Aden Emergency

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The Aden Emergency was an insurgency against British crown forces in what is now the country of Yemen on the southern Arabian Peninsula.

It lasted from December 10, 1963, when a "state of emergency" was declared in Aden, a British Crown Colony since 1837, until November 30, 1967 when British forces left. Aden had been of interest to Britain as a link to British India and then, after the loss of most of Britain's colonies from 1945 and the disastrous Suez Crisis in 1956, as a valuable port for accessing crucial Middle Eastern oil.

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. Nasser, with crucial diplomatic support from both the United States and Soviet Union, had defeated the British, French and Israeli invasion forces that stormed Egypt following Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956, compelling their evacuation. Nevertheless, Nasser had then enjoyed 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 a humiliating failure only 3 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 among the Arabs in Aden, as opposed to the Yemeni guerrilla groups drawing inspiration from Nasser's pan-Arabist ideas but acting independently themselves.

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.

Notable events include the Battle of Crater which brought Lt-Col Colin Mitchell (AKA. Mad Mitch) to prominence. On June 20 1967 there was a mutiny in the South Arabian Federation Army, which also spread to the police. Order was restored by the British, mainly due to the efforts of the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, under the command of Lt-Col Colin Mitchell.

Nevertheless, deadly guerrilla attacks particularly by the NLF soon resumed against British forces once again, with the British being defeated and driven from 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.

Both the Aden naval base and the Suez Canal itself were closed in the same year, and the Canal-- shuttered by Nasser on the eve of war with Israel-- would remain closed until 1975. These acts would deprive the new, oil-poor Yemeni nation of valuable business and revenue, and precipitate severely disruptive economic circumstances for years afterward. Some have postulated that these economic strains helped to fuel extremist movements in Yemen which led, in turn, to many young Yemeni mujahideen joining to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan after 1979.