A STRATEGIC HISTORY

For centuries, this critical yet tiny city has sat at a crossroads of world trade, and has suffered under numerous conflicts to the present day

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Aden, on the southeastern coast of today's Yemen, has always been a prisoner of geography. The ancient Greeks labelled it Arabia Emporion (Arabic trade port), and it was well-known from biblical days as commanding the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Later, it was an important British air and naval base between Egypt and India, and crucial for safeguarding access to the Suez Canal and Middle Eastern oil wells. A British colony since 1839, by the 1950s it had replaced Cyprus as the headquarters of UK Middle East Land Forces, and was therefore of great strategic importance.

Aden city used to be the capital of South Yemen until its unity with North Yemen in May 1990. The former capital rings a vast, natural harbour that constitutes the modern port; its principal suburb, Little Aden, was developed as the site of the oil refinery and tanker port, operated by British Petroleum until ownership was transferred to South Yemen in 1978. In 2015 Aden reprised its role of capital when President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi fled to the port, his hometown, after being deposed from Yemen's capital city Sana'a by Houthi rebels.

A proscribed organisation due to their human rights abuses and use of child soldiers, the Houthis are a Shia revivalist political and military organisation whose leadership is drawn from the al-Houthi family. For the last 20 years, they have been indoctrinated, trained and equipped by Iran, and equipped with ballistic missiles by North Korea. Their ships monitor Gulf shipping and relay information to Tehran.

Having close links with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis' fundamentalist beliefs put them against the United States and Israel. In this they are the heirs of the tribespeople that Britain sought to oversee in the post -Second World War period.