Southern Yemen: Secession or liberation from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Houthis?
A UAE academic has praised the recent movements of national liberation in southern Yemen, aiming to protect its resources from manipulation and rid it of all terrorist organizations led by the Muslim Brotherhood and Houthi militias.
Yesterday, Emirati academic Abdul Khaleq Abdullah stated on his Twitter account: “The issue of southern Yemen is not a matter of secession but rather a matter of national liberation.”
He questioned, “Why do some insist on handing over southern Arabia to the Iranian Houthi rebel movement in Sanaa?” implicitly referring to the Islah Party of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Abdullah added that “the issue of southern Arabia is not a matter of secession but rather a matter of national liberation through which the people of the South seek to establish their free country and independent state, deserving the support of countries worldwide and the peoples of the region, foremost among them the countries and peoples of the Arab Gulf… a state with its own title.”
Southerners, led by the Southern Transitional Council formed in 2017, aspire to the separation of southern regions of Yemen, which signed a unity agreement in 1990 between the north and south after lengthy negotiations led by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Since 2015, the Houthi rebels supported by Iran have been engaged in armed conflict with the stable Yemeni government in Aden, following their expulsion from the capital, Sanaa. Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by the Yemen crisis, creating the worst humanitarian crisis according to United Nations estimates.
