‘Fair Play’ or Poisoned Chalice : The Last Years of Britain's Presence and Policy in Southern Arabia

The region of South Arabia (including the vast region of Hadhramaut) has been a part of the Yemen since 1990 due to a shot-gun marriage of an arrangement following the perestroika, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of its protecting presence. Since then it has been in a regular state of ever-increasing political turmoil and instability. This is due to the United Nations' failure to implement its Resolutions concerning the region's political future prior to British withdrawal in 1967, with Southern Arabia's strategic location at the doorstep of the world's major oil resources and its constant insecurity adding fuel to fire, the latest case being the current crisis and the launch of Operation Decisive Storm in 2015. This study may be deemed authoritarian for the period it covers from many aspects due to the pen from which its authorship flows and the high and sensitive position held by its wielder at the time of the events it covers. It should certainly prove a revealing and illuminating eye-opener about the recent political history of a region that continues to suffer from grave paucity of material for the purpose of scholarship, and about which, regardless of its past greatness and current significance and strategic importance to the world at large, so little is known.