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144 16. THE SNAKE WITH A THOUSAND HEADS: THE SOUTHERN CAUSE IN YEMEN SUSANNE DAHLGREN In the summer of 2007, a lively and non-violent movement sprang up in the southern provinces of Yemen to protest the south’s marginalization by the north.The movement was sparked by demonstrations held that spring by forcibly retired members of the army, soon to be accompanied by retired state officials and unemployed youth.The deeper roots of the uprising lay in grievances dating to the 1994 civil war that consolidated the north’s grip over the state and, southerners would say, the resources of the country.1 Southerners soon took to calling their protests al-Harak, a coordinated campaign against a northern “occupation.” The ethos of the national revolutionary movement that began in January 2011 was prefigured by al-Harak: it met brutal violence with peaceful resistance and relied on flexible organisation instead of hierarchies. As Yemenis from across the country came together to demand the end of President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih’s regime, it almost seemed as if the call for reestablishment of the independent southern state would be put on hold.When Salih finally signed the Gulf Cooperation Council plan for political transition in November 2011, there was a brief celebration before protests resumed in “Change Squares”across the country and a “parallel revolution”fought to oust corrupted functionaries in state bureaucracy and the army. In post-Salih Yemen, al-Harak continues to struggle for the rights of southern Yemenis. Al-Harak should be understood as a broad-based popular movement demanding sounder and more just governance.As such,the southern cause commands widespread support (including from some outside the south). The movement encompasses elements that want to secede and, in a country long forecast to become a “failing state,” if not the “next Afghanistan,”these are the actors who are featured in the international media.To the extent that the southern movement was noticed amidst Yemen’s multiple problems prior to the uprising of 2011, it was mostly dismissed as secessionist or, following the preference of the government, cast as a potential ally of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and a threat to Yemeni stability. Indeed, in the midst of the movement to oust Salih in May 2011, jihadist group and al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Shari‘a managed to take over major towns in Abyan province in the south. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the following six months saw more than a dozen US airstrikes in Abyan. Rumors at the time attributed the militants’ success to the withdrawal of army units from the area, allowing around two hundred jihadists to walk in and declare their “Islamic Emirate.” These cities were later recaptured by the government in the spring of 2012. Though the Yemeni Army claimed 145 credit, local people said Ansar al-Shari‘a was driven out by “People’s Committees”made up of local tribes and southern activists. 2 The southern uprising was a completely new type of social movement in this part of the world and, even inside Yemen, many old-guard activists failed, in the beginning, to understand it. In a country where about 60 percent of the population is under twenty-five years of age,the movement reflected the aspirations of youth for opportunity and openness to the outside world. It also advocated peaceful resistance rather than armed struggle. As the protests proliferated in 2007 and after, however, Salih vowed to crush them. His security forces and the army obliged with blockades of entire provinces—such as Radfan, where the 1963 revolution that brought independence for the former South Yemen was launched—use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators,air raids upon entire cities,assassinations, and arbitrary detentions.Still,the southerners persisted in attempts to foster a new political culture in the poorest Arab country. Salih and his regime propagated a narrative whereby the southerners, about one sixth of the Yemeni population, suffered in equal measure with residents of the more populous north. Because of Yemen’s pre-1990 history, however, the southern cause is unique. The southerners yearn for reestablishment of the rule of law they recall from the days before unification with the north.Some hope to remain united with their northern brothers under better rule; others would just as soon split the country once more. Unified and Divided From 1967 to 1990, the southern provinces of Yemen—Aden, Lahij, Abyan, Shabwa, Hadramawt, and Mahra—comprised a self-declared socialist...

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