Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council, headed by Aidarus al-Zubaydi, is the strongest political entity in southern Yemen. While the Southern Transitional Council claims to be the rightful representative of southern Yemeni peoples today, the symbols it embraces harken back to the Cold War-era People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and can antagonize both those in Yemen and those externally whose support southerners need to secure their sovereignty.
The Southern Transitional Council formed in 2017, from amongst the southern forces that liberated Aden from the Houthis almost two years previously. The Southern Transitional Council then adopted the old People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen flag, not only as a symbol of the state lost, but also as a symbol of defiance and resistance. The return of the old, pre-unity flag might be a potent symbol for southerners long suppressed by the late Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime (r. 1978-2012), but it was also polarizing, reviving wounds and tensions within Yemen and among its neighbors, like Oman.
On the Arabian Peninsula, memory can be both ancient and recent.
All political movements are built on a brand. Memory and symbols aim to create a constituency and capture existing groups seeking centralized leadership. On the Arabian Peninsula, memory can be both ancient and recent. By adopting the old South Yemeni flag, the Southern Transitional Council sought to capitalize on the momentum garnered by the post-2007 Hirak resistance, the protests coinciding with the Arab Spring in 2011, and the southern victory over Houthis in July 2015. The Southern Transitional Council became the latest manifestation of a resistance to unity dating, at a minimum, to the short 1994 civil war, if not before. Until the 2017 establishment of the Southern Transitional Council, the generation that rose against Yemen’s 1990 unity, composed of former members of the Yemeni Socialist Party, former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen bureaucrats, and former military officers, sought to regain their state lost upon joining the Republic of Yemen.
As southern activist Sahar al-Yafai points out, had the “the STC [Southern Transitional Council] adopted a different flag, for example the old South Arabia flag, people would’ve rejected the STC.” The Federation of South Arabia was a British-sponsored political entity inaugurated in 1959 that created a multi-emirate confederation in what now is southern Yemen, not unlike the seven-emirate federation of the former trucial states that would become the United Arab Emirates. The communist takeover of Aden in 1967 aborted South Arabia prematurely and formed the centralized and theoretically Marxist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in its place. Among southerners, however, Sahar explained that “the South Yemen flag is no longer just a nation’s flag. … [I]t no longer represents the old socialist state. It’s simply the symbol of struggle and resistance for southerners,” while coupled with the legacy People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen elite, it renews old wounds of conflict among neighbors.
Indeed, the old South Yemeni flag that combines Pan-Arab revolutionary ideals and the Cold War-era red star of the socialist block is, on the international stage, at least, counter-productive. The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen legacy is replete with intra-elite conflict and tension with neighboring Gulf states.
When southern Yemenis embrace the old South Yemeni flag or turn toward Salafism, the same symbols can repel other Yemenis.
Since May 2017, the Southern Transitional Council has captured the southern brand, and expanded its presence from Aden to the periphery as far as Mahrah and Socotra. If Aidarus and the emerging southern elite aim to deter internal political and security challenges and expand their diplomatic support beyond the lifeline the United Arab Emirates provides, the Southern Transitional Council must rebrand. “The dream of independence for southerners has never died,” said Khaled al-Yamani, Yemen’s former foreign minister and a native of Aden. The Cold War-era South Yemeni flag helped maintain the collective memory of southern peoples, but this came at a cost given the antagonism the symbol itself sparked not only in the rest of Yemen and in the Persian Gulf, but also among Western powers like the United Kingdom and United States. Al-Yamani points out, the flag “reflects the right of southerners to reclaim [their state but] it does not necessarily imply a return to the same socialist policies that once deprived the South of major opportunities for development and growth.” The Southern Transitional Council leadership needs to express this to assuage neighbors like Oman, who still fear southern secession due to Cold War-era South Yemen sparking and supporting the Dhofar Rebellion, a Marxist insurgency that raged against the Omani monarchy and British presence contemporaneous with the Vietnam War.
Symbols have resonance. When southern Yemenis embrace the old South Yemeni flag or turn toward Salafism, the same symbols can repel other Yemenis, a dynamic that plays into Houthi hands.
Rebranding the Southern Transitional Council assures a path forward, rather than associating the group with a past that can no longer exist. Preserving the symbols of the old South Yemen opens another Pandora’s Box by leaving space for old elites like former Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, South Yemeni President Ali Nasser, and South Yemeni and later united Yemen Prime Minister Haydar Abu Bakr al-Attas to reclaim influence when their presence and political views not only caused conflict but also are today irrelevant.
With myriad economic and security challenges facing South Yemen, arguing over a new flag or other symbols may seem foolish, but local culture and historical memory matter. If the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen flag is weighed down with history and if South Arabia is too distant or associated with the colonial era, then the Southern Transitional Council should develop a new flag for a new era, more than thirty-five years since the failed experiment in unity began, and thirty-one years since it collapsed. Only when the Southern Transitional Council rebrands, can it unite southern Yemenis while assuaging those so scarred by Cold War history that they would rather have the flagbearers of the old People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen lose, even if it means preserving the Houthis. Aidarus must break with the past, not be constrained by it. Only with rebranding can he pull southern Yemen out of the stasis and stalemate under which it has labored for nearly a decade.
