I’m a few days late, but November 30 was the 40th anniversary of the final withdrawal of British forces and power from Aden, now part of a unified Yemeni Arab Republic. That withdrawal was the key step in the dismantling of Britain’s permanent military (naval) presence “East of Suez”, a development whose inevitability became a lot clearer to Brits and others after the strategic failure of the British-French (-Israeli) “over-reach” assault against Egypt 11 years earlier.
The BBC website has an interesting account by veteran reporter Brian Barron of a repeat visit he recently made to Aden, and his reflections on the 1967 withdrawal which he had covered as a much younger journo.
He tells us a revealing anecdote about standing in Aden’s Crater District in 1967 with the notoriously bloody British “counter-insurgency” specialist Col. Colin (“Mad Mitch”) Mitchell, watching as some of the soldiers under Mitchell’s command were…
- stacking, as in a butcher’s shop, the bodies of four Arab militants they had just shot and Mad Mitch said: “It was like shooting grouse, a brace here and a brace there.”
(I wonder: Did Barron report it in that straightforward way at the time, or did he conveniently glide right over that articulation of Mitchell’s brutal mindset?)
Americans, I have found, are a people with not much appreciation for anyone’s history– but especially not for the history of peoples far distant from and perceived as different from themselves. Thus, you have the scenario repeated over and over and over again of eager, fresh-eyed and well-meaning US citizens rushing overseas to work on often well-intentioned projects to bring “modernization”, or “good governance”, or “universal [= western] judicial norms” or whatever to those distant peoples. They seem to imagine that those other societies are a tabula rasa on which American/”western” norms and practices can simply be inscribed. There is little or no appreciation that people in Africa or Asia or the Middle East have seen nearly all of this before. They have seen white westerners come in, protected by the force of heavy arms or other appurtenances of hard power, and proclaiming all kinds of “humanitarian” but often extremely myopic and self-referential projects. They have seen all those phalanxes of young white idealists come in and try to impose their own societies’ norms and projects on indigenous people many years more experienced and wiser than themselves. They have seen the horrendous damage those interventions ended up causing.
Barron’s latest reflection on the British retreat from Aden makes a few unnecessarily chauvinistic points. For example, he refers to “the old Anglican Church [which] is no longer the secret police interrogation centre it became following the British retreat”, but no reference at all to the interrogation centers where Mitchell and his predecessors over the preceding 130 years of British occupation of Aden did all their ghastly work.
Barron concludes with this reflection:
- Looking back we can see the magnitude of Britain’s strategic blunder here. The political, military and diplomatic establishment in the late 1950s and early 1960s misjudged the strength of Arab nationalism, completing a colossal military base despite local hostility.
There was an absence of reliable intelligence (doesn’t that sound familiar?). As the insurgency turned deadlier, we withdrew – abandoning moderate allies.
Twenty-three years of police state thuggery followed, with the Soviet KGB replacing the British.
Even after Aden and the rest of the south merged with North Yemen, there was another civil war in the 1990s. No wonder Aden today seems battered and bruised, and its people frustrated by the follies of their rulers: a forgotten place anchored to a forgotten time.
I find this story-line intriguing. In the first two paras there is some realism and self-awareness. In the third there is some anti-Soviet finger-pointing, which also introduces the justifiability of some kind of an “apres nous la deluge” view of the end of empire. And that view is strengthened and underlined with the last para. Now that the British are no longer in Aden, according to Barron it has slipped out of history: “a forgotten place anchored to a forgotten time.”
Well, maybe Aden has been (fairly conveniently) “forgotten” by many Brits. But how on earth can anyone say it has been “forgotten” by the 800,000 people who live there, or the 21.5 million people in the rest of Yemen? Do they not count as people whose forgetting or remembering we should take into account?
Indeed, the history of Aden is an important one in the anti-colonial narratives of the Middle East and far beyond. The peoples of the Middle East have never forgotten those narratives. Very few Americans, however, have any idea that they even exist.
Cracking post in every way.
Like you, I remember.
“white idealists…try to impose their own societies’ norms and projects on indigenous people many years more experienced and wiser than themselves”
As an American having just lived in Cairo for two years, I have to say that characterizing the indigenous people of the Middle East (or any region) as being inherently wise because of some collective unconscious of their long-stretching history is bullocks.
It also sounds like an updated version of the noble savage theory, wherein non-Western peoples, being unspoiled by civilization, have not only a natural disposition towards altruism, but also wisdom born of millennia.
I don’t know about the Yemenis, but most Egyptians do not know nor care about any of their history that pre-dates Nasser.
On these grounds, I think it is very possible that outside experts can help non-Western countries, just as non-Western experts can help Western countries. This mindset that Westerners are never capable of helping Africa/the Middle East/etc. is the same thinking that makes Nigerian parents reject polio vaccines for their children because said vaccines come from the hands of evil white doctors.
But aside from that bit, excellent post and excellent blog.
Events forty years in the past are indeed present history for the nearly one million residents of Aden. In fact it is well worth looking at the local reporting of Yemen’s 40th anniversary celebrations of those late November 1967 events.
I wish I were skilled at hyperlinking, but maybe Helena can carry out the necessary steps. Check the reporting in the archives of the English language “Yemen Times” — Issue: (1108), Volume 15, From 3 December 2007 to 5 December 2007. Or better yet, read the reporting over the last two weeks in the Arabic newspaper “Al-Ayyam” based in Aden.
The people of Aden and other towns and cities have been engaged in nearly two months of sit-ins as part of continuous peaceful civil disobedience against an unpopular regime that seized a monopoly of power after the country’s 1994 civil war. This was a war fought against the Socialist leadership of the former South Yemen by the overly aggressive leadership of the form North Yemen, which was then allied with religious fanatics who in the 1980s had joined the Arab-Afghan jihad sponsored by the USA-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan and well-known nefarious bearded individuals.
Between Yemeni unity in 1990 and the civil war in 1994, these old Arab-Afghan forces operated inside Yemen with the support of the former North Yemeni regime to carry out a murderous jihad against the leadership of the Yemeni Socialist Party. Approximately 100 individuals were assassinated in this pre-civil war campaign, and then following the civil war in the summer of 1994 the entire country was taken over by old western-allied President Ali Abdallah Saleh and his numerous family and tribal associates. Saleh was George W. Bush’s guest of honor at a G-8 Summit meeting in June 2004.
What is significant about events today in Yemen is that the people of Aden, Lahej, Radfan, Abyan and other areas are exercising their democratic voices in an effort to bring political change in the country. The unfortunate event that helped keep this civil disobedience movement going the last two months was the murder of five young men in Radfan as they prepared to celebrate the 44th anniversary of the beginning of the independence struggle against British rule on October 14.
Yemen’s revolutionary anniversaries have long been celebrated together — South Yemen’s October 14 and November 30 anniversaries linked to the revolution in North Yemen on September 26, 1962.
Back on October 14, 1963 British security forces sparked South Yemen’s anti-colonial independence struggle when they shot and killed a similar group of young men in the city of Radfan, located sevety miles or so north of Aden in the mountains. Thus when President Saleh’s security forces killed five Radfanis on October 13, 2007, their actions played on powerful national memories of events more than forty years ago. This gave added force to what had previously been a modest protest movement against Saleh’s regime.
President Saleh has ruled since 1978, and the opposition’s civil disobedience movement is now spreading to many region’s of the country.
but most Egyptians do not know nor care about any of their history that pre-dates Nasser.
Garth, this is a gross generalization. Most people I’ve met in Egypt are very aware of the history of Egypt, pre and post-Nasser. My family in Egypt, including young adults and high school-age nieces and nephews are well informed about Egyptian historical periods. They make superb personal guides!
“white idealists…try to impose their own societies’ norms and projects on indigenous people many years more experienced and wiser than themselves”
This brings US in most troubles in ME and especially in Iraq.
As most “”white idealists” thinking they done it before with many places around the world why not redo this in ME?
So they forgot that those places they went and succeeded those indigenous people where living and their life very basic and never see or past civilised time in their life and most are living like cave peoples.
But in ME they where the cradle of civilizations from Egypt to Babylon and those time was the top and early civilized time then they went down and again during Islamic area they flourishing again with top civilized society.
So the people in ME very aware and care about their historical life and what they had and what their grand grand fathers had added to the world with full proud of it.
We might want to talk about the Noble Savage “myth” at some other time. Suffice it to say that repeating the cliches of Whig historians does not establish them as facts.
As to Aden in 1967, there is another link to be drawn: between Britain’s sudden indifference to the colony and her support for the Yemeni Royalists (mentioned in Sd’s valuable posting) who, with the assistance of the SAS and the Saudis among many others, were holding down 50,000 of Egypt’s best soldiers. That was the first sign that Nasser was really not planning to attack Israel in 1967…
One of the untold stories of Aden is of the role that British (and Irish) servicemen of the socialist persuasion played in supporting the Arab socialists. Certainly few postings in the British forces were more detested by the “other ranks” than Aden.
One US Marine Corps officer believed that these foreign adventures weren’t for idealism but for profit. He was Ol’ Gimlet Eye, that Quaker from PA, MajGen Smedley Darlington Butler:
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
http://www.warisaracket.org/index.html
“It also sounds like an updated version of the noble savage theory, wherein non-Western peoples, being unspoiled by civilization, have not only a natural disposition towards altruism, but also wisdom born of millennia.”
I really don’t think that is at all a fair characterization of what Helena was saying. In fact, I do believe she was criticizing the flip side of that particular western-supremacist, colonialist, and dare I say it, racist coin. But I am sure Helena can speak for herself better than I can for her.
“most Egyptians do not know nor care about any of their history that pre-dates Nasser.”
Gosh! I don’t know what Egyptians you hung out with for the last two years, but I have found quite the opposite. My impression has always been that Egyptians, like other Middle Eastern/North African/Asian people are very aware and pround of, their history, both ancient and modern. But again, I don’t really think Helena was talking about “some collective unconscious of their long-stretching history”, nor do I think she was talking about some kind of “inherent wisdom” in the sense that you appear to mean it – at least what she said resonated very differently with me. She can correct me if I am wrong, but it seemed to me she was referring to something more immediate and pragmatic than that.
“This mindset that Westerners are never capable of helping Africa/the Middle East/etc….”
I think you have made the same mistake I tend to make sometimes. It looks like you have taken exception to one small statement extracted from the whole without considering it in the context of the message. I believe Helena was referring to a very specific method of “helping”. I am very certain she was not saying at all that westerners are never capable of helping non-westerners. I think what she was referring to was a very typical western-centric, western supremacist, “great white father knows best” approach to “helping” that infantilizes the “helpee”, that often, but not always, is associated with military force, and assumes that the westerners know better than the “helpee” does what is best for him.
Bevin, as someone who has studied the situation in 1967 a lot, I find your last comment very interesting. Can you elaborate, and/or refer me to some sources?
Garth, thanks for the nice comments you made about the post and the blog.
No, I don’t think that non-westerners are inherently “wiser” or nobler or whatever than westerners. I do believe however (1) that people raised within any particular kind of society tend to be the ones who understand most about the dynamics (including the change dynamics) within that society, and (2) that, ceteris paribus, people tend to accrue wisdom and understanding of complex social phenomena with age. Hence the respect that in most societies people accord to those of greater age. (US people, with the culture’s general fixation on the positive value of “youthfulness” and “newness” lose more than most of them even understand through those fixations.)
But that means there is a particularly bitter irony when eager (and often very idealistic) young westerners rush out to countries very different from their own and presume to tell people– especially respected elders– within those societies how to run things. nearly all those elders certainly have “seen it all before.” Western projects at controlling and remaking the societies of Asia, Africa, and the Americas have been around a long time.
I don’t know which country you’re from or how old you are. But if an eager young 23-year-old fresh out of say Senegal or Yemen came to you country, backed up by a whole apparatus of Senegalese/Yemeni administrative and security/military instruments and proceeded to tell the community leaders in your own home community that they have been doing everything wrong up until now and they need to do everything the “correct” (i.e. Senegalese or Yemeni) way from here on… well how would people in your community feel about that?
Back in 2004 I was doing some research for my recent Africa book in a small town in Mozambique. By Mozambican standards I guess I look pretty young, though I was 52 at the time. One of the community leaders I really needed to interview there refused to take my questions seriously until I was able to persuade him that yes, I was indeed over 50 (and here was my birthdate in my passport to prove it) and yes, I did indeed do “just a little bit of farming.” (as I desperately remembered the few tomato vines back in my garden at home.)
i could see his point.
By the way, SD, you absolutely CAN and SHOULD learn how to write hyperlinks. It’s extremely easy. One good way is to hit “Control-U” as you look at this page and the HTML source of the page should pop up in a separate window…. Scroll down to where you see the first of the hyperlinks rendered there in the raw HTML. (That’ll be around one-third of the way down the page, for reasons I needn’t go into.) That’s the hyperlink around Washington losing struggle for Abu Mazen’s soul?… Or even clearer to understand, the next one down: the one around JWN front page You’ll see that preceding that text there is an HTML tag (enclosed between less-than and greater-than signs) that directs you to the URL you want to link to; and after the text is the HTML tag that “closes” the hyperlink.
Or, you can take one of the many little teach-yourself courses in basic HTML available online. You should do this because writing basic HTML is increasingly becoming an aspect of basic literacy, imho. Plus, t is not hard to do!
i just want to second shirin’s interest in the history you mentioned, bevin – could you tell more of the story in a comment on this thread, or tell us where to look into it further?
perhaps relevant to this is the longer history of yemen & the hadramawt, which if memory serves was the site of a number of the more anti-authoritarian/egalitarian revolts against the more centralized/hierarchical structures of the various dynasties of the khalifate…