There never was a simple answer to this question which, in essence, boiled down to whether Britain's security and military response in the Aden Protectorate had any significant influence on its decision to withdraw from South Arabia. For ultimately, it was the tide of world events and factors outside Britain's control that determined that this would be inevitable, even though security and defence shortcomings may have hastened that process. The South Arabian withdrawal embodied many of the same defects in policy objectives, liaison and intelligence that contributed to the inglorious British military withdrawals from Norway, Dunkirk and Crete in the Second World War, though with the fundamental difference that Britain had occupied Aden for the past 128 years. And whereas Britain's disengagement from twenty-four of its former colonial possessions during the ten years prior to 1967 had generally left behind soundly based administrations, law and order and prosperity, its South Arabia legacy was one of chaos, confusion and bloodletting. As to how Britain's security and military response affected that withdrawal, I offer my own experiences as an administrator and political officer who served in Aden and both its Eastern (EAP) and Western (WAP) Protectorates between 1960 and 1965. References to the ‘Protectorate’ mainly apply to the WAP.

When in 1839, Captain Haines captured the near-derelict fishing village of Aden from the Abdali Sultan of Lahej, he envisaged that its superb natural harbour would provide Britain with a key strategic base and coaling station on the sea route to India. He also believed that Aden's security was best guaranteed by peaceful rapprochement with the tribal rulers of its hinterland, a policy that broadly remained an article of faith for successive British governments until the final phase of Britain's South Arabian involvement. Britain's withdrawal had been forecast well before 1967, for its twin objectives of securing Aden as a permanent military base to protect its commercial and strategic interests yet bring a measure of peaceful development to South Arabia, were proving impossible. Post-war Britain was virtually bankrupt and never had the means to achieve both. However, by 1960 a slew of economic, strategic and prestige factors had persuaded HMG to hang on despite world-wide anti-imperialist sentiment and covert American opposition.