Bombing Yemen As British As Afternoon Tea
U.K. air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen – who have dared to challenge Western support for Israel over Gaza – are taking place exactly 60 years after a brutal British bombing campaign in the country.
The so-called Radfan revolt of early 1964 in modern-day Yemen has long passed out of historical memory.
We should remember it though, as evidence of how British foreign policy is practised in reality – and how we only truly find out about that reality once government files are released decades later.
The Radfan is a mountainous area about 50 miles north of Aden, Yemen’s major southern port. In the early 1960s, it was part of a British colonial creation – the Federation of South Arabia, a grouping of sheikhdoms and sultanates established by London.