The Return of Ali Salim al-Beidh: The Leader of Yemen’s Southern Secessionist Movement
The Return of Ali Salim al-Beidh: The Leader of Yemen’s Southern Secessionist Movement
In May 2009, Ali Salim al-Beidh officially reentered Yemeni politics with a speech addressed to his former constituents in southern Yemen. In the speech, al-Beidh called on southern Yemenis to continue their struggle against what he calls the military occupation of the south by the northerner-dominated government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Al-Beidh goes on to list and reaffirm the grievances of many south Yemenis who are active in the movement for secession (Gulf News, May 22, 2009). The list includes the violation of the terms of the 1990 unification of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR, a.k.a North Yemen) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY, a.k.a. South Yemen), the illegal seizure of southerners’ lands and businesses, and the forced retirement or firing of soldiers, officers, and bureaucrats in the former PDRY military and civilian administration (al-Ayyam, May 21, 2009). While al-Beidh’s speech, broadcast from Germany, was directed at all south Yemenis, it was particularly directed at the widening Southern Movement.
In 2007, al-Harakat al-Janubiyya (the Southern Movement), was formed by a group of former PDRY military officers who were prominent members of the Association of Retired Southern Military Officers, an organization that seeks redress for the thousands of officers and NCO’s who lost their positions after the 1994 civil war. The Southern Movement quickly became an umbrella organization for a host of groups dedicated to either pressuring the Saleh government into enacting long-promised federalization policies or, as is now most often the case, bringing about the outright secession of the south and the recreation of an independent, sovereign South Yemen. Since its inception, the Southern Movement has had a fluid and decentralized leadership structure. General Naser al-Nuba, one of the founders of the Southern Movement, while still a prominent member, has, to some extent, been sidelined in the organization as the protests and calls for secession have intensified. Al-Nuba advocates non-violent opposition to the Saleh regime. Since 2009, protests and strikes have resulted in frequent and often violent confrontations with Yemeni security services. These security services, in particular the Political Security Bureau (PSB) and elements within the intelligence apparatus of the Republican Guard, have intensified their efforts to control the rebellion by arresting key leaders and organizers within the groups that make up the Southern Movement. As a result of intensified pressure from Sana’a, the leadership of the Southern Movement has begun to tilt in favor of those who call for a more forceful regimen of protests and even armed revolt.
Al-Beidh’s speech to Southern Yemenis signified an escalation of the conflict between southerners and the Saleh-led government. As the last president of an independent south Yemen, al-Beidh remains an important figure there. Currently, his visage is frequently displayed by protesters agitating throughout South Yemen (Yemen Post, November 11). Al-Beidh, born in 1939, was active in the rebellion against the British occupation of the 1960s. After independence in 1967, al-Beidh quickly rose to prominence within the Marxist-dominated National Liberation Front (NLF), one of two groups that had opposed and fought the British. After eliminating its political rivals, the NLF began to carry out a series of internal purges. As the defense minister, al-Beidh was a key figure in the NLF during these firings. Al-Beidh was heavily influenced by Marxist theory and Soviet ideology, and, in the manner of such conspiratorially-centered worldviews, oversaw one of the most wide-ranging purges of the military. During his time as defense minister, al-Beidh was instrumental in moving what became the PDRY closer to the Soviet Union. During his tenure, Soviet advisers, followed by their Cuban counterparts, poured into the country. [1]
The PDRY was never an especially stable country, and even the Soviets and Cubans were horrified at times by the frequent internal purges and assassinations. Al-Beidh survived and eventually rose to the position of general secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party in 1986. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the PDRY lost its primary source of aid and risked collapse. The leadership of both South and North Yemen saw unification as a way to preserve their own power. In 1990, the two Yemens unified, and al-Beidh became vice president of a newly unified Republic of Yemen (ROY). The union was troubled from the outset with a spate of assassinations of prominent leaders and bureaucrats within the southern governorates. After the Yemeni Socialist Party lost seats in the 1993 election, al-Beidh retreated to Aden. Negotiations between al-Beidh and Sana’a broke down and civil war followed in late April 1994. In May, al-Beidh declared the south’s independence and formed the very short-lived and unrecognized Democratic Republic of Yemen (DRY). The DRY’s military was quickly overwhelmed by northern forces and less than two months later al-Beidh was forced to flee to Oman by sea. In the aftermath of the civil war, Aden was looted, the southern military was dismembered, lands were seized, and most of the British-influenced southern governmental institutions (that were historically far more organized and effective than their northern counterparts) were disbanded.
Sana’a promised reforms and greater regional control for the southern governorates in the years after the civil war, but control remains centralized and continues to be dominated by men drawn from northern-based tribes allied with President Saleh’s Sanhaan tribe. As Yemen’s overall economy has deteriorated, the economic conditions in southern Yemen have worsened markedly. Perceived government inaction combined with rising unemployment and poverty rates are part of what is driving southern Yemenis to join the Southern Movement.
Al-Beidh’s May 2009 speech and subsequent speeches and press releases all highlight the level of underdevelopment in the southern governorates, Sana’a’s unwillingness to live up to its promises, and the increasingly heavy-handed tactics used by the security services. Al-Beidh’s speeches and communiqués are widely disseminated online and on cassette tapes across South Yemen. As the last head of state of an independent South Yemen, his views and calls for action carry considerable weight. Al-Beidh is careful to make use of inclusive language that reaches out to all members of the Southern Movement regardless of their political and religious views. However, many south Yemenis have not forgotten his stridently secular and socialist politics. Since unification, large parts of the south have undergone what can be called a “re-Islamization.” The reasons behind this return to religious dogma, often the most radical interpretations of Islam, are complex and beyond the scope of this article.
Tariq al-Fadhli, a former mujahid who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, is a rising figure within the Southern Movement. The “sheikhly” Fadhli family leads the Fadhli tribe and had been allied with the British before independence. After the British formally departed Yemen and the socialists came to power, the Fadhli family lost much of its land and prominent members sought refuge in Saudi Arabia. In the late-1980s Tariq al-Fadhli, like many other returning “Afghan-Arabs,” was employed by the Saleh regime to fight a guerrilla war against the PDRY. [2] Following his split with the Saleh regime in the spring of 2009, al-Fadhli announced that he backed the movement for secession. In recent months, Fadhli has made a number of statements disputing the fact that al-Beidh speaks for the Southern Movement or South Yemenis as a whole. Al-Fadhli has labeled al-Beidh as a member of the ancien regime and publicly debated his relevance and even his sanity (Yemen Post, April 10).
Salim Ali al-Beidh remains in exile in Germany after the Omani government stripped him of his citizenship for becoming active in Yemeni politics, which violated the terms of his residency in Oman where he had lived since fleeing Yemen in 1994 (Gulf News, op, cit.). It is highly unlikely that he will ever be allowed to return to Yemen, so his position as “leader” of the Southern Movement will remain titular at best. However, many in south Yemen, particularly those who long for a return to the secularism and even socialism of the former south Yemen, still hold him in high regard. His speeches and press releases are carefully worded and continue to contribute to the resurgent idea of South Yemen as culturally, politically, and even historically distinct from North Yemen.
Al-Beidh’s position outside Yemen also means that in many ways he is the south’s international spokesman. Well before his public return to political life, al-Beidh carefully cultivated contacts within the influential community of expatriate South Yemenis. Many of the organizations active in South Yemen depend heavily on the financial support of expatriate south Yemenis, so al-Beidh’s position as a kind of intermediary and spokesman for the cause is important. As the conflict intensifies, this position is likely to grow in prominence. Al-Beidh has clearly stated that, while he intends to fight for south Yemenis in order to rectify the mistakes of the past (i.e. unification), he is a member of the older echelon and that the “real fight” must be fought by the younger generation of South Yemenis. It remains unclear as to whom or even what faction will lead the broader rebellion in the south, but given his history as an astute politician and a perennial survivor, Ali Salim al-Beidh must not be unduly discounted.
Notes
1. For brief overviews of the PDRY and its development, see, Robin Leonard Bidwell, The Two Yemens, (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1983), p. 324; Paul Dresch, A History of Modern Yemen, (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2000), pp.120-150.
2. The ‘Afghan-Arabs’ were instrumental in the 1994 civil war and in particular in the recapture of Aden. Al-Beidh and other exiled PDRY government officials also blame the Saleh government’s use of ‘Afghan-Arabs’ for many of the post unification assassinations of southern officials. For a general introduction to the state usage of the Afghan-Arabs, see Robert Dreyfuss’ Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005), pp. 278-279.
