Aden 1967 — Iraq 2005 posted by bat020

This week's Socialist Worker includes a lengthy article by our very own John Game looking at the eerie parallels between Iraq today and Britain's botched exit from the port of Aden, now in Yemen, in 1967:

Readers of British newspapers at the time were treated to a bewildering array of acronyms to describe the competing factions of the resistance in Aden, as well as tales of “foreign extremists” from Egypt and Yemen.

These militias, strangely, appeared set on killing British soldiers as well as each other, despite the fact that Britain had promised them independence as soon as the trouble had stopped.

What made it worse was that the security forces themselves appeared to be arming various organisations — and there were growing fears of clashes between the local police and militia and the British army.

The backdrop to all this was a rising tide of Arab nationalism, with British oil interests being kicked out of both Iran and Egypt. All this triggered an escalating conflict between Aden's workers allied with Yemen's republicans and Egyptian troops on one side, facing British-backed sultans and their feudal militias on the other.

By 1964 British policy seemed to be spiralling into disaster. It was in this situation that Harold Wilson’s Labour government came to power, promising to reverse the polcy. It was not to be.

Labour’s colonial secretary Anthony Greenwood was determined that the popular nationalist leaders ought to be given power and independence as quickly as possible. But this decision was overruled by Harold Wilson.

The reasons for this were bound up with Britain’s desire to keep good relations with the US, despite Britain’s failure to send troops to Vietnam. US president Lyndon Johnson was prepared to accept this failure if Britain would take over its policeman role in the Middle East.

This shameless U-turn was dressed up with the same warmed over arguments we are hearing today. Suddenly it was remembered that promises had been made to the sultans, that there were risks if Britain’s “word” was seen to be worthless, and that carrying out Labour policy would send a “dangerous message” to those who would make this vital region a centre of instability.

The result was a protracted attempt at finding a "compromise" solution that would preserve British imperialist interests in the region. Predictably, this led to civil war, with the British cutting and running in 1967.

Aden is simply one, now largely forgotten, example of how these protracted negotiations about the nature of the post-colonial system function. They are presented as attempts to prevent civil war, but the central concern is always with shaping the destiny of territories and whole regions in the interests of great powers.

From the Kurds of northern Iraq to the Arabs of Iran, the ethnic conflict now regularly treated as arguments for foreign intervention have their roots in the reordering of the world carried out by tardily retreating great powers. As history is recycled, it is important to understand that these were bad arguments then — and they are bad arguments now.

Read the whole thing here. There's also a valuable background article on Aden on Wikipedia.