Cover Notes

During the early 1960s the Cold War reached its climax. Britain’s dwindling power in the Middle East was under siege from Arab nationalism, the Communist Bloc and from American designs in the region.

Aden, with its strategic military base and old Protectorate buffer zone, was soon the main battleground. The 1962 Egyptian-inspired coup in the neighbouring Kingdom of Yemen further tightened the noose.

So began a bitter and bloody insurgency war in South Arabia. British regular and Special Forces were soon pitted against growing and formidable terrorist forces, fighting both as war in the mountains and an urban conflict in the backstreets of Aden town.  Intelligence agencies vied for control of ‘hearts and minds’.

The British launched a clandestine war in Yemen to keep their enemies at bay.  But still the situation spiraled out of control in Aden, reaching bloody denouement in June 1967. In November 1967, the British Army finally withdrew from South Arabia.

Aden Insurgency is the extraordinary story of Britain’s last colonial conflict.  Using  wide-range of recently released archives and eye-witness accounts, Jonathan Walker examines the collapse in military security and failures in the intelligence war, set against a background of ruthless political ambition.

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