YEMEN Press Agency

Since summer of 1994 war…Why has been the people of Yemen south still paying the price?

SANAA, Aug. 16 (YPA) – Since the 1994 summer war, the resulting violations, the dismissal of thousands from their civilian and military jobs, and the confiscation of their rights and property by leaders loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh (Afash), the people of the southern provinces have been continuing to remember and lament their tragedies.

These painful events were still bleed in the memory of the people of Aden and the southern provinces, and constituted a heavy burden on the path of their present and the future of their children; because of the military and security leadership of the “Afash” regime, which had exploited their influence to plunder public and private property and seize vast areas of land and real estate, until those areas had become in the eyes of the corrupt thieves of yesterday as private fiefdoms for those close to the “Afash” tribe, who seized control of the oil and mineral wealth, reaching the point of dividing the sea into sectors among themselves to plunder the fish wealth.

They were able to establish financial empires worth billions of dollars, managed by dozens of their private companies, while the people of those provinces were impoverished and given crumbs, without paying attention to their suffering, which have been continued to this day, and without them learning from the lessons of the past decades.

Takfir and systematic assassinations

The southern provinces and their people have a bloody record full of tragedies and crimes, beginning with their being accused of apostasy and the subsequent systematic policy of assassinations, and not ending with the marginalization of southern cadres and their dismissal from their jobs, as well as other conspiracies that the southerners seem to have forgotten about since the declaration of war on Yemen in March 2015, followed by the UAE’s establishment of the so-called “Southern Transitional Council (STC)” in May 2017. This STC aimed to eliminate southern components and forces, especially the “Southern Movement,” so that it could have a share of the cake of positions and resources with yesterday’s criminals for the so-called “7/7 Gang”, including the General People’s Congress and the Islah Party”, according to the outcomes of the so-called “Riyadh Consultations” in 2022, in which the burdens of those leaders were dropped and they were granted “the honor of the unity of land and people,” for which the free people of the two parts of Yemen had previously struggled until the unity was achieved on May 22, 1990.

Therefore, many southerners have remembered—or tended to forget—the dozens of documented horrific massacres that targeted the south and its people, leaving thousands of victims, both dead and wounded. Even more painful was the displacement of civilian and military personnel, some of whom suffered severe psychological trauma. Among them were pilots and missile technicians who had become sidewalk vendors in Aden city, south of Yemen, Brigadier General Saleh Nasser Al-Nakhabi, was one of the honor guard officers who had participated in raising the Yemeni unity flag on the flagpole of the presidential palace in Tawahi. This was part of a systematic policy of exclusion implemented by leaders close to Saleh. The tragedies were intensified until the announcement of the Southern Movement in 2007, amid local and regional tensions and superficial solutions for those were dismissed from their jobs, without the return of looted properties and lands to their owners.

Among the most notable of these violations and crimes, the tragedies of which the people of the south still recall every year, was the Qatana village massacre, known as the “Al-Majalah massacre”, in the Al-Mahfad district of Abyan province. This massacre was in December 2009 and carried out by American aircraft and with the official approval of Rashad Al-Alimi, who was then serving as Minister of Interior in Sanaa. The massacre left almost 41 dead and wounded, most of them were women and children, under the pretext of the war on terrorism. Then, Al-Alimi went out to exonerate America from the crime, as if it had never happened.

Frequently, many tragedies were happened in various forms, such as at least 70 people were killed, including children, and other dozens were injured in an explosion at an ammunition factory in the Batis area of Jaar district in Abyan in early March 2011, after clashes erupted between armed elements and government-affiliated army forces, according to media and human rights reports. After that a condolence camp at the Sanah School was targeted with tank shells, under the direction of the commander of the 33rd Armored Brigade, in 2013, when the Islah party took over the government in Sanaa.

More than 698,000 violations against citizens and opponents of the corruption of the partners who undermined Yemeni unity were documented by Southern human rights’ reports against the Saleh regime and its allies from the Islah Party, between 1994 and 2014.

These violations included assassinations, exclusion, marginalization, destruction, and looting of property, with wealth being turned into spoils of war, in addition to reviving regional tensions by bringing leaders from Abyan and Shabwa closer to sensitive military and security positions at the expense of the rest of the people of the south, who were subjected to exclusion and marginalization.

Blood-Stained Records.

Those who lead the political, military, and security scene today in Ma’ashiq Palace in Aden, south of Yemen, within the so-called the coalition-formed “Presidential Leadership Council”, still have records stained with the most heinous crimes and inhumane practices, which are documented in southern memory.

They have been managing the security file in Aden and the southern provinces since 2007, headed by Al-Alimi, who was then-Afash Minister of Interior, in addition to the Islah Party agents, specifically the party’s senior military leader, Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar. This may be re-established through the eldest son of former President Saleh, Ahmed Ali, with with Emirati and Saudi support.

These individuals had continued to exchange roles in the security and economic affairs of these regions, while the signs were being continued to increase citizens’ suffering in terms of basic services and the collapsing living conditions. This was amidst the promotion of fragile and temporary economic reforms, the result of direct regional, American, and British interventions, which have turned these regions into warring cantons.

How long?

After three decades of suffering for the Yemeni people, both north and south, the most prominent question resounds from the heights of the Radfan and Shamsan mountains: “How long can the southern people continue to pay the price for the suffering imposed on them by the UAE dirham and the Saudi riyal, through yesterday’s tools whose validity expired on September 21, 2014, and nd whose return has been recycled by newcomers to the southern scene who have become a bridge to connect them to Maashiq under new names, while crises are produced under the cover of so-called legitimacy?”

Finally, if true peace is to begin with justice and recognition of rights, any future solutions must start with an accounting of the past, restoring dignity to the victims, and ensuring that these tragedies are not repeated. Without this, the south would remain stuck in place, carrying its wounds into an unknown future.

AA