The origins of the Southern Yemeni secessionist movement have already been alluded to68: to summarise, it is important to note that the first three years of Yemeni union did not bring much material benefit to the former People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. On the contrary, in the aftermath of their democratisation, Southern communist government structures were slowly dismantled, privatising services and bringing an end to severely subsidised healthcare and education in that half of the country, among other funding cuts. These cuts only reinforced rumours spreading among the local population that Southern resources, and Southern oil and gas, were being siphoned by Sana'a to promote Northern interests. Together with the gradual reduction of the Yemeni Socialist Party's authority and influence across the country, this growing Southern dissatisfaction with the new status quo eventually lead to the 1994 Civil War for separatism, in which Southern forces were quickly overwhelmed by the North, despite military assistance from countries like Saudi Arabia (which saw at the time a unified Yemen on its border to be a potential strategic threat).
The aftermath of that war has not yet been fully analysed, but following the unquestionable victory of the North of Yemen over the South, President Saleh's regime set about a process of purging YSP leaders from key positions in the South and replacing them with Northern officials, in order to ensure that a second war would never occur. Simultaneously, “an estimated 100,000 military and civil employees” were also “forcibly retired” (Human Rights Watch, 2009b, p. 15). While President Saleh succeeded in crushing the ability of the former Southern leadership to mobilise any significant forces against the Sana'a Government by integrating the Southern and Northern armies, he failed to effectively address Southern grievances, leading to prolonged and continuing hostility towards his regime after 1994. In the ten years that followed, Southern Yemenis for the most part found few outlets in mainstream politics for voicing their discontent, pushing them to protest frequently against the Yemeni state. Ever fearful of budding revolutions, the Government of Yemen responded to these protests with brutal reprisals, inadvertently sowing the seeds of what would become a flourishing secessionist movement.
The Southern Yemeni secessionist movement today, sometimes referred to as the Hiraak (or Southern Mobility Movement), is most commonly connected to groups of disaffected military personnel, known as the Society of Retired Military Officers, who put together a large public demonstration campaign in 2007 (Small Arms Survey, 2010, p. 5), decrying their unfair dismissal and poor pension arrangements. Due to the popularity of thematic linkages in their protests to issues of unemployment and extreme poverty, their movement served to radicalise the local population, drawing new participants to public demonstrations from all sectors of Yemeni society, many of them
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from the Yemeni Socialist Party, but some also from other parties, including Islah. By 2009, calls for increased Governmental development of the South had merged with demands for outright separation from the North, and these have only grown in intensity and popularity in recent years. Oxford Analytica explain that “Demonstrations have since taken place in many major cities in the South, including Aden, Zingibar and Mukalla” (2009, p. 5).
Due perhaps to their significant defeat in the 1994 Civil War, representatives of the Southern secessionist movement have at all times maintained a passivist narrative, heralding dialogue and understanding as the keys to achieving their goals. Recently, unfortunately, they have been linked to growing terrorist activity and armed combatant movements, but, as with the Houthis, their ties to terrorist groups are yet to be confirmed69. Oxford Analytica report that clashes between armed combatants and Government forces have thus far occurred in the governorates of Lahej, Dhala and Abyan, with Dhala, they argue, being the point of origin of the 2007 protests (p. 5).
Figure 26 Areas Affected by Secessionist Protests Since 2007
The map above indicates that the secessionist movement has had wide-ranging appeal in the South of the country. Yet while Southern anger at the Sana'a Government is steadily rising, with the slow resolution of their grievances in the aftermath of the Arab Spring gradually turning the population against the new regime as well, it is by no means true that all Southerners favour secessionism as the only viable solution to their problems. Furthermore, the danger that the Hiraak poses to the unified Yemeni state has traditionally been mitigated by the movement's significant internal divisions and lack of organised leadership.
The Human Rights Watch notes that:
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There appear to be many competing bodies and persons portraying themselves as the leadership of the Southern Movement, and it is unlikely that there is a single over- arching leadership body, but rather various locally and regionally organized groups that loosely coordinate their activities, but often act independently of one another (p. 16).
The involvement of multiple parties within the Hiraak has lead to on-going struggles for control over it, while the ideologies and political positions of many of these parties themselves are antithetical to one another. Writing in 2009, Oxford Analytica add that the Hiraak's chances for success have been traditionally limited by the reality that “Many prominent Southerners serve in the Government and have vested interests in the current regime” (p. 6), although temporarily this ceased to be the case after the Arab Spring of 2011, when many abandoned President Saleh in order to voice their outrage at his targeting of civilian protesters with military and police forces.
The Yemeni Government's responses to Southern protests have been immediate and violent. In this sense, President Saleh's regime has viewed the Southern separatist movement, almost from its origins, as a significant threat to Yemen's integrity, though it is not yet clear what President Hadi's position will be on this. Christopher Boucek writes that such fears have been reinforced by the growing popularity of the movement, and he argues that:
The potential scope of the separatist challenge to the Saleh regime was made evident in spring 2009 when an important regime supporter defected to the southern movement. Tariq al-Fadhli, a former mujahid who had fought in Afghanistan, has family roots in the South including claims to hereditary lands. According to some analyses, the withdrawal of al-Fadhli’s support for the government is symptomatic of the southern issue’s propensity to challenge the status quo (2009, p. 16).
Certainly, despite the Yemeni Government's harsh response to Southern protests, or perhaps in answer to it, the secessionist movement has continued to draw in new members, including entire tribes, with varying degrees of influence. A further area of concern is that the secessionist movement is growing increasingly violent, and the Human Rights Watch note that there have been frequent reports of attacks on Northerners in the South, some of them fatal (2009b, p. 23). Meanwhile, continued shelling of the South in the war against Al Qaeda, is contributing to rising hostilities.