ABSTRACT
Egypt suffered a serious setback in the Arab Cold War with the breakup of the UAR. But Syrian secession and failed covert action projects in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon did not diminish Nasser’s appetite for foreign adventures. In fact, the conservative monarchy in Yemen had long been in Nasser’s sights and, nearly a year after the demise of the UAR, a coup by Egyptian-backed Yemeni established the Yemen Arab Republic. Unfortunately for Cairo and its Yemeni allies, the coup did not crush all resistance and, within weeks, an Egyptian army was fighting a bloody counterinsurgency campaign in the mountains of Yemen. Ill-prepared for counterinsurgency on many levels – including intelligence collection and analysis – Yemen proved to be a humbling experience for the Egyptian army. In many respects, Yemen was a continuation of the Anglo-Egyptian regional power struggle that did not end at Suez. Indeed, shortly after Egyptian troops were sent to prop up the Yemen Republic, the mukhabarat began subverting the British presence in neighboring Aden and the South Arabian Federation. While Britain’s withdrawal from Aden in 1967 seemed to signal another Egyptian victory, covert action failed to give Cairo any meaningful leverage over the new government in Aden. Moreover, Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war with Israel meant that it had to negotiate its own military withdrawal from the Yemen Republic to the north. In the end, Yemen proved to be a frustratingly bitter experience for Egypt and another symbol of the country’s inability to exert meaningful influence over the Arab Middle East.
