Sana’a: When revolutions erupted in the two former South and North Yemen states in the early 1960s, Yemenis had a mutual goal; the moment they get rid of the British presence in the south and the Imams in the north, they will come together and form a unified Yemen.
But that goal took them three decades to fulfil. On 22 May, 1990, the former Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the Democratic Republic of Yemen (DRY) merged, giving birth to The Republic of Yemen.
The former president of YAR, Ali Abdullah Saleh was elected as a president of the new state and the former president of DRY, Ali Salim Al Baidh was elected as the second in command.
The two leaders lived in harmony for a couple of years before differences began to surface when dozens of members of the Yemeni Socialist Party, which ruled the former southern state, were assassinated.
In August, 1993 as a sign to the heightening tension, Al Baidh refused to go to Sana’a in protest of the assassinations.
To defuse tensions, Saleh and Al Baidh flew to Jordan on February 1994 to sign a peace agreement. On April 27, Saleh lashed out at the socialists in a public speech.
For the southerners, that speech amounted to a declaration of war on the south. A week after his speech, an all out armed clashes broke out between the forces of the two states. The clashes intensified day by day despite calls for halting fighting by the Arab League and the UN.
On May 21, Al Baidh unilaterally withdrew from the unification agreement and declared independence for the Democratic Republic of Yemen. Saleh rejected the secession and mobilised his forces, which soon achieved gains on the ground.
On July, 7, Saleh’s forces backed by some defected southerners and Islamists entered Aden, putting an end to the civil war. Southerners say that the victors began looting their lands and dismissed them from their jobs.
Saleh ordered thousands of defeated military personnel from the south and public servants to stay at home.
The resentment in the south against the new stats qou remained considerably subdued until July 2007, when hundreds of military pensioners organised a protest in Aden demanding equal pensions as their counterparts in the north.
Saleh accused the protesters of trying to revive secession and announced an injection of YR50b (AED854 million) to address pensiondisparity. But this move did not appease the protesters and more rallies were organised to demand South Yemen independence.
Saleh’s forces tried to nip the protest in the bud by using lethal force which claimed the lives of hundreds of pro-secession southerners.
In May, 2009, Saleh’s government closed Al Ayyam daily, a popular newspaper in the south, accusing it fuelling secession sentiment.
Inspired by successful anti-regime rallies in Egypt and Tunisia, protests in Yemen forced Saleh to leave office in November, 2011.
Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, was elected a new president in March 2012, to be the first president from the restive south. Hadi’s election did not calm down pro-secession calls.
Addressing the southern issue, Hadi launched a package of decisions which included issuing an apology for the civil war, reinstating the pensioners and forming a committee to look into the confiscated lands.
These policies have not pleased the separatists so far, and they have vowed more protests in the south until their demands are met.
They also accused Hadi and his government of trying to thwart their plan of reviving South Yemen state by dividing the south into two regions.