By: Abdul Salam Qaed

The Yemeni Islah Party has been giving the southern issue special attention, which was embodied in its General Conferences and in its media discourse, starting with being the first Yemeni political current that called for overcoming the effects of the 1994 summer war and paying attention to development in the Southern Governorates a few weeks after the war ended in its First General Conference (First Session) held in September 1994 and ending with its vision to resolve the southern issue that was discussed in the National Dialogue Conference, a vision that was inclusive. And the Islah Party has provided accurate solutions to the southern issue, based on its national responsibility as a political current that exists throughout the Yemeni geography.

The Islah Party’s vision of the content of the southern issue that was presented to the National Dialogue Conference provided an accurate and deep diagnosis of that issue, a diagnosis based on the facts on the ground and its political and historical backgrounds. It removed many features of ambiguity and exposed the falsity of the parties that took the southern issue as a rich substance for trading and falsifying facts, leading to political intrigues and the exploitation of the suffering of those affected in order to achieve private gains.

- Content of the Southern Issue:

In its vision of the content of the southern issue that was presented to the National Dialogue Conference, the Yemeni Islah Party believes that the decline in the role of the state, since the establishment of unity, in providing public services and its withdrawal from its duties towards citizens in the south, contrary to what they were accustomed to and were familiar with, especially during the period of socialist rule, of the presence in the intensive state in their lives represented in imposing its prestige, extending its influence, applying its laws and providing its services. The state in the south was the main sponsor for creating job opportunities through the public sector, and it was responsible for providing people’s basic needs and setting their prices in a manner commensurate with their income, which negatively affected the overall life of the citizens in the south, and compounded the disastrous effects of the policy pursued by the authority since the post-war period.

It stressed that "the former regime's view of the military victory on July 7, 1994, as a final achievement for the completion or end of history, and it was full of illusions. It thought that by getting rid of the partner of the state of unity, the Yemeni Socialist Party, it no longer needed to create any kind of partnership in decision-making with the people of the south, and that since then it is not obligated to any partnership with any party, whether southern or northern. It considered that the exclusion of the unity partner from power was only the first step on the path to getting rid of the rest of the active political forces in the Yemeni arena. Therefore, it tended to narrow the area of the political opposition, blocking any horizon for peaceful democratic change through free and fair elections and the consolidation of an authoritarian, repressive regional and family authority, even if it wears the fake democratic dress and talk a lot about freedom, democracy and human rights.”

The Islah Party's vision of the content of the southern issue showed that "the Southern Governorates were the great arena for this destructive policy and its major victim, without any decreasing of the effects of that policy, which extended horizontally to all regions of Yemen and vertically to all economic, social, political and cultural fields and sectors."

And the vision of the Islah Party confirmed that “talking about the content of the southern issue as a national, political and just human rights issue should lead us to recognize that the beginning of some of the manifestations of suffering and problems that are at the core of the content of the southern issue back to the period of the independence's state in the south and its aftermath, which was characterized by its comprehensive performance and exclusion, like its northern counterpart, and the lack of recognition of the other and his right to disagree, and the resulting cycles of violence and repression of opponents, in addition to its adoption of policies and decisions that undermined the rights and property of citizens, such as the nationalization of housing, companies, factories and production facilities. It also excluded thousands of civilians and military from the south from employment, and many of them fled abroad, leaving everything behind. It is important to emphasize this in our discussion of the content, as this will have an impact in putting treatments and solutions.”

Regarding the political dimension of the content of the southern issue, the Islah Party’s vision indicated that this is represented in “undermining the national partnership, consolidating the monopoly of power and wealth, removing the southern partner from the actual partnership in governance and decision-making at the political level, and excluding southern cadres from leading positions in the field of public finance and the collection of resources such as customs, taxes, and banks, and from the security and military command positions and commands of special units, and contentment with placing southern symbols in the forefront to beautify the system, where everyone - northerners or southerners - are just employees and all partners in political life are nothing but cards that are used and then thrown and disposed of as harmful waste.

The vision pointed to "the authority's insistence on refusing to treat the effects and wounds of the 1994 war and to present a national political project that takes into account liquidating the effects of the war, treating its wounds, and moving the country forward towards implementing the contents of unitary agreements, especially those related to trends related to building a state of law, based on strong national institutions, taking care of equal rights of citizenship, transforming the democratic unionist project into a source for the production of new interests for citizens of all categories and segments, as well as adopting effective policies to strengthen the bonds of the national fraternity and conducting a broad rehabilitation process for a united and large Yemen that helps it achieve objective national and social integration.

The Islah Party’s vision also touched on the content of the southern issue, the practice of backward centralization, the detraction of the features that embody the partnership of southerners in the unity state, the emergence of the phenomenon of financial and administrative corruption that the southerners had never known, robbery of oil wealth in the south, failure to address issues of land, real estate and the seizure of gardens, parks and tourist resorts and distribute them to influential officials.

In addition to this, the liquidation of the public sector in the south, the exclusion of military and civilian personnel, businessmen from public office, the dismissal of tens of thousands of military personnel working in the armed forces, public security and political security, some of whom were highly specialized (pilots, engineers... etc.), the demobilization of thousands of qualified southern cadres in the civil and diplomatic corps, the confiscation of rights and freedoms and other details of grievances in the south contained in the vision of the Islah Party for the content of the southern issue that was presented to the National Dialogue Conference, in the light of which the Islah Prty presented its vision to solve this issue.

The Islah Party’s vision to solve the southern issue:

The Yemeni Islah Party presented its vision for solving the southern issue in the document it submitted to the National Dialogue Conference (March 2013 - January 2014), as did all the political forces and currents participating in the conference. The vision of the Islah Party was characterized by depth, comprehensiveness and accurate treatments of this issue, and it stipulated that "the southern issue is at the forefront of the national issues on the agenda of the National Dialogue Conference, and that its solution will constitute the correct entrance to comprehensive national reform and the solid foundation upon which the foundations of the modern civil state will be built."

And the vision of the Islah Party stressed that “the first step begins with confidence-building measures and creating the appropriate atmosphere and climate in preparation for a just and comprehensive solution to the southern issue that preserves the entity of the state, restores the peaceful contents of the unity of May 1990, restores consideration for the goals of the Yemeni revolution and places the south in its natural national place as a party in the national equation and as a true partner in power and wealth.

And the vision of the Islah Party stressed the need to end the security imbalances in some Governorates of the south and quickly address the absence and lack of public services in the Southern Governorates. And it called for “providing all the necessary capabilities for the judicial committee formed by the presidency in a manner that ensures the speedy completion of the task entrusted to it in dealing with issues of deportees, land obliging the government to implement its decisions and return the seized property, whether it belongs to individuals, parties, unions or the state, with fair compensation for the past period.

In its vision, the Islah Party demanded addressing the conditions of civil, military, displaced, arrested, forcibly retired, displaced abroad, returning them to their jobs and paying their legal dues, and addressing and settling the conditions of the deported and missing civilians as a result of the various political conflicts in the southern arena and the settlement of their pensions, in addition to those who were not included in the list of the deported committee.

It also called for the consolidation of the principles of the state of right, law and equal citizenship, and the consolidation of the concept of the federal unity's state, its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

And the Islah Party has recognized that it is the right of any human population, whether in southern Yemen, in the north, in the east or in the west, and under the federal state and after peace and stability prevail throughout the country, and through democratic means of self-determination, whether through a referendum or through the legitimate representatives of any human population and the democratically elected, and through free and fair elections within the democratically elected Parliament, can decide the fate of their human mass, whether to remain within the federal union or to withdraw from it.

On November 29, 2014, the head of the branch of the Islah Party in Aden and a member of the Yemeni parliament, Insaf Mayo, in a statement he made to Anadolu Agency, said that the Islah Party would stand with “ the will of the people in the south,” declaring their absolute support for the southern cause and respect for the popular will.

Mayo added: "We salute the struggles of our Yemeni people in all arenas of the revolution and struggle, and in particular our brothers and sons who are sitting in Freedom Square in Aden," where supporters of the peaceful Southern Movement were sat in that time.

Welcoming the Riyadh Agreement:

The Islah Party has remained interactive with everything related to the southern issue, placing keenness on solving this issue a fair solution as the main criterion for determining its welcoming or rejecting positions, including its support for the Riyadh Agreement signed between the legitimate government and the Transitional Council on November 5, 2019, considering that the Agreement strengthens the unity of the national ranks against the Houthi coup and Iranian interference, which threatens everyone. The Agreement also preserves the unity of the southern ranks and preserves the justice of the southern cause from being lost in the midst of chaos and absurd conflicts with regional backgrounds and invoking historical revolts and grudges, in which everyone will be suffocated by its fire.

After signing the Riyadh Agreement, the head of the Information and Culture Department of the Yemeni Islah Party in the interim capital of Aden, Khaled Haydan, welcomed the signing of the agreement, considering it a "step towards strengthening stability and excluding options of violence."

And Haydan said: "Away from the language of profit and loss, the signing of the Agreement is a step forward to enhance stability and exclude options of violence, it is better for us to agree and negotiate with each other for a year than to fight for one day in which we lose and destroy our lives."

He added: "We are optimistic about the Agreement's success, and we appreciate the efforts of the brothers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to support the legitimacy under the leadership of the President of the Republic, which reached the Riyadh Agreement to rearrange the situation in the capital and others, and addressing the causes of the war that Aden witnessed repeatedly."

Haydan indicated that Aden has endured a lot of trouble and images of turmoil and chaos, and it has to feel stability and regain hope for a better reality as the country's interim capital and a springboard for the liberation of all of Yemen.

He expressed his hope that "the Riyadh Agreement will end the anxiety over the recurrence of cycles of violence and fighting, restore to Aden its consideration, and enable it and its children to live in dignity and peace, and that this Agreement will be a step in the way to restor the country."

He stressed that this requires everyone to cooperate in order to achieve it in terms of giving priority to the public interest, the belief that there is no way to stability only through the rehabilitation of the state institutions and enable them to perform their function and activate the civilized political action tools and community partnership with its multiple vocabularies at the expense of chaos factors and tools production cycles of violence and conflict.

Thus, it is clear from the above that the Islah Party was the first Yemeni political current to demand overcoming the effects of the summer of 1994 war and calls for giving the Southern Governorates special attention in terms of development and reconstruction of what was destroyed by the war. The southern issue remained present in the Party's General Conferences and was at the fore in its media and political discourse. And its vision of the content of the southern issue and its solution presented to the National Dialogue Conference was characterized by depth, comprehensiveness and just solutions under the banner of unity, away from outbidding and political exploitation of that issue or its trading by coup groups and militias on the political scene in Yemen. It welcomed the Riyadh Agreement as it contributes to the unity of the national ranks and preserves the justice of the southern cause and preserves it from being drawn into absurd conflicts whose effects will be reflected on everyone.