The RAF, the Aden Protectorate Levies and Counter-insurgency in South Arabia, 1951-1957

davidbfpo · Jun 22, 2022

A forthcoming lecture online from the RAF Museum, 1st July 2022 at 1230hrs and the publicity says:

Dr Huw Bennett (Cardiff University) and Dr Edward Burke (University of Nottingham) will discuss the Royal Air Force, the Aden Protectorate Levies and Counter-insurgency in South Arabia during 1951-1957. This lecture will be broadcast live from RAF Museum, Cosford.

Loyalist bargains between European colonial powers and indigenous collaborators were fluid and frequently renegotiated. Indigenous forces could mutiny or refuse to execute orders they believed violated, explicitly or implicitly, the terms of their agreement with the colonial power. As well as enabling colonial violence, locally recruited forces could also restrain it. This paper examines the experiences and influence of the RAF Regiment-officered Aden Protectorate Levies (APL) from 1951 to 1957. It argues that the APL proved increasingly reluctant to carry out a new Forward Policy in South Arabia. Rather than accepting the Air Ministry’s recommendation to temper their expansionism, colonial administrators blamed RAF officers in command of the APL for a collapse in morale, and successfully campaigned for an increased role for the British Army in Aden and its protectorates. The result was the continued prosecution of a failed policy that consumed ever greater British military resources.
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Register via: The RAF, the Aden Protectorate Levies and Counter-insurgency in South Arabia, 1951-1957 - Crowdcast

davidbfpo · Jul 2, 2022

The talk is available on: The RAF, the Aden Protectorate Levies and Counter-insurgency in South Arabia, 1951-1957 - Crowdcast It appears that the talk is a chapter in an un-named book; which was due to be published in 2020 and the chapter is available: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/OutputFile/4846533

The article ends with a pertinent comment:

What we have suggested in this chapter is that the undercurrents for disintegration within the South Arabian security forces began to swell at least eleven years beforehand. Rather than assuming people in Aden and its surrounding territories acted only within boundaries set by the British, we argue they absorbed ideas from multiple political directions and powerfully converted them into their own intended outcomes. Future research on decolonisation violence must investigate further how European states were pushed out not simply by their enemies, or their own economic travails, but by the people they believed to be their loyal friends in uniform
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If you click on the questions you can go straight to the answer given, for example a list of the most useful books is given.

Worth reading an Open Access article in the June 2022 journal Middle Eastern Studies: 'Anthropologists, Topographers, Diplomats, and Spies: Royal Air Force Intelligence Officers in South Arabia 1954–1959' by Professor Clive Jones, of Durham.

davidbfpo · Jan 26, 2024

Added here as the best place; the Federal Regular Army in South Arabia / Aden may be what is sought.

The Abstract below is from a 2023 article by Huw Bennett, alas behind a paywall:

This article argues an understanding of the British withdrawal from Aden in 1967 requires greater attention to be paid to the loyalty of the local security forces who were supposed to help repress the insurgency in south Arabia, and then secure a friendly state when Britain left. The Federal Regular Army (FRA), the most important formation, proved to be consistently unreliable through behaviours ranging from the attempted murder of British personnel, to desertion and political activism. However, disbanding the FRA might have made matters even worse, so British officers sought to manipulate its loyalty through various mechanisms, including pay rises, ignoring disloyal incidents and directing propaganda at the soldiers. These endeavours succeeded in holding off a mutiny until June 1967, but only by creating a force which became infiltrated by the insurgent movements and lacked the capacity to play any meaningful role in defending the federation. This analysis suggests studies on British counter-insurgency should investigate further the role of local allies in strategy and operations.
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From: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2023.2265361

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