As the title indicates, this is a guest post by Nedhal Moqbel
The South and the Northern Government: A Persistently Troubled Dialogue
By Nedhal Moqbel
A recent episode of “Agenda Maftouha” (Open Agenda) program, broadcast by BBC Arabic TV, discussed Yemen’s security situation. Among the program’s guests were the Southern activist Saleh Al-Jabwani and Colonel Abdullah Al-Hadri who represented President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s opposition. Mr. Al-Hadri dilated on Saleh’s crimes against protesters in Sanaa and Taiz squares and the destruction he left behind. However, Mr. Al-Hadri obviously got nervous and impatient when the issue of Southern secession was raised. As he responded to Mr. Al-Jabwani’s comments, Colonel Al-Hadri used an emotional speech and a sharp tone, contending that the current situation is the cause of the entire “Yemeni nation.”
“Our cause is one . . . why do you want to divide us amidst this continuous uprising?” added Mr. Al-Hadri. Wait a minute! Wasn’t it a “one Yemeni nation” when Southerners began their own uprising after 1994, demanding their right to a merely dignified life? Wasn’t it a “one Yemeni nation” when you and your boss (Saleh) brutally persecuted them? Weren’t those protesters your fellow citizens and, therefore, part of this “Yemeni nation”? Moreover, Mr. Al-Hadri stated that General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar was an honest military man who refused to stand by a dictator, and so did Colonel Al-Hadri and many others in the military. He said, “Yes, we used to be Saleh’s partners before. But when he stained his hands with blood and began to distort the country and foster Al-Qaeda, we decided to stay away and choose the homeland and the nation.” How devious! How provocative!
In a sympathetic tone, Mr. Al-Hadri spoke of Saleh’s crimes during the recent protests in North Yemen, stressing that this bloodshed was the reason he (Al-Hadri) and others like General Al-Ahmar seceded from Saleh. As if Saleh’s hands were clean until before these protests! What about the blood he has shed in the South since 1994? What about the thousands of Southerners whom he and his allies killed and wounded in that short-term civil war with military tanks and rockets? What about many extra thousands of Southerners whom they have killed, detained, tortured, and wounded since the outset of the Southern Peaceful Hirak? Why did Mr. Al-Hadri and his fellow military men not distance themselves from Saleh while he was shedding those bloods in the South? Why did they continue to support him, to represent his iron fist over the South? Why did they turn against Saleh only when his victims were Northern citizens?
Of course, my intention is not to attack anyone. I simply reject the twisted language Mr. Al-Hadri used to obscure the Southern cause. He went on, using the same emotional appeal: “It’s shameful to talk about South and North now . . . our cause now is that of a homeland and a nation.” Well! What is really shameful is that Colonel Al-Hadri does not consider the Southern issue itself a cause of an entire homeland whose lands and natural resources and jobs have been robbed, an entire people that used to exist independently but now is under a real occupation. What is really shameful is that Mr. Al-Hadri’s words echoed Saleh’s attitudes toward the South even though the former was presented in the program as an anti-Saleh figure. The same old regime being reproduced! No wonder that most of the oppositional figures affiliated with the “new” government participated in various ways in the 1994 war against the South. No wonder that they still unjustly and irrationally compare the Southern cause (a cause of a homeland) with the Huthi issue (a cause of a sectarian group).
Northern military figures like Colonel Al-Hadri know well the many injustices from which Southerners have suffered too long. Therefore, it is unacceptable that he accuse them of having “ruptured the country.” The country has been torn apart since the 1994 civil war. I wonder if Mr. Al-Hadri still remembers when his citizens in the North celebrated their “victory’ over the South on 7/7/1994; the Sanaa official TV then displayed Northern women uttering trilling cries of joy and Northern men chanting on streets, “Allah Akbar! Long live our leader Ali Abdullah Saleh!” On the other side of the country, Southerners were collecting the dead bodies of their loved ones in order to bury them. This black day, with all the sad memories it carries to Southerners, was made an official holiday and a national day to celebrate annually. Technically, unification ended in 1994 and was replaced by an occupation of the South and a robbery of its natural resource revenues, history, culture, and dignity. Who, then, tore up the previously unified Yemen?
The General People’s Congress and the Joint Meeting Parties are two faces of the same coin. The talk about having given Saleh immunity from prosecution is only half the truth. This “new” government has, in fact, given immunity to itself, too, since the majority of its officials were yesterday’s strong allies of Saleh’s. What we see now in the Sanaa government is the same old regime, and what we hear is the same old language, especially when it comes to the Southern problem. This government’s officials may undergo internal conflicts, but the Southern issue is always the thing that eventually brings them together due to their shared fear of losing the South with all its many treasures. Until Southerners achieve their goal of liberation, we will continue to hear the same rhetoric from Northern officials (and from Northern ordinary citizens) who often argue fearfully and impatiently, “there’s only one Yemen . . . unity is a red line . . . we’re ready to die for it . . . we’ll protect it with our own blood . . . unity or death.”
Comment by Jane: It is true that the atrocities toward the southern protesters (2007-2010) provoked little if any outrage in other parts of Yemen. During the Saada War, civil groups aligned themselves with the concept of civilian immunity without taking a stand on either side of conflict itself. Conversely during the southern protests, the arrests, torture and cold blooded killings elicited little sympathy. Beyond the absence of media attention, some in Sanaa expressed the opinion that southern protesters deserved it. In 2007/8, Southerners were really expecting that their counterparts in the north would join their uprising against the regime.
The lack of domestic solidarity against the state’s systematic attacks on unarmed southern protesters that in part caused the shift in demands from equal civil rights to independence. Remarkably, some of the current revolutionaries (who are seeking to overthrow the regime) deny that southerners have the right to seek independence although both movements deny the legitimacy of the state. From the outset of the current revolution, few efforts were made to reach out to the southern secessionists. And many southerners viewed the year long protests in Sanaa and other parts of the country in a disconnected way, not wholly unsympathetic, but as if the bloody events were occurring in another county. As I’ve said before, many view the unity government as an re-branding of northern power. some also view all northerners as privileged and part of the oppressive structure, when in fact disenfranchised northerners are very poverty stricken and thoroughly without basic services.
In terms of raw numbers, Saleh’s trail of blood, more southern protesters were killed than “northern” protester fatalities over the last year of the rev, and it occurred week after week in an atmosphere of domestic and international silence.
