Page 14 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

CHAPTER I

The Abandonment of Aden

Out remedy and safeguard will be to trend continually ‘leff.
*
T. E. Lawrence, 1919

Our job was somehow to untie the knot and release ourselves
without disaster.
Lord Trevelyan, 1970

That the regime [we] backed should have been overthrown by
terrorists and has forced our speedy withdrawal is nothing but good
fortune . . . we shall get out of Aden without losing a British
soldier, chaos will rule soon after we’ve gone, and there’ll be one
major commitment cut - thank God.

Richard Crossman, 1967

Aden in the summer of 1967 presented a bleak and melancholy picture. Its
cosmopolitan population of Arabs, Indians, Somalis and Europeans suffered
under a reign of unrelenting violence imposed by gangs of Arab terrorists and
only partially mitigated by the exertions of the British security forces. Com­
mercial life in the town and port, once the hub of a thriving entrepot trade, had
sunk to a low ebb, as a consequence both of the closing of the Suez Canal by the
Arab-Israeli war in June and of the incessant, politically directed, strikes
which were paralysing Aden’s industry. Rival Arab nationalist bands fought a
running battle with each other through the streets and houses of Crater, the old
town inside the walls of an extinct volcano which was the mercantile heart of
Aden. At gunpoint they compelled a frightened population to afford them
shelter and sustenance, as well as money with which to finance their grisly
games and their hit-and-run attacks upon the British authorities. From the
beginning of 1967 until the end of August there were no fewer than 2,600
incidents of terrorism in Aden as a whole, murders, robberies, bombings and
shootings, and most of the victims were ordinary citizens.

• The Letters ofT. E. Lawrence (ed. David Garnett), London, 1938, p. 293, to Lord Curzon, 25 September
1919-