South Yemen, are they trying to copy Somaliland?

[MoonLight1]

South Yemenis rally for self-rule

 

 

Witnesses said more than 10,000 demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans [AFP]

 

Thousands of people have rallied on the streets of southern Yemen to demand the restoration of the region's independence.

 

Tuesday's protests coincide with the visit of Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, who met Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president, in the capital Sanaa.

 

Moussa was to discuss the conflict in the far north of the country, where rebels from the Shia Zaidi sect have been leading an uprising for the past five years with fighting intensifying in recent weeks.

 

After the talks, Moussa, the head of the 22-nation bloc, said that the Arab League "confirms its support to Yemen's unity and stability".

 

"The president has expressed openness in engaging in dialogue with the different political sides inside Yemen and abroad, no matter what the differences are, and he expressed his readiness to hold talks with them.

 

"The unity of Yemen does not concern only Yemenis but all Arabs, and what's important is a dialogue among everyone for the unity and the stability of Yemen," he added.

 

Yemen divisions

 

Witnesses said more than 10,000 demonstrators marched in the city of Dhaleh while thousands more turned out in various centres in Lahej and Abyan provinces.

 

Protesters brandished the flag of the former independent state and chanted anti-government slogans demanding the separation of the south of Yemen from the north and urging Arab League support for a renewed breakaway.

 

Abdullah al-Faqih, a professor of political science at Sanaa University, told Al Jazeera: "The southerners were turned into second class citizens; they were marginalised politically, socially and economically.

 

"If the regime doesn't react decisively and in a timely manner, we will have secession as a real cause, because if you kill people, forget about unity," he said.

 

Yemen is the Middle East's poorest country and southerners complain they have fared even worse than their fellow countrymen since unification with the north in 1990.

 

The conflict between the Houthi fighters and government forces first broke out in 2004, but last month the fighting intensified as the group pushed to topple the government.

 

 

 

Source: Al Jazeera English

[MoonLight1]

the new world order says if two cuntries marry together on voluntery bases,e.g (South&North Somalia, South&North Yemen) then the only way they can seperate and get recognition is to devorce while mutually aggreed e.g (Ethiopia & Eretria, Check & Slovakia, Montinegro & Serbia), unless there are special cases such as East Timor, and Kosovo. These South Yemen guys are just dividing their people and leading them to a Cul-De-Sac.They shoul've learned from Somaliland, not copy it.

[NGONGE]

^^ The South has been trying to breakaway since 1994, saaxib. It's never in the news but such demos have been taking place ever since then.

 

President Saleh refers to them as (and these are his exact words) 'the offspring of Somalis and Indians, not real Yemenis'.

 

They in turn refer to anyone from the North as Daxaabsha and make all sorts of jokes about the backwardness of people from the North.

[MoonLight1]

And the only country which recognised them in 1994 was Somaliand, I remember those days when the media used to joke about this recognition saying it was a recognition from the unrecognised, that was a very big mistake from Egal (allah yarxam), Yemen never trusted S'land again.

[NGONGE]

^^ I think it will be a different thing now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Liqaye]

It seems really odd how the Salah government seems to be getting it from all sides nowadays?

Houthis in the north, separatists in the south and Khat for them all.

 

In many ways a civil war in yemen if not quickly put out by neighboring countries such as Saudia and Oman, would make the Somali imbroglio seem positively a picnic.

 

It is unbelievable the depth of hatred sections of Yemenis have for the government.

 

Somalis and Indians huh, no wonder southern Yemenis have the prettier women

[NASSIR]

Originally posted by MoonLight1:

[QB the new world order says if two cuntries marry together on voluntery bases,e.g (South&North Somalia, South&North Yemen) then the only way they can seperate and get recognition is to devorce while mutually aggreed e.g (Ethiopia & Eretria, Check & Slovakia, Montinegro & Serbia), unless there are special cases such as East Timor, and Kosovo. These South Yemen guys are just dividing their people and leading them to a Cul-De-Sac.They shoul've learned from Somaliland, not copy it. [/QB]

Mr. Moonlight, Eritrea was an autonomous state that was federated with Ethiopia. The case of Eritrea, Kosovo and East Timor has, therefore, no similar bearing on the forever union of the two regions of Somalia. I'll be cautious not to draw any comparision from these countries with Somalia. I know you are a unionist as every Somali should be.

 

"Evaluating further on whether “Somaliland” had possessed the attributes of statehood based on the history of the legal merger of the two regions of Somalia, let us revisit the Covenant on the Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), and the UN General Assembly Resolution 1514(XV) of 1960, the latter was implemented through the Charter-based mechanism. Looking from dispassionate analytical framework, when both British and Italian Somaliland were granted independence and merged thereafter, one would come to know whether the break-away entity of Northwestern Somalia ever transpired into a state of its own.

Under article 1 of the CCPR, the subjection of peoples to alien rule and exploitation violates the UN charter, so it can be said immediate steps were taken, in non-self-governing territories (Colonies), to transfer all powers once and for all.

 

Article 6 of Resolution 1514(XV) also proclaims that, after the transfer of all powers in non-self-governing territories to the people concerned, disruption of the political and territorial integrity of a country formed subsequently is incompatible with the charter. As it is evident from the widespread protest demonstrated by our leaders in 1959, the Legislative Council in Hargeisa appointed a commission to represent their voted resolution passed on April 6, 1960 by the elected members of the Protectorate on their political desire and heartfelt aspiration for an independence and immediate union with Somalia(3). Britain was quick to acquiesce to such popular demands though it regretted the short interval of timing under which the responsibility of the protectorate were to be transferred to Somalia. Another important document states that widespread political protests arising from the secret liquidation of the Hawd Reserve to Imperial Ethiopia forced Britain to “accept the eventual unification of British Somaliland with Italian Somaliland,” (4).  

 

Whereas the newly formed state of Kosovo possessed the attributes of autonomy under federal Yugoslavia, Somaliland had possessed no such attributes of autonomous status. Kosovo had its own separate assembly, police, and bank until 1990 when Serbian rule was imposed on them that repressed the ethnic Albanians who are ethnically distinct from the Serbs. The existence of historical rivalry and animosity between the two also dates back to the Ottoman period. For instance, Muslim Albanians were in a better position than the Serbs. A further root cause of their conflict was when Albanians allied with Germany and Italy during WWII in their quest for pledged “Greater Albania” during which Muslim atrocities against the ethnic Serbs occurred." By Mohamed Elmi

[Jacaylbaro]

The Somaliland's recognition to Southern Yemen is still in place ..... we should support them get what they want. We share the sea.

[Liqaye]

^^^

LOL

 

Indeed you share the sea.

[Liqaye]

The Well Runs Dry

Christopher Boucek, Gregory Johnsen

 

Yemen is invariably referred to as the "land of faith and wisdom" in jihadi journals and videos, echoing a famous saying of the prophet Mohammed. But what was true 1,400 years ago rings more than a little hollow today. Few in the West have much faith in the continued stability of the Yemeni state or see wisdom in investing in an opaque economy plagued by rampant and systematic corruption. These concerns, combined with the rapid depletion of Yemen's water table and its oil reserves, are causing the state's already limited power to recede further back into major urban areas.

 

Meanwhile, the rural and tribal areas of the country, many of which have long been beyond the full reach of the government, are gaining increasing autonomy -- opening up space for al Qaeda to regroup and use the country's undergoverned regions as a staging area for attacks throughout the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. It's not hard to imagine Yemen ultimately looking a lot more like chaotic Somalia, its neighbor across the Gulf of Aden.

 

The security situation in Yemen is steadily worsening. In February 2006, 23 al Qaeda prisoners tunneled out of a political security prison and into a neighboring mosque, where they walked out the front door to freedom. Among the escapees was Nasir al-Wahayshi, a former secretary to Osama bin Laden who fought in the battle at Tora Bora before escaping to Iran, where he was eventually arrested and extradited to Yemen.

 

At the time of the prison break, al Qaeda's Yemen branch had been largely eliminated. But the past three years of violence have underscored the dangers of lapsed vigilance, illustrating what can happen when highly experienced and motivated fighters return to the battlefield. This is surely a concern for U.S. officials as they debate what to do with the 99 Yemenis being held at Guantánamo Bay. Although some appear to be innocent, separating them from the guilty has proven to be an overwhelming task for U.S. investigators.

 

Wahayshi, along with fellow escapee Qasim al-Raymi, have spent the years since their escape rebuilding and restructuring an al Qaeda network in Yemen that is designed to survive the loss of key commanders. Once a durable infrastructure was established, their ambitions grew and they looked to expand and upgrade their local al Qaeda chapter into a regional franchise. This took place in mid-January, when the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda combined forces under Wahayshi's command. But as dangerous as al Qaeda is, in the Yemeni government's calculations it does not represent an existential threat to the survival of the regime in the same way as the religious revolt in the north and talk of secession in the south do.

 

The northern revolt began in June 2004, when the Yemeni government overreached and tried to arrest a former member of parliament, following years of confrontations and government support for transplanted Wahhabi extremists against a local community of Shiites known as Zaydis. The fighting has been centered in the mountainous northern governorate of Sadah, and the Zaydis' Shiite identity has led to claims that Iran is meddling on Saudi Arabia's southern border, drawing the attention of Saudi and U.S. security officials. But despite Yemeni allegations to that effect, no firm evidence has come out. The war is on hold, following a secret deal between the president and the rebel leader, which is likely to last only until parliamentary elections are held later this year.

 

Nationwide elections were originally scheduled for April, but threats of a boycott and backroom negotiations could postpone them six months. Further complicating matters are muttered threats of secession and popular protests organized by some in the Yemeni Socialist Party. Despite the party's relatively weak power base, the government takes these threats seriously. It recently put 160 Islamist militants in the southern governorate of Abyan on its payroll, which many southerners see as a replay of the early 1990s, when scores of socialist leaders were assassinated in the buildup to the 1994 civil war.

 

As if these political and security problems were not enough, Yemen's chronic economic, demographic, natural resource, and human development challenges are only growing worse with each passing year. Most critically, the state's oil reserves are almost tapped out. Yemen is a very modest oil producer, yet it generates approximately 80 percent of its income from oil exports. As of 2003, the country was exporting more than 450,000 barrels per day, but Minister of Oil Amir Salem al-Aidroos warns that exports had fallen to roughly 280,000 barrels per day by January 2009. Barring any major discoveries (and none are expected), Yemen will likely run out of exportable oil within the next decade.

 

This is not merely an economic issue. The Yemeni government relies on the hard currency generated by oil exports to fund the state and lubricate the extensive patronage systems that tie the country together. For the past several years, record global crude prices had masked the reality of Yemen's declining export capacity, allowing the government to ignore the impending reckoning. The country now exports fewer barrels of oil per day and earns significantly less income per barrel -- almost $100 less than it did only six months ago. The resulting nose dive in government revenues has forced several budget revisions and led the Ministry of Finance to order budget cuts of 50 percent throughout the entire bureaucracy, further underscoring how serious the government is taking threats of southern secession. The economic crisis will likely hit Yemen hardest at just about the time that President Ali Abdullah Saleh will be forced to step down as the unified country's first and only president -- leaving a power vacuum in his wake.

 

Yemen has done little planning for a post-petroleum economy, and most analysts doubt state expectations that natural gas will be able to fill the void left by oil. In a best-case scenario, if natural gas exports come online in significant quantities, there will still be a lag between the end of oil and the rise of gas. It is not at all clear how the country will deal with this inevitable gap.

 

Of even greater concern, perhaps, is the fact that the country is rapidly running out of water. Groundwater used for agriculture and basic human needs is being consumed faster than it can be replaced, resulting in dramatically falling water tables -- up to several meters per year in some places. Sanaa might very well become the first capital in the world to run out of water. Natural aquifers are being depleted at astounding rates due to a lack of any serious legal oversight, reckless irrigation techniques, and unregulated private exploitation.

 

India, with more than 50 times the population, has fewer than one eighth as many private water-drilling rigs. Nearly all Yemen's arable land is devoted to cultivating khat, a seminarcotic plant whose leaves are habitually chewed by most male Yemenis. The more water khat is given, the more it thrives, leading many farmers to irrigate with little thought to the consequences. Given the costs and terrain involved, desalination is not feasible. In the absence of significant measures to reduce urban population growth and eliminate the hidden subsidies that encourage unlimited private exploitation of the country's water, Yemen's future looks extremely bleak.

 

Exacerbating all these trends are the country's demographics. Yemen has one of the highest population growth rates in the world, at just under 3.5 percent. The current population is expected to double to more than 40 million within two decades. The delivery of basic government services is hampered by the fact that the population is spread throughout 135,000 villages, with many located in isolated areas. Education and healthcare services are limited for most, as is reliable electricity and other services. Most Yemenis outside major urban areas receive little from the central government, and as a result the regime's authority and presence in the governorates is largely absent.

 

Yemen has long had a reputation among outside observers of stumbling from one crisis to the next without ever completely collapsing, but much of what appeared to be blind luck was calculated governance fueled by petrodollars. When the well runs dry, that luck may run out as well.

 

Gregory D. Johnsen is a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern studies at Princeton University.