Aden Emergency
The Aden Emergency, also known as the 14 October Revolution (Arabic: ثورة 14 أكتوبر, romanized: Thawra 14 ʾUktūbar, lit. '14th October Revolution') or as the Radfan Uprising, was an armed rebellion by the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) against the Federation of South Arabia, a British Protectorate of the United Kingdom, which led to the proclamation of the People's Republic of South Yemen.
Partly inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism, it began on 14 October 1963 with the throwing of a grenade at a gathering of British officials at Aden Airport. A state of emergency was then declared in the British Crown colony of Aden and its hinterland, the Aden Protectorate. The emergency escalated in 1967 and hastened the end of British rule in the territory which had begun in 1839.
Background[edit]
Aden was originally of interest to Britain as an anti-piracy station to protect shipping on the routes to British India. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, it further served as a coaling station. Over the period since the annexation of Aden, the British had signed many protection treaties with the emirs of the inland to secure British rule over the area. Following the independence of India in 1947, Aden became less important to the United Kingdom.
The Emergency was precipitated in large part by a wave of Arab nationalism spreading to the Arabian Peninsula and stemming largely from the socialist and pan-Arabist doctrines of Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser. The British, French and Israeli forces that had invaded Egypt following Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956 had been forced to withdraw following intervention from both the United States and the Soviet Union.
Nasser enjoyed only limited success in spreading his pan-Arabist doctrines through the Arab world, with his 1958 attempt to unify Egypt and Syria as the United Arab Republic collapsing in failure three years later. A perceived anti-colonial uprising in Aden in 1963 provided another potential opportunity for his doctrines, though it is not clear to what extent Nasser directly incited the revolt in Aden, as opposed to the Yemeni guerrilla groups drawing inspiration from Nasser's pan-Arabist ideas but acting independently themselves.