ANALYSIS: Southern Yemenis look for political payback after battle of Aden 

Demands for autonomy or independence are growing after 12 months of war in which southern fighters played key role in fight against Houthis
Yemeni security forces take security measures after an assassination attempt on Aden security chief Brigadier Shalal Ali Shayea in Aden, Yemen on 18 January 2016.

Saeed Al-Batati-Friday 22 January 2016

AL MUKKALAH, Yemen – The Houthis and their allies have been booted out of southern Yemen, but their withdrawal has only exposed internal fissures over southern demands for autonomy or outright independence, which have grown during almost 12 months of war.

Some southerners now feel betrayed by President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and say they are being sidelined despite paying a heavy toll in the fighting. Others believe they are now in a better position to impose their influence and win concessions from Sanaa. Which way their support falls could well decide Yemen’s future.

The north-south rift goes back decades. The British ruled over the territory that would become South Yemen from the late 1830s until 1967, when the territory secured independence. It would become a communist state two years later.

The north, meanwhile, became a self-governing monarchy after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, although Arab nationalists, inspired by General Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, overthrew the king in the 1960s.

In 1990 the two Yemens unified, but the marriage was not a happy one – the southerners felt that they were given a raw deal after the north implanted its own men in key positions and monopolised wealth that is mostly produced in the south. A civil war ensued in 1994, with the north winning the day.

Hadi is a southerner but has been seen as an empty suit who did nothing to stop his predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, from waging war on the south in the 1990s and then failing to adequately address post-war grievances in the south. Hadi was Saleh’s defence minister in 1994 and then vice president until he took power in the Saudi-led transition following the fall of Saleh in 2012.

However, as the Houthis, a Shia minority from northern Yemen backed by Saleh and his supporters, managed to seize the capital Sanaa and begin marching south last year, Hadi and the southerners united around a common enemy, albeit for different reasons – while Hadi fought for power, the southerners fought to resist another assault from the north.

When the Houthis and their supporters seized parts of the southern capital of Aden in March it was the southern militias who kept up the ground resistance while the Saudi-led coalition pounded the city from above. When the Houthis eventually started to be pushed back last summer, the long-sidelined southerners felt they would be given a bigger stake. 

Since then Hadi has been playing a delicate balancing act trying to keep the southerners on side.

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