Mad Mitch's Tribal Law Aden and the End of the Empire

Aden, June 20, 1967: two army Land Rovers burn ferociously in the midday sun. The bodies of nine British soldiers litter the road. Bright flames mixed with thick, black smoke bellows above Crater town, a tough Arab neighborhood built on top of a dormant volcano. Surrounded by high rugged peaks and perched on the south-western edge of the Arabian peninsular, it is home to insurgents, terrorists, and gangsters, who establish "no-go areas" against the British-backed Federation government. Crater had come to symbolize Arab nationalist defiance in the face of the world’s most powerful empire. Hovering 2,000 ft. above the smouldering destruction, a tiny Scout helicopter surveys the scene. Its passenger is the recently arrived commanding officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell. Soon the world’s media would christen him "Mad Mitch" in recognition of his extremely robust and controversial reoccupation of Crater two weeks later. Mad Mitch was truly a man out of his time. Supremely self-confident and debonair, he was an empire builder, not dismantler, and railed against the national malaise he felt had gripped Britain’s political establishment. Drawing on a wide array of never-before-seen archival sources and eyewitness testimonies, Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law tells the remarkable story of inspiring leadership, loyalty, and betrayal in the final days of British Empire. It is, above all, a shocking account of Britain’s forgotten war on terror.

Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defense and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, specializing in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britains Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security.