Aden Insurgency: The Savage War in Yemen 1962-67 Paperback – February 19, 2015

This book is bit difficult to find so I was thrilled that Amazon could source it. I bought as a gift for my Father, who reports it is a fascinating read. It is a relevant book to our family as one of the men featured on the cover is my Uncle.

or, depending on your personal view, colonial liberation war or even some kind of proxy war between the UK and Egypt. This book is a good account of the conflict, mainly from a British military viewpoint (as expected, it is after all a Pen & Sword publication). It would have been interesting to learn a bit more about the political decisions leading up to the unglorious exit from Aden, but I suppose many relevant documents are hidden rather deep in the archives.

The book arrived in a timely fashion and in excellent condition. It is an interesting account of a sad chapter in British and Middle Eastern history that explains some of the problems of present day Yemen.

I enjoyed watching "The Last Post" on Netflix, a BBC series about a Royal Military Police unit during the Aden Emergency, and I realized I didn't really know that much about the conflict, so I picked this up. I didn't realize until just now, after reading the book, that the author was also the historical advisor for the series.A good read, although a bit choppy in its structure. The author attempts to deal in detail with specific aspects of the conflict by chapter, until the end when he wraps it up with the events of 20 July 1967 and the final days leading to the British withdrawal. This results in jumping back and forth in time throughout the book, which he could have been made a more cohesive narrative by the inclusion of better maps and more relevant illustrations. The maps are few and the pages of photos in the middle of the book appear almost chosen at random and do little to specifically support the story.On the other hand, I enjoyed the intensely tactical approach to the military engagements, and it had me pulling out some of my old weapons references to consider capabilities in that environment. But mostly it was a tale of negatives: colonial arrogance; failure to understand - or make a substantial attempt to understand - the culture; and of course the main story of an inadequately equipped small force attempting to deal with a nationalist insurgency with poor intelligence support and unreliable local allies.There's a line in one soldier's recollection of one of the series of attacks on 20 July 1967: "As was the custom, we were not in radio communication for this routine trip." That simple statement speaks volumes about the casual arrogance that still remained regarding the threat after 4 years of The Emergency in what was the most violent year of that conflict. And, of course, that complacency led directly to the deaths of British soldiers.The author also gives Egyptian involvement a fair amount of space, and discusses it both in the context of the conflict in Aden and in the lead-up to, and the aftermath of, the 6 Day War.Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the region or in COIN/LIC/Irregular Warfare more broadly. I will caution that the author does have a bit of an obvious bias in telling the tale, but it is not so strong that it irrevocably colors the story.

Jonathan Walker, presumably an old boy of Downside, and the son of Sir Gervas Walker, to whom he dedicated this book, has written a good history of the British efforts to quell what they deemed the "Aden Insurgency," the efforts in the 1960s by some inhabitants of South Yemen to end the presence of the British Empire in their country.Once in a while one reads a book, and doesn't know whether to give it five stars, three stars or merely a single star. As a military history of the British engagement, it would undoubtedly deserve five stars, particularly for its meticulous research. On the other hand, no effort whatsoever is expended to fathom the motivations of the "dissidents" and then "terrorists," whose behavior is described with the same bafflement one usually describes lunatics. Few if any participants on the other (winning) side are quoted in the least; can one clap with only one hand?Given that Sun Tzu wrote that the first part of any strategy is to know one's enemy, it is no surprise that the British efforts to stay on in Aden ended in humiliating defeat. For years, the British didn't even know who their principal enemy was. Perhaps this complete cultural illiteracy and blindness to the political and historical undercurrents is what makes this book absolutely stellar; it seems to be an iteration of an all too frequent political process: throw English-speaking soldiers with massive firepower into an Arab country, ignore most, if not all, political and historical undercurrents, label all dissidents "terrorists" to be ignored or taken on militarily, and then ultimately watch the theoretically superior force leave in shame, defeated by unconventional warfare. Semper idem!That the British were forced to leave comes as no surprise, and given Aden's subsequent fate, is a tragedy. Many, many former subjects of the British Empire will truthfully tell you that their lives were much better under the British.That a British historian can in this day, in all seriousness, write such a one-sided history is perhaps surprising, and certainly a warning to any aspiring "pacifiers" of the Arab world. Perhaps the implicit lessons to be drawn from this book make it worthwhile to Anglophones interested in the Middle East's (military) history.

A well researched, honest, truthful and well written account of a difficult time in one of England's far-flung colonies. A worthwhile read for budding historians.

Very detailed and apparently historically accurate.

This was a well-written book which did a good job of explaining a convoluted chapter of history. It makes good use of first-hand accounts and deals with a seemingly never ending amount of political groups and organisations in a way that is eminently readable. An essential book if you are interested in gaining a better understanding of colonial era Aden and Yemen today.

Well written account of the colonial history of this former Crown Colony. For me, particularly interesting, as I was in Aden a number of times during the ‘insurgency’ ( we didn’t call it that, back then), and so filled in many gaps in my knowledge of the history of the god-forsaken place.

An interesting book about the Aden insurgency. Another very good book which is well worth reading is 'Mad Mitch's Tribal Law' by Aaron Edwards about the withdrawal of British forces from Aden in 1967.

I served in Aden and Radfan 63-65 and knew very little about the politics and intrigue. This book is an 'eye-opener' indeed. Very impressed with the references and commitment to the truth. Superb detail and total lack of bias.

This book is excellent as far as it goes but it does not go far enough so is consequently fatally flawed. The author records activities in South Arabia from 1962-1967 in a well written and researched manner and is to be congratulated for that.However he fails to record the incidents of the 1950s that lead to the troubles of the 1960s- the shootings in Aden and Crater,the incursions of Yemeny forces inspired by the Governor of Beida,the tribal rebellion of the Rabezi in Wadi Hatib or the problems in Lodar,Beihan or Dhala all of which brought on tht revolution coupled with poisonous propaganda from Egypt.It is a pity that the 1950s is a blank page for most history books on South Arabia-it was not for me I was there.