Friends of South Yemen
Like many places in Yemen, Aden claims a connection to early biblical and Koranic stories. While Sanaa may claim it was founded by Noah’s son Shem, local legends give Aden a more ancient claim – not only as the departure point for Noah’s Ark, but also as the city founded by Cain and Abel. The tomb of Abel (who according to the Koran was buried by Cain after being instructed how to do so by a raven) is reputed to be located on Jabal Hadid.
Aden served as the main port of the Awsan Kingdom between the 9th and 7th centuries BC. In 685BC, the port was captured by the great Sabaen King Karib’il Watar, who through his campaigns brought the Kingdom of Awsan to an end. In the mid 1st century AD the Periplus of the Erythracean Sea notes that Aden is called ‘Eudaemon Arabia’ (‘Happy Arabia’). The epithet would stick and apply to the entire country, particularly under its Latin version ‘Arabia Felix’. Despite its description that the port was strategically located and that it had previously served a large number of ships crossing through the region, the Periplus noted that the port had previously been largely destroyed by the Himyarites.
Descriptions of Aden appear throughout the Islamic era of Yemen. Although the original three centers of Islamic governance had been Sanaa, Hadhramawt, and Al Janad, the Abbasid rulers of Baghdad began to move their focus from the last city to that of Aden in the mid 8th century. Several centuries later, the historians reported that Queen Arwa received the yearly revenue of Aden as part of her marriage dowry.
In the early 1500s Ludovico di Varthema, the Italian explorer who was the first non-Muslim to enter Mecca wrote that: ‘Aden was the strongest city that was ever seen on level ground’. At the time of his visit, Aden was controlled by the Tahrid dynasty. He writes the account of his travels that ships from India, Ethiopia and Persia as well as vessels headed for Mecca docked at the port under the imposing watch of Sirwah Fortress and paid dues to the Tahirid Sultan. He also notes that the city housed up to 6,000 families. Ludovico suffered harsh treatment at the hands of the sultan’s underlings – he was chained and imprisoned for 65 days as a suspected Christian spy – but it did not seem to damped his opinion of the city which he found ‘extremely beautiful’.
On 19th January 1839 Captain Stafford Bettesworth Haines captured Aden and the city was annexed to British India. The British had been looking for an ideal spot to serve as a coaling station for the ships travelling to and from India. In the previous years, British settlements appeared on Socotra and Perim Island but were abandoned once the port of Aden had been seized. The capture of Aden marked the first expansion of the British Empire under the reign of Queen Victoria.
Aden had changed significantly since its early 16th century heyday: the port had lost its significance as Vasco de Gama’s route to India around the Cape of Good Hope was utilized more and more often on the one hand, and as the coffee boom developed the red Sea ports of al-Mokha and al-Luhayyah on the other. Compared with the 6,000 families present during Ludovico di Varthema’s visit, the city only boasted an entire population of 600 people when Captain Haines took over.
During the early years of the British occupation the city of Aden began to grow in size; particularly once the Suez Canal opened in 1869. In the 128 years of British rule, the city’s population grew from 600 to over 250,000 and trade revenues exploded from £30,000 to £154 million. By the 1950s Aden was the fourth-largest tax-free port in the world, and it saw over 6,300 ships annually.
The British colony of Aden served as a crossroads for many of the 19th century explorers – Bruton, Speke, Baker and Stanley all passed through the port town. The poet Arthur Rimbaud lived in Aden as well, although he had long given up poetry by that point. The city hosted royal visitors too. In 1872, the future King Edward VII stopped in at Aden on his way to India. Queen Elizabeth II made a more prolonged visit in 1954.
The British used Aden as their base for exerting control over much of South Arabia. Starting in the 1880s, the British began signing treaties of friendship and protection with the various sultanates of southern Yemen that made them officially part of the Aden Protectorates. Eventually these protectorates would be organized and separated into the Eastern and Western Aden Protectorates.
Britain’s growing presence in Arabia soon put it at odds with the Ottoman presence in the north. The first major clash between the two colonial powers occurred in 1873 as the spheres of Aden and Sanaa began to overlap. Over the next 30 years conflicts would continue to spark – at times with great severity. At last the two powers agreed to a line separating their respective aeras of control. The Anglo-Ottoman Line was agreed to in 1905 and stretched from the Bab al-Mandab in the southwest to the town of Harib in the northeast. Even after the revolutions of North and South Yemen in the 1960s the line would serve as the basic border between the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen until unification in 1990.
In 1937, Aden was removed from the jurisdiction of British India and became a crown colony in its own right. Beginning around the same time, and as a result of the adoption of the ‘Forward Policy’ - the movement favoring greater intervention in the governance and development of the British protectorates – the British in Aden began signing more intrusive ‘advisory treaties’ with the Aden Protectorates. A series of limited constitutional reform were propagated throughout the protectorates until the 1950s.
In 1959, Western Aden Protectorates formed the Federation of Arab Emirates of the South. Despite a local outcry, Aden joined the federation in 1963. The larger body became the Federation of South Arabia, but it would not last long. The same year, an intense rebellion in the Radfan mountains against the British was led by the National Liberation Front (NLF). For several years Aden became an intense war zone as the NLF and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) carried out guerrilla attacks against the British, the colonial power responding with a particularly brutal counter-insurgency. Aden was a battlefield, and the area of Crater saw bomb and grenade explosions on a daily basis.
Colin Campbell Mitchell (17 November 1925 – 20 July 1996) was a British Army soldier and politician. He became a public figure in 1967 as the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Forces under his command reoccupied the Crater district of Aden which had been taken over by local police mutineers in what became known as "the last battle of the British empire". The reoccupation and subsequent control of the Crater were controversial. Mitchell became known as ‘Mad Mitch’. He subsequently resigned his army commission in 1968. Subsequently, he became a Conservative Member of Parliament and served one term from 1970 to February 1974. After participation in a failed business venture he subsequently worked as a security and military consultant. In 1989 Mitchell took a leading role in the Halo Trust, a not-for-profit organisation undertaking mine clearance in former war zones. Click on this link for a documentary about Mad Mitch and his exploits in South Yemen: Mad Mitch and his Tribal Law
With the decision to withdraw from all military bases ‘east of Suez’, the British issued a defence policy paper declaring that all military forces would leave Aden by the end of 1968. Following the announcement, fighting increased as the Marxist-learning NLF and the Egyptian-backed FLOSY vied for power. Because of the situation in the city, the British were forced to expedite the removal process, and the last British soldiers flew out of the country on 30th November 1967 – the date now celebrated as Independence Day.
As the British left, the NLF assumed power in the newly formed People’s Republic of South Yemen. In 1969, the leftist contingent of the NLF acquired control of the party, instituting drastic socialist reforms labelled as the ‘Corrective Move’ – a policy which would lead to the formation in 1970 of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, the only Marxist state to have ever existed in the Middle East.
Rivalry within the Yemeni Socialist Party led to another brutal war in Aden in January 1986. Head of State Ali Nasir Muhammad al-Hasani and the recently returned-from-exile ex-leader Abd al-Fatah ismail both rallied their forces to see who could assassinate the other first. Al-Hasani won that game, but eventually he was forced to flee from the country as well. The ‘January events’ led to a ten-day civil war that resulted in 13,000 civilian casualties and the emigration of over 60,000 Yemenis to the north.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of South Yemen lost its sole benefactor, and the long-contemplated union with the Yemen Arab Republic was formalized on 22nd May 1990. Aden was declared the ‘economic capital’, of the Republic of Yemen, but it is not exactly clear what this meant. After unification Aden was largely neglected until the civil war of 1994. For the third time in 40 years Aden became the scene of large-scale fighting. And the southerners wanted an independent state once again. They lost the war and became increasingly subservient to the north until the Houthis overthrew the internationally recognized government in 2014. Aden has been built up very slowly but the hope that the Aden Free Zone would be developed remained nothing more than a hope.
Sadly Aden is known as the location where the USS Cole was bombed in 2000, an al-Qaeda attach viewed as an important precursor to the September 11th attacks of 2001.
-Source: Yemen by Daniel McLaughlin, Bradt Travel Guides.As the former capital of the PDRY, Aden was officially named the economic capital of Yemen when the country was unified – although this was largely a formality as, prior to 2015, the government only made brief visits to the city in winter, when the weather there is agreeable (and is cold in Sana’a). In the fighting of 2015, local resistance forces comprised fighters with a wide range of ideologies and alliances, some of whom received considerable support from the UAE.
Given Aden’s position as the interim capital, all factions believe it is essential to maintain a public presence there. This is particularly relevant for the Internationally Recognised Government (IRG) led by Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi: without its Aden base, it is no more than a government in exile. Hence Saudi Arabia’s efforts to forge what has become the Riyadh Agreement. Since 2015, Aden has struggled to become the true capital of the IRG. This is because Hadi and most of his ministers use Riyadh as their main base and, as such, are rarely in Aden, where most remaining embassies to Yemen are located. International organisations have their main Yemeni offices in Sana’a and sometimes operate from Amman and Djibouti, maintaining only a minimal presence in Aden.
Moreover, the relationship between Hadi’s government and various southern independence groups in Aden has been tense from the beginning. Few members of local resistance forces recognise Hadi’s legitimacy as president, as most are aligned with the pro-independence forces. The uneasy alliance between the sides lasted until 2017, when Hadi dismissed Zubaydi as governor of Aden. An indicator of the balance of power in the city is was the position of Shaye, who retained his post after Zubaydi’s dismissal, nominally answering to the IRG until 12 August 2019 – when his allies in the STC expelled the Hadi government from Aden. He was eventually dismissed in mid-August 2019 after the STC had taken over Aden.
In addition to being the main site of conflict between the IRG and the STC, Aden also suffers from considerable insecurity caused by struggles between various forces. In particular, the Security Belt and other STC-linked Salafist forces have – in line with the wishes of their Emirati sponsors – frequently launched attacks on individuals associated with rival political groups, mainly Islah. The UAE and the STC publicly describe these attacks as “anti-jihadist”, thereby conflating Islah followers with members of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group (ISIS). With the help of these local forces, the UAE has allegedly maintained secret prisons throughout the region in which it has tortured detainees and held them without trial for lengthy periods. Moreover, the UAE has allegedly hired foreign mercenary groups to assassinate Islah members and other perceived enemies.
The confusing political situation in Aden reflects the city’s complex history, particularly its role as a focal point for migration in the last century. In addition to being a destination for rural Yemenis seeking job opportunities, Aden has also been the main port from which Yemenis migrated. People came to Aden from the Protectorates, the imamate, and the YAR, creating the basis for a very mixed society – one that it is far more liberal than other parts of Yemen – as well as an intellectual and political centre. These factors make the xenophobic attacks against northerners in Aden all the more jarring.
On July 29th 2020, the STC rescinded its self-rule declaration in the hope that the Riyadh Agreement would be implemented and its members would gain an equal share in the new government which was supposed to be formed within 30 days. The government has not been formed and the STC leaders have not been allowed to leave Saudi Arabia. Only Hamid Lamlis, the new governor of Aden has taken up his post as the political stale mate continues.