began on 14 October 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.

Background

In 1838, Muhsin Bin Fadl, Sultan of Lahej ceded of Aden to the British. On 19 January 1839, the British East India Company landed Royal Marines at Aden to occupy the territory and stop attacks by pirates against British shipping to India making Aden a part of British colonial rule from 1839 until 1937. In the 1920s, the British began expanding and annexing the multiple sheikhdoms surrounding Aden under the claim of protecting them."Yemen". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 22 September 2013 This was more a precautionary measure to prevent the Yemeni imams from storming Aden than a desire to annex the small sheikhdoms to the empire. In the mid-1950s, the British realized that they would not be able to manage the colonies and needed a stable political unit that would distance Aden from the wave of Arab nationalism that had swept the region and preserve for them influence and the ability to manage Aden from London, so they established the Federation of the Emirates of South Arabia in 1959. The federation did not succeed for several reasons, the first of which was the British insistence that Aden would be part of the entity, which was rejected by the commercial elite of Aden, most of whom were Indians, Persians, and Jews, because they feared for their future from the sheikhdoms. On the other hand, the leaders of the sheikhdoms feared that they would be overthrown later or that their influence would remain limited due to the dominance of the educated Aden elite, which was made up of a large number of non-Arabs and non-Muslims. In addition to all that was the sheikhdoms' differences over who should be the president of the federation.

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 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.

Emergency

There were a number of different nationalist groups fighting the British. Often, they fought each other. The most well known groups are:

1. The South Arabian League (S.A.L.)

2. The Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (F.L.O.S.Y.)

3. The Organization for the Liberation of the Occupied South (O.L.O.S.)

4. The People's Liberation Party (P.L.P.)

5. The National Liberation Front (N.L.F.)

Among the main players, the S.A.L. was backed by Saudi Arabia, the F.L.O.S.Y. by Egypt and the Aden Trade Unions. All the major groups were based in Yemen, and they regularly combined or broke up with other groups. For instance, S.A.L joined with P.S.P. to become O.L.O.S. in 1965, and then broke away in 1966. The N.L.F. joined with O.L.O.S. in January 1966 to form F.L.O.S.Y. then broke away in December 1966. Such movement was quite common all through the war.

Hostilities commence

Hostilities started on 10 December 1963, with an NLF grenade attack against British High Commissioner of Aden Sir Kennedy Trevaskis, which took place as he arrived at Khormaksar Airport to catch a London-bound flight. The grenade killed the High Commissioner's adviser and a woman, and injured fifty other people. On that day, a state of emergency was declared in Aden.

The NLF and FLOSY began a campaign against British forces in Aden, relying largely on grenade attacks. One such attack was carried out against RAF Khormaksar during a children's party, killing a girl and wounding four children.

The guerrilla attacks largely focused on killing off-duty British officers and policemen. Much of the violence was carried out in Crater, the old Arab quarter of Aden. British forces attempted to intercept weapons being smuggled into Crater by the NLF and FLOSY on the Dhala road, but their efforts met with little success. Despite taking a toll on British forces, the death toll among rebels was far higher, largely due to inter-factional fighting among different rebel groups.

In 1964 the British 24th Infantry Brigade arrived to conduct land operations. It remained in Aden and the Aden Protectorate until November 1967.

By 1965, the RAF station RAF Khormaksar was operating nine squadrons, including transport units with helicopters and a number of Hawker Hunter fighter bomber aircraft. These were called in by the army for attacks on rebel positions in which they would use 60-pound high explosive rockets and their 30 mm ADEN cannon.

Aden street riots

On 19–20 January 1967, the NLF provoked street riots in Aden. After the Aden police lost control, British High Commissioner Sir Richard Turnbull deployed British troops to crush the riots. As soon as the NLF riots were crushed, pro-FLOSY rioters took to the streets. Fighting between British forces and pro-guerrilla rioters lasted into February. British forces opened fire 40 times, and during that period there were 60 grenade and shooting attacks against British forces, including the destruction of an Aden Airways Douglas DC-3, which was bombed in mid-air, killing all the people on board.

At one point toward the end of the rebellion in early 1967 the NLF killed at least 35 members of FLOSY in 32 days. The FLOSY guerrillas first asked the British for protection, and then 80 actually flew to the UK using the British passports they had as citizens of a British Colony.

Arab police mutiny

The emergency was further exacerbated by the Six-Day War in June 1967. Nasser claimed that the British had helped Israel in the war, and this led to a mutiny by hundreds of soldiers in the South Arabian Federation Army on June 20, which also spread to the Aden Armed Police. The mutineers killed 22 British soldiers and shot down a helicopter (The pilot had to abandon take off from a ledge near Crater, Aden after being hit in the knee by a bullet. The Sioux crashed and burnt out but all three occupants escaped), and as a result, Crater was occupied by rebel forces.

Concerns were heightened regarding the ability to give sufficient security to British families in the midst of the increased violence, resulting in evacuation plans for families being sped up considerably.

Battle of Crater

Following the mutiny, all British forces were withdrawn from Crater, while Royal Marines of 45 Commando took up sniping positions on the high ground and killed 10 armed Arab fighters. However, Crater remained occupied by an estimated 400 Arab fighters. NLF and FLOSY fighters then took to the streets and engaged in gun battles, while arson, looting, and murder was also common. British forces blocked off the two main entrances to Crater. They came under sniper fire from an Ottoman fort on Sira island, but the snipers were silenced by a shell from an armoured car. Order was restored in July 1967, when the 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders entered Crater under the command of Lt. Col. Colin Campbell Mitchell and managed to occupy the entire district overnight with no casualties.

British withdrawal from Yemen

Nevertheless, repeated guerrilla attacks by the NLF soon resumed against British forces, causing the British to leave 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, effectively abandoning the South Arabian government.

On 30 November 1967 the ''Federation of South Arabia'' ceased to exist when the People's Republic of Southern Yemen was proclaimed. In 1967 Israel defeated Egypt in the Six-Day War thus obliging Egypt to evacuate its troops from Yemen. FLOSY, now without any military support from its Egyptian ally, continued fighting the NLF. However FLOSY's fate was sealed when the NLF managed to persuade the Yemen's Federal army to join the fight against FLOSY. On 7 November 1967 FLOSY tried to attack a federal army base but the army defeated FLOSY with the NLF's help, inflicting heavy losses on FLOSY. After the defeat FLOSY´s fighting force disbanded although some cadres and leaders remained outside the country. Most of the opposing leaders reconciled by 1968, in the aftermath of a final royalist siege of San'a'.

Aftermath

British military casualties in the period 1963 to 1967 were 90 to 92 killed and 510 wounded. British civilian deaths were 17. Local government forces lost 17 killed and 58 wounded. Casualties among the rebel forces stood at 382 killed and 1,714 wounded.

See also

* British Order of Battle at the Aden Emergency
*List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

References

Bibliography

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External links

Infantry Assistance From Outside Aden

{{Arab nationalism

Arab nationalist rebellions
20th-century revolutions
Insurgencies in Asia
Communism in Yemen
Communist revolutions
Wars involving Yemen
Wars involving the United Kingdom
History of the Royal Marines
United Kingdom–Yemen relations
20th century in the Colony of Aden
Federation of South Arabia
1960s in Asia
1960s in the British Empire
Rebellions in Yemen
Rebellions against the British Empire
Wars of independence
Labor disputes in Yemen