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The Aden Protectorate Levies, Counter-insurgency and the Loyalist Bargain in South Arabia, 1951 - 1957. Huw Bennett Edward Burke European powers depended upon indigenous collaboration to conquer new colonial territories and then to make their rule sustainable. As the seismic changes in global order brought about by the Second World War shifted the very basis of that rule, colonial powers were compelled to re-negotiate the terms of collaboration. This chapter takes the West Aden Protectorate case to illuminate how the loyalist bargain was maintained, and why that process was so difficult. The episode shows that the colonial power in the form of the Aden and British governments, far from being master manipulators in the business of divide-and-rule, struggled to exercise control over a numerically insubstantial opponent. While most writing on indigenous collaboration, or loyalism, is concerned with the creation and maintenance of colonial orders in general, this chapter focuses on the implications of the relationship for violence. It centres upon the position of the local security forces, particularly the Aden Protectorate Levies (APL), as the primary intermediaries. It argues that the intensity of colonial violence towards a resistant population was diminished by the effective military tactics adopted by rebels, a growing reluctance by the APL soldiers to punish their own people, and the impotence of the only viable military alternative – aerial bombardment. In combination, these three factors forced the civil and military authorities in Aden to halt their expansionism. However, the colonial administration in Aden was so determined to revive their offensive “forward policy” that they won a bureaucratic battle to displace the Royal Air Force from controlling the local security forces, and several years later renewed the fighting in the West Aden Protectorate with British Army assistance instead. Perspectives on collaboration, loyalism and indigenous security forces Historians have long sought to understand the relationships between colonial rulers and their subjects, searching for the bases of the co-operation that coexisted with violent coercion. The debate has been framed around conceptions of collaboration, loyalty, indirect rule, and alliances.^1 Perhaps the most influential model remains Ronald Robinson’s 1972 theory of collaboration. Robinson posited that imperial powers lacked the material resources to impose control throughout their newly acquired possessions: local collaborators proffered essential manpower and knowledge about alien societies. For indigenous elites, partnership with the invaders could be exploited to maintain or improve their own standing. The bargain struck between colonisers and collaborators implied a willingness to appreciate the wider demands placed on both parties by their constituencies – be they metropolitan politics or indigenous societies. If either party to the bargain grew too powerful or dissatisfied, then collaboration could break down, necessitating a reconstruction on different terms and, potentially, with different participants.^2 This model has been applied to contexts as diverse as the Rhodesian mining industry to the Indian Army in the First World War.^3 (^1) Colin Newbury, ‘Patrons, Clients, and Empire: The Subordination of Indigenous Hierarchies in Asia and Africa’, Journal of World History 11, no. 2 (2000): 227. (^2) Ronald Robinson, ‘Non-European foundations of European imperialism: sketch for a theory of collaboration’, in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds.), Studies in the theory of imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), 117-142. (^3) Charles van Onselen, ‘The role of collaborators in the Rhodesian mining industry 1900-1935’, African Affairs 72, no. 289 (1973): 4 01 - 418; George Morton Jack, ‘The Indian Army on the Western Front, 1914-1915: A Portrait of Collaboration’, War in History 13, no. 3 (2006): 329-362.
Most colonies raised small formations of soldiers and policemen to uphold internal security, guard frontiers, and assist neighbouring colonies in an emergency.^4 Military history and military sociology as sub-disciplines have been accused of Eurocentrism.^5 Though some studies concentrate on the British officer’s experience in colonial armies, a rich literature grounded in cultural and social histories has developed.^6 Broadly speaking, these works address three principal concerns: recruitment, strategic logics, and the political consequences of military service. Writing on recruitment investigates the practices designed to encourage men to join up, the ideological assumptions underlying these policies, and the motivations expressed by indigenous personnel. The Indian Army after the 1857 uprising has been the case most intensively researched. Incentives included pay, healthcare provision, and opportunities for adventure.^7 Timothy Stapleton’s book on colonial Zimbabwe demonstrates the equal importance of the prestige endowed on those who enlisted.^8 Seeking predictably loyal armed servants, colonial authorities believed certain ethnic groups possessed special military attributes. In India the so-called “martial races” included Nepalese Gurkhas, Punjabi Sikhs and Muslims from the northern frontier.^9 Heather Streets shows these racial constructs owed as much to discourses within the imperial metropole as to organisational cultures in armies.^10 Writing on colonial armies in wartime tends to derive either from a war and society perspective, or from military analysis. The latter approach sometimes descends into the listing of practical lessons for contemporary officers, ignoring historical context; the former can show scant interest in the fighting so intrinsic to war.^11 The sharpest insights come from methodologies that integrate the two. Michelle Moyd’s penetrating work on German East Africa notes the surprising paucity of research on colonial soldiers at war. She argues that askaris in the locally raised Schutztruppe derived their war-fighting methods in part from precolonial raiding practices.^12 Tarak Barkawi’s book on the Indian and British armies in the Second World War places greater emphasis upon cohesion fostered among troops in battle. Pre-war martial race ideas disintegrated as the Indian Army expanded rapidly in new demographic directions.^13 Military effectiveness in wartime was maintained by three mechanisms. The welfare system upheld morale by giving soldiers rest, recreation and medical care. Organising personnel on regimental lines offered distinctive identities, often rooted in home locations, as a basis for (^4) David Killingray and David Omissi, Guardians of empire: the armed forces of the colonial powers c. 1700- 1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 9-11. (^5) Tarak Barkawi, ‘Culture and Combat in the Colonies: The Indian Army in the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 2 (2006): 325. (^6) On British officers: Anthony Clayton and David Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial Africa (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1989). (^7) David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860- 1940 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994). (^8) Timothy Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923- 80 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2011), 16. (^9) Gavin Rand and Kim A. Wagner, ‘Recruiting the “martial races”: identities and military service in colonial India’, Patterns of Prejudice 46, no. 3-4 (2012): 232-254. (^10) Heather Streets, Martial races: The military, race and masculinity in British imperial culture, 1857- 1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). (^11) Robert M. Cassidy, ‘The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency,’ Parameters , (2006): 47-
(^12) Michelle R. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2014), 15, 66. (^13) Tarak Barkawi, Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 51, 159-160.
This chapter’s contribution is to suggest that loyalism could also function to restrain violence. It is argued the local military forces in Aden re-negotiated their loyalist bargain mid-way through an insurgency. What is crucial here is not just that indigenous intermediaries exercised agency, but that the imperial patron listened, and responded. Most studies on colonial militaries or auxiliaries pay attention to failures in loyalty, especially mutinies. However, they generally do so with reference to military effectiveness at the tactical level. This is because in the conflicts most deeply researched, the world wars, military disloyalty did not have further- reaching strategic consequences.^22 Micropolitical events had micropolitical effects. But in irregular wars, soldiers’ actions may directly influence high politics.^23 Yigal Levy’s concept of “control from within” is helpful here. It is “the intentional action taken by soldiers – when tasked to implement politically sensitive missions with which they disagree – in an attempt to affect the political performance of the military.”^24 Only in a few instances has the agency of colonial soldiers or auxiliaries been analysed to explain the strategic consequences during wartime.^25 In the decade following the events examined here British power in the Middle East profoundly diminished, in part due to the shifting loyalties of armed allies. British strategy and loyalist security forces in Aden Aden served Britain’s extensive global interests. After the U.K. and the sea lines of communication, the Middle East represented Britain’s third grand strategic priority. War plans written from 1948 expected a Soviet offensive to rapidly surge through Europe. The allied counter-stroke was to come from bombers in Britain, the Middle East and Okinawa. However, the expansion of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons capability, combined with demands from Egypt for the handover of strategic air bases, meant that the 1948 plans lost credibility.^26 The 1952 Global Strategy Paper shifted defence policy towards nuclear deterrence. Subversion, propaganda and insurgency were also identified as future trends. The paper confirmed the Middle East as fundamentally important to national security. In 1953 the wisdom of relying on Egyptian bases shrank further, when the USSR detonated a hydrogen bomb. Singularly valuable assets could be destroyed at a stroke. Dispersed facilities now became more important
- not least the port and airbase at Aden. The same year a protracted British attempt to get the U.S. to formally commit to regional defence failed. President Eisenhower preferred a “Northern Tier” of defence co-operation along the Zagros mountain range.^27 Plans to defend the Northern Tier expected the Royal Air Force (RAF) to strike Soviet forces and bring in reinforcements.^28 By the mid-1950s Khormaksar was the busiest RAF airfield in the world, (^22) Kaushik Roy, 'Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context: A Case Study of the Indian Army during World War II', Journal of Military History 73, no. 2 (2009): 497-529. (^23) Chiara Ruffa, Christopher Dandeker and Pascal Vennesson, ‘Soldiers drawn into politics? The influence of tactics in civil-military relations’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 24, no. 2 (2013): 322-334. (^24) Yagil Levy, ‘Control from within: How soldiers control the military’, European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 1 (2017): 194. (^25) Roel Frakking, ‘Collaboration is a Very Delicate Concept’: Alliance-formation and the Colonial Defence of Indonesia and Malaysia, 1945- 1957 (PhD thesis: European University Institute, 2017); David M. Anderson, ‘Making the Loyalist Bargain: Surrender, Amnesty and Impunity in Kenya’s Decolonization, 1952-63’, The International History Review 39, no. 1 (2017): 48-70. (^26) Michael J. Cohen, Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945- 1954 (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 90, 124, 132, 161-163. (^27) David Devereux, The Formulation of British Defence Policy Towards the Middle East, 1948- 56 (London: Macmillan, 1990), 65, 114, 141, 153, 174. (^28) Michael J. Cohen, Strategy and Politics in the Middle East, 1954-1960: Defending the Northern Tier (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 34, 38.
averaging 5,000 air movements a month.^29 The erosion of British power in the Middle East necessitated reliance upon regional allies. Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and the U.K. held the Baghdad Pact’s first meeting in November 1955 to formalise the Northern Tier.^30 British strategists had no choice but to consider the needs of allies, including colonial militaries. The British East India Company seized Aden in January 1839. From 1937 until 1963 Aden was a Crown Colony. Outside the port British authority was diffuse. Around 800,000 people lived in the Aden Protectorates. Initially informal arrangements held sway between the Governor and the tribes. Gradually the position became regularised in protective treaties which prohibited the tribal ruler from concluding agreements with foreign powers. The Protectorates served as a buffer to block any Ottoman threat to Aden, and after 1918, to protect against incursions from the Yemeni Imamate.^31 Organised into Eastern and Western Protectorates, the former roughly four times the size of the latter but with a much smaller population, a Resident Advisor sat atop them to protect British interests.^32 In 1934 the Aden government signed an agreement with Imam Yahya, the ruler of Yemen, in which Yahya consented, with some minor adjustments, to remove his forces from positions to the south of the former Anglo-Ottoman frontier. However, the treaty did not amount to formal recognition but rather a cessation of direct hostilities “pending a final decision” on the border question.^33 From 1937 the British started signing new advisory treaties granting the Aden government jurisdiction over domestic policy, most significantly the ability to topple state rulers. The last treaty with a major ruler, the thirtieth, was signed in April 1954.^34 The Yemeni government protested that British expansion in the Western Protectorate violated the 1934 treaty.^35 The death of Imam Yahya in 1948 and his succession by his son Ahmad led to renewed tensions on the Yemeni-Protectorate frontier. In December 1952 Ahmad kidnapped the Sultan of Upper Yafa, a ruler under British protection, condemning him as “a foolish and tiresome fellow.” In response to increasing evidence of Yemeni intervention, the British authorities launched a series of covert operations to try and destabilise Yemen. Paying tribal leaders to mount raids over the border was the favoured method.^36 Governors Sir Tom Hickinbotham (1951-56) and Sir William Luce (1956-60) advocated extending British influence in the Protectorates to reinforce Aden’s safety, known as the “forward policy.” Though the Foreign Office was not convinced, Prime Ministers Churchill, Eden and Macmillan were content to allow the Colonial Office and its governors considerable latitude in local affairs. In January 1953 Hickinbotham sent forces to Nisab to compel the Upper Aulaqi Sultan to sign an advisory treaty, which he did. The Sultan was paid a stipend for his loyalty and further forces arrived to pacify the area, in particular the Rabizi tribe, who opposed the construction of a road through their territory in the Wadi Hatib. Spencer Mawby argues that the offensive forward policy, of which this was but one example, was driven by colonial officials in Aden and the Protectorates, and met little (^29) Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, ‘Aden Revisited’, Air Power 6, no. 3 (1959): 180. (^30) Cohen, Fighting World War Three from the Middle East , 189. (^31) Simon C. Smith, ‘Rulers and Residents: British Relations with the Aden Protectorate, 1937-59’, Middle Eastern Studies 31, no. 3 (1995): 509-523. (^32) Spencer Mawby, 'Britain's Last Imperial Frontier: The Aden Protectorates, 1952-59', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 29, no. 2 (2001): 79. (^33) Foreign Office memorandum, ‘British Policy in the Middle East’, 27 March 1944, cited in David Lee, Flight from The Middle East (London: Ministry of Defence, Air Historical Branch, 1978), 14. (^34) British Library [hereafter BL]: IOR/R/20/B/2351: Aden intelligence summary for the period ending 31 March,
(^35) Spencer Mawby, British Policy in Aden and the Protectorates 1955- 67 (London: Routledge, 2006), 29. (^36) Spencer Mawby, 'The Clandestine Defence of Empire: British Special Operations in Yemen 1951-64', Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 3 (2002): 110-113.
Locally recruited officers held a governor’s commission, but British officers retained all key administrative and operational posts. The first commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Morice Lake, favoured the Aulaqi and Audhali tribes. Lake and his successors admired these tribes’ perceived bellicosity, sense of honour and independence.^46 A British partiality towards “up-country” levies persisted throughout the APL’s history. The bulk of recruits came from tribes that lived in the mountainous regions of the Western Protectorate, especially the Aulaqi and Audhali.^47 APL squadrons were recruited along tribal lines, the logic being that, if a dispute or rebellion broke out, then levies from particular squadrons could be excluded from carrying out punitive operations in their own territories. The APL’s official historian tried to present the levies as apolitical, by virtue of having stopped recruiting whole sections from one tribe in 1952, and promoting soldiers without regard to tribal politics.^48 In reality this policy was not fully implemented. In 1955 the Force Commander reported that squadrons were still organised on a “tribal basis”.^49 An officer who served with the APL from 1957 to 1959 recalled that some squadrons drew their recruits almost exclusively from one tribe, while others were mixed.^50 Soldiers entered the APL with a sponsor, often a tribal ruler, who had the new recruit on his ‘face’ for the whole of his service. In cases of desertion members of a soldier’s family could be imprisoned until he handed himself and/or his rifle over to the government.^51 Levies, or gundi , were thought by their officers to be “unsophisticated” and politically ignorant. Their Muslim faith was seen as a source of stability, preventing the usual soldierly problems over drink, though it did mean operations were best avoided during Ramadan.^52 Gundi apparently valued officers with a sense of humour and formed a loyal bond with charismatic individuals, not simply obeying someone because they held a particular rank.^53 Loyalty was interwoven with organisational, local and international politics. In December 1947, the APL was mobilised during Arab-Jewish violence in the Crater district of Aden following the United Nations vote to partition Palestine. Jewish leaders complained that levies had murdered civilians instead of protecting them. The AOC temporarily stood down the APL and confiscated their ammunition, replacing them with men from the Royal Navy. The British Army officer then commanding the APL, Lieutenant-Colonel G.W. Jones, believed his levies had been wrongly punished.^54 An official investigation into the riots disagreed, concluding that excessive force had been used. The APL had killed at least thirty-one Adeni Jews despite their not doing anything “unlawful … except possibly, in some instances, breaking curfew.”^55 In the wake of the Aden riots, the government took steps to improve discipline. A closer relationship with a reinforced RAF Regiment was the solution. The RAF Regiment was given control over the APL and began training the levies. A few British Army officers who had served (^46) Lord Belhaven, The Uneven Road (London: John Murray, 1955), 78. (^47) BL: IOR: R/20/B/2475: Memorandum by Brigadier P.G. Boxhall, Commander, Aden Protectorate Levies, 8 February 1960; Frank Edwards, The Gaysh: A History of the Aden Protectorate Levies 1927-61 and the Federal Regular Army of South Arabia 1961- 67 (Solihull: Helion and Company, 2004), 72; Cliff Lord and David Birtles, The Armed Forces of Aden and the Protectorate, 1839- 1967 (Solihull: Helion, 2011), 25. (^48) Edwards, The Gaysh , 72, 74-75. (^49) TNA: AIR 2/13564: Notes for Air Commodore on the Aden Protectorate Levies by the Force Commander, Group Captain A.J. Douglas, 20 June 1955. (^50) Imperial War Museum Sound Archive: Bertram William Sydney Boucher-Myers, catalogue number 10785. (^51) BL: IOR: R/20/B/2475: Minute written for Chief Secretary by [illegible], 8 August 1955. (^52) Edwards, The Gaysh , 44, 103, 114. (^53) Squadron Leader C.M.G. Watson, ‘Field Intelligence Officers in the Aden Protectorate’, British Army Review 9 (1959): 64. (^54) Edwards, The Gaysh , 93-95. (^55) John Willis, ‘Colonial Policing in Aden, 1937-1967’, The Arab Studies Journal 5, no. 1 (1997): 70.
with the APL transferred to the RAF Regiment. Most left, including Lieutenant-Colonel Jones.^56 The colonial authorities concluded that prolonged periods spent by the rural soldiers in towns, especially Aden, could lead to their politicisation through exposure to subversive, anti-colonial sentiments. Keeping the APL busy in the Protectorates would help to avoid future incidents of (nationalist) indiscipline in the future.^57 At this stage, the filtration of modern ideological forces into the remote rural hinterland did not seem to be a pressing concern. In the second half of the 1950s defence, colonial and foreign policy-makers became increasingly worried about anti-colonial propaganda pouring forth from Egypt across the Middle East.^58 But officials in Aden had yet to fully believe their locally recruited forces could be capable of absorbing anything more than local political influences. Stretching the loyalist bargain in the Upper Aulaqi Sultanate Advisory treaties appeared to give the Aden government a mandate in the Protectorates. But such treaties ignored the lack of authority exercised by certain rulers. The Upper Aulaqi Sultan held little sway beyond his capital, Nisab. The Aden government’s most resilient opponent during the forward policy was the Shamsi section of the Rabizi tribe, whose territory lay in the mountainous region of Hatib in the Upper Aulaqi Sultanate. Their uprising, which began in 1953 with some support from the wider Ahl Rabiz and other local tribes, such as the Dammani, was in response to a decision by Aden to construct a road through the Wadi Hatib. This road derived directly from the forward policy, extending communications near the border with Yemen. The Hatib is one of the few fertile valleys and constant water sources in the region.^59 The fort at Robat, the principal village in the wadi, was controlled by the leader of the Shamsi, Salim Ali Ma’wer.^60 The Rabizi were not consulted in advance about the construction of the road. Now they feared losing all the customs revenue from the caravans that passed through the valley.^61 Ali Ma’wer appealed to the Yemeni government for help, receiving small consignments of weapons and ammunition, including rifles. The road gangs in the Hatib were attacked in October and November 1953 and construction was suspended.^62 On 17 November the Aden Protectorate Levies moved into the Wadi Hatib from two directions.^63 The North Force of “Operation Nothing Venture” quickly sustained casualties from Ali Ma’wer’s snipers. Pinned down, they called in bombing sorties by the RAF’s 8 Squadron to limited effect. The APL commander agreed a ceasefire with Ali Ma’wer in order to negotiate a political settlement. News of the ceasefire either never reached the APL South Force, or they decided to ignore it. On 6 December the South Force reached the area near Robat. They proceeded to Ali Ma’wer’s house, killing the Rabizi chief’s aunt in the ensuing engagement. The AOC in Aden, Air Vice- Marshal Sidney Bufton, later noted that “disciplinary action was taken against the pilot (^56) Edwards, The Gaysh , 89, 108; Lord and Birtles, The Armed Forces of Aden, 20. (^57) Edwards, The Gaysh , 99; BL: IOR: R/20/B/2475: Aden Intelligence Centre memorandum, ‘Local Security Forces, Western Aden Protectorate Desertions’, 16 June 1956. (^58) Robert McNamara, Britain, Nasser and the Balance of Power in the Middle East, 1952- 1967 (London: Frank Cass, 2003). (^59) Kennedy Trevaskis, The Deluge: A Personal View of The End of Empire in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019), 202. (^60) Edwards, The Gaysh , 121. (^61) Trevaskis, The Deluge , 219. (^62) Trevaskis, The Deluge , 219. (^63) TNA: AIR 28/1224: Khormaksar Operations Record Book, entry for November 1953.
Reporting from Nisab in May 1955, political adviser George Henderson related that between October 1954 and April 1955 there had been 142 separate attacks on Robat Fort. He criticised the APL and their RAF Regiment officers, noting that significant desertions – eleven during a single operation – indicated poor leadership and morale.^77 On 18 May 1955 Kennedy Trevaskis, the most senior colonial official in the Western Protectorate, reported that 180 APL soldiers and Government Guards had deserted in the previous six months, including significant numbers from tribes outside the Aulaqi territories. Many APL soldiers were uneasy about their role enforcing the colonial writ within new areas.^78 A report by the Air Ministry underlined the importance of the APL and the risk to its future efficacy, warning that their morale was rapidly crumbling as the campaign against the Rabizi escalated. APL wastage rates were reaching unsustainable levels – 706 levies serving in January 1954 were no longer available for service in June 1955.^79 Studies on desertion in civil war propose various reasons why soldiers might risk the severe punishments normally reserved for such a betrayal. Action by “early movers” can persuade others to follow, having seen that a sense of grievance is shared, and that the dangers involved in deserting can be surmounted. Soldiers from similar localities are arguably more likely to desert as their units are more socially homogenous.^80 Opportunities to desert are clearly important in settings where fear compels soldiers to calculate how best to ensure their own personal safety.^81 The depth of norms of co-operation within military units are also likely to affect whether desertion occurs.^82 Unlike some recent studies, we cannot interview the APL deserters to find out what motivated them. Several contributory factors have already been mentioned: propaganda directed at the APL, kinship ties with those being attacked in the Protectorate, and poor leadership by British officers. Disentangling these from each other to identify a causal hierarchy is impossible on the existing evidence. Indeed, relying too heavily on British testimony about inter-group relations within the Aden Protectorate Levies, groups they perhaps understood poorly, could be misleading. What is clear is that the Aden government, RAF and British Army manipulated the presentation of the “true reasons” for the desertions, to achieve their bureaucratic political objectives. Impugning the RAF’s leadership, Trevaskis believed the “dangerously subversive” APL should be recalled to Aden, a suggestion rejected by their commander, Group Captain Douglas, and Air Vice-Marshal Bufton.^83 However, Douglas acknowledged in an internal air force report that he could only rely on four of his six APL squadrons to undertake operations in Wadi Hatib.^84 Colonial officials, quick to point the finger at the APL and the RAF Regiment, were more restrained in their criticism of the Government Guards - under the command of the Aden (^77) BL: IOR/R/20/C/2349: Memorandum from Assistant Adviser North East Area, Nisab to BAWAP, 20 February
(^78) BL: IOR R/20/C/2349: Memorandum from BAWAP to the Chief Secretary, Aden, 18 May 1955. (^79) TNA: AIR 2/13564: Notes for Air Commodore on the Aden Protectorate Levies by the Force Commander, Group Captain A.J. Douglas, 20 June 1955; Report by D.Ops on Visit to Aden and Headquarters, Middle East Air Force to Study Current Operational Problems in the Aden Protectorate. (^80) Kevin Koehler, Dorothy Ohl, and Holger Albrecht, ‘From Disaffection to Desertion: How Networks Facilitate Military Insubordination in Civil Conflict’, Comparative Politics 48, no. 4 (2016): 443. (^81) Holger Albrecht and Kevin Koehler, ‘Going on the Run: What Drives Military Desertion in Civil War?’, Security Studies 27, no. 2 (2018): 181. (^82) Theodore McLauchlin, ‘Desertion and Collective Action in Civil Wars’, International Studies Quarterly 59, no. 4 (2015): 669-679. (^83) Trevaskis, The Deluge , 225. (^84) TNA: AIR 2/13564: Notes for Air Commodore on the Aden Protectorate Levies by the Force Commander, Group Captain A.J. Douglas, 20 June 1955.
government - who suffered more desertions relative to their size than the APL.^85 Whilst a gradual falling off in local security force numbers could be ignored by those who fervently believed in the forward policy, a single dramatic event proved less easy to explain away. Reconfiguring the loyalist bargain On 15 June an APL convoy led by Wing Commander Rodney Marshall, comprising 108 officers and men, set out to relieve the fort at Robat. Marshall received “maximum air support” from six Venom aircraft in continuous pairs, and prearranged air strikes by three Vampire and four Venom aircraft on suspected rebel positions in the surrounding mountains.^86 The convoy arrived in Robat around midday, unloaded supplies, and prepared for the return journey that afternoon.^87 Shortly after leaving the fort, Marshall and his men were ambushed. Flight Lieutenant John Lee was killed in the first moments of the well-prepared ambush. Marshall and Mulazim Awal (First Lieutenant) Abdullah Quteibi were killed before they could evacuate the convoy from the kill zone. Five other ranks were killed and seven wounded. At a meeting at Government House on 18 June, Air Vice-Marshal Bufton acknowledged the Rabizi rebels “…do not appear to be afraid of air attack, against which they have learned to utilise to the full the protection afforded by the terrain.”^88 APL headquarters had already concluded that picketing the mountains overhanging the Wadi Hatib during future convoy movements would require more than 7 00 APL levies if mountain warfare principles were to be applied. Meanwhile, morale deteriorated further. On 28 June, shortly after orders were issued for another convoy movement to Robat, another nineteen levies deserted.^89 Of these, ten were from tribes from Dathina state, bordering the Upper Aulaqi to the south (in nine cases relatives of the deserters, who were believed to have fled to Yemen, were imprisoned).^90 For the government in Aden colonial prestige was a paramount consideration: a truce or peace deal with Ali Ma’wer was out of the question since two British officers had been killed.^91 Attempts to contract out the punishment of the Shamsi to other tribal actors failed. The most senior branch of the Rabizi, the Hummeidi, refused a request (with financial inducements) to move into the Wadi Hatib and to garrison Robat fort.^92 Nonetheless, government officials in Aden resisted a proposal by Bufton to withdraw from Robat. According to Kennedy Trevaskis, abandoning the fort under such conditions would have “an extremely adverse effect politically on the prestige of the Government in the protectorate as a whole.” It would also mean abandoning the road project, “thus conceding victory to the Yemeni policy”.^93 The Air Ministry sent Air Commodore Dudley Radford to urgently assess the situation in South Arabia in the wake of the Robat ambush. Radford, a former commander of 8 Squadron at Khormaksar, rejected assertions by government ministers, echoing the views of colonial (^85) BL: IOR: R/20/B/2475: Minute from Chief Secretary, Aden, to the Governor, 13 June 1955. (^86) TNA: CAB 129/75/48: Note by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 20 June 1955. (^87) TNA: AIR 2/13564: Notes for Air Commodore on the Aden Protectorate Levies by the Force Commander, Group Captain A.J. Douglas, 20 June 1955; Edwards, The Gaysh , 129. (^88) BL: IOR R/20/C/2349: Note of a Meeting at Government House, 18 June 1955; TNA: WO 373/125/4: Recommendation for Award for Acting Squadron Leader A.A. Stewart. (^89) Edwards, The Gaysh , 127, 129. (^90) BL: IOR: R/20/B/2475: Cypher from Acting Governor to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 30 June 1955; Minute for the Chief Secretary by [illegible], 10 August 1955. (^91) TNA: AIR 28/1224: Operation Order No. 11/55, signed Group Captain J.R. Gordon-Finlayson, 29 June 1955. (^92) BL: IOR R/20/C/2349: Note of a Meeting at Government House, 12 July 1955. (^93) BL: IOR R/20/C/2349: Rabizi Situation – Robat Fort, Memorandum by BAWAP, 23 June 1955.
the first year of their service and, most importantly, a planned increase in pay was expedited. Thanks to these measures and, of course, the withdrawal from the Wadi Hatib, morale and discipline slowly recovered in late 1955 and early 1956.^103 As described by Levy’s “control from within” concept, the APL soldiers had brought a change in government policy to their satisfaction and also gained improvements in their conditions of service. While the Air Force concentrated on rebuilding the fractured loyalist bargain between levies and their officers, the Aden administration plotted a way to prevent the Air Ministry and the RAF from undermining their expansionist forward policy in the future. In this endeavour the colonial authorities skilfully manipulated long-standing inter-service rivalries to their advantage. During the summer of 1955 the Aden government conspired with the War Office in London to blame RAF Regiment officers for the debacle at Robat and the problems in the APL, rather than the forward policy.^104 Following his involvement in the evacuation, Major Diacre of the Life Guards received a confidential request from the War Office for “a report on how the RAF Regiment worked (or did not) and any other bad points that you noticed that can be used against them.” Major Diacre obliged, writing of the RAF Regiment’s “bad NCOs and mediocre officers” attached to the APL – an assessment that overlooked successive decorations for bravery and leadership, including two Military Crosses, awarded to British APL officers and NCOs during operations in the Wadi Hatib.^105 Diacre’s report was instrumental in having the RAF Regiment replaced by the British Army in the Protectorates – a reversal of the handover of 1948. The War Office request for “bad points” was unorthodox, since it bypassed the normal chain of command. However, the Life Guards enjoyed a connection with the Secretary of State for War, Brigadier Antony Head, who had served from 1928 to 194 6 as an officer in that regiment.^106 In September 1955 an Army brigadier was appointed to take command of a new land forces headquarters in Aden. The Air Ministry hoped the appointment would be temporary and that the RAF Regiment would retain its lead role over land operations.^107 Instead, the Army steadily increased its presence in South Arabia during the next five years, replacing the RAF as the service in command of the Aden Protectorate Levies in February
- This military opportunism was replicated by the Special Air Service in 1959, which exploited a successful mission in Oman to avoid abolition under the Sandys defence cuts.^108 The Army’s build-up in Aden and the Protectorates from 1955 offered another theatre of operations after the Anglo-Egyptian agreement in 1954 closed bases in the Canal Zone and removed the stain of the takeover of the APL by the RAF Regiment in 1948. The Air Ministry and the RAF Regiment were outmanoeuvred by the War Office, with assistance from the Life Guards. Blaming the RAF Regiment rather than the forward policy conveniently ignored the political reasons for the breakdown in colonial authority in the Western Protectorate. The RAF’s insistence on the withdrawal from Robat was an embarrassing admission of failure, but it had nonetheless saved the APL, the Protectorates’ most important loyalist institution, from irreparable damage.^109 Instead of using the withdrawal from the Wadi Hatib as an opportunity (^103) TNA: AIR 2/13564: Cable from Commander in Chief, Middle East Land Forces, to Chiefs of Staff, 24 September 1955; Lord and Birtles, The Armed Forces of Aden , 24. (^104) TNA: CO 1015/841: Minute from J.C. Morgan to Minister of State, 12 July 1955. (^105) Loyd, Challengers and Chargers , 42; TNA: WO 373/125/4: Recommendation for Award for Acting Squadron Leader A.A. Stewart; TNA: WO 373/125/3: Recommendation for Award for Acting Squadron Leader P.E. Charlton; Edwards, The Gaysh , 113, 127. (^106) Loyd, Challengers and Chargers , 42, 50. (^107) TNA: AIR 2/13564: Minute by Air Commodore J.H. Harris, HQ Middle East Air Force, 3 July 1955. (^108) David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945- 1967 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 131. (^109) BL: IOR/R/20/C/2349: Memorandum from Deputy BAWAP to BAWAP, 24 October 1960.
to reflect on policy failure in the Protectorates, the government in London focused on exchanging one military service for another. The Army officers who replaced their RAF Regiment counterparts in the Aden Protectorate Levies from 1957 reconstructed the image of the loyalist bargain in essentially apolitical terms. Writing in the British Army Review of his experience on secondment, Lieutenant-Colonel De Butts recounted how: “The men are extremely cheerful and willing and once they get to know their British commander will do almost anything for him. In the conflict of loyalties between tribe and the ‘geish’ (army) the personality and leadership qualities of the British officer may well pay [sic] a decisive part.”^110 The Army later pushed back into those positions given up in
- In October 1960 an even larger force than the one that had evacuated the fort at Robat, entered the Wadi Hatib. The Shamsis reverted to the tactics they had employed five years earlier. By April 1961 the government, under regular attack, had run out of funds to build the road.^111 Once again, the Rabizi steadily retook their territory. They subsequently resisted the entry of the Federal Regular Army (FRA) of South Arabia into the area in 1964. An FRA military intelligence officer later concluded that, instead of being a puppet of Yemen, Ali Ma’wer “…would probably have been one of the first to engage any Yemeni force coming anywhere near his wadi.” Army officers came to the same conclusion as the RAF a decade earlier: the road through Wadi Hatib was not worth the price.^112 Conclusion Bargains are struck and remoulded through many small gestures, in the case of the Aden Protectorate Levies, over decades. If, as their officers supposed, the bargain depended largely upon leadership, then the multiple personal relationships cultivated within these units can be difficult to discern today. The desertions from the APL and the Government Guards in the months prior to (and in the immediate aftermath of) the Robat ambush in June 1955 stand out clearly from the remaining archival record, much of which is missing. Less dramatic expressions of discontent were also likely to have arisen: orders can be followed sharply or with a moment’s pause, rifles can be aimed a little wide of the mark. European officers often found themselves alone with their indigenous troops. Insensitivity to expressions of “control from within” might be fatal. It was all very well for the Aden government and the senior Protectorate officials to demand the APL fight further into the Wadi Hatib. They did not have to live with the soldiers each day. The Upper Aulaqi case shows that further attention should be paid to the ways in which loyalist security forces might affect policy and violence during decolonisation conflicts. Generally, they are supposed to have accentuated the violence. Of course, in many contexts local collaborators were deliberately deployed precisely to do the dirty work. Though the Aden Protectorate Levies exercised considerable political power in opposing the forward policy being rolled out into the Upper Aulaqi region, they only succeeded because rebel sniper and ambush tactics were so effective, and because the air force simply could not bomb the Rabizi into submission. These factors may have been absent in other conflicts where local security forces objected to the tasks assigned to them, thus rendering attempts to re-negotiate the loyalist bargain null and void. The manner in which officials played clever Whitehall games to permit a second round of colonial expansionism, also warrants broader consideration. How did (^110) Lieutenant Colonel F.M. De Butts, ‘The Aden Protectorate Levies’, British Army Review 12 (1961): 20; Imperial War Museum Sound Archive: Bertram William Sydney Boucher-Myers, catalogue number 10785. (^111) BL: IOR R/20/C/2349: Letter from Senior Assistant Adviser Eastern Area to BAWAP, 3 April 1961. (^112) Edwards, The Gaysh , 129.
