From governing south Yemen to mobilising: The STC’s post-defeat strategy
The last two months have been, Amr al-Bidh admits, a “rollercoaster”.
“I can’t say that it hasn’t been a difficult time,” the top official from the Southern Transitional Council told Middle East Eye in an exclusive interview in London.
In early December, the Yemeni separatist group controlled - or was perceived to control - all the territory that once made up South Yemen, the state that existed from 1967 to 1990 that the STC is trying to revive.
A years-long stalemate in Yemen’s war had been cracked open by a surprise offensive where STC-aligned fighters swept away Saudi-backed tribal forces from key cities, military bases and oil infrastructure.
South Yemen’s flag fluttered at outposts on the Saudi and Omani borders. Another UAE-funded faction was redrawing the regional map, following the Rapid Support Forces’ takeover of Darfur in Sudan and growing calls for Somaliland’s independence.
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Today, the picture couldn’t be more different.
The STC’s leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, has disappeared and is charged with high treason; STC officials in Riyadh claim the organisation has dissolved; its main patron, the United Arab Emirates, has exited Yemen altogether; and the authority it yielded in the south has evaporated.
“We are still there,” says Bidh, Zubaidi's special representative and scion of a family steeped in south Yemeni political history. “The STC is still relevant.”
Saudi Arabia came down on the STC like a tonne of bricks when the separatists refused to withdraw from the areas of Hadhramaut and al-Mahrah provinces that it had seized in December.
On 2 January, Saudi air strikes accompanied a counteroffensive by the forces loyal to the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), Yemen’s internationally recognised government that the STC ostensibly belonged to.
Within a week, the PLC was back in control - even in Aden, the STC’s seat of government and would-be capital of any future independent south Yemen. At least 80 STC fighters had been killed.
Bidh disputes claims that the STC miscalculated. His narrative is one of a limited military operation against local rivals that took on unexpected momentum.
The sudden political and military withdrawal of the PLC from Hadhramaut and al-Mahrah created a vacuum that the STC ended up filling almost by mistake, he claims.
“We hadn’t come with the idea of establishing a state in an instant,” Bidh says.
“But when people saw, OK, we’re now in control, they thought ‘why not? Why not now?’”
‘They have to be held accountable’
Saudi Arabia said the STC takeover of Hadhramaut and al-Mahrah jeopardised the kingdom’s national security.
“The idea that we created a national threat, we didn't see it. I mean, we've been allies for a long time. How come we suddenly became a threat to them?” Bidh says.
“We didn't really aim to go to the borders and create that chaos.”
'We lost a military battle, but the popular support that we have right now, it's huge'
- Amr al-Bidh, senior STC official
The advance in al-Mahrah, Yemen’s most easterly state, “just happened unexpectedly”. And when the STC pressed as far north as al-Abr in Hadhramaut, Bidh says they “immediately withdrew”.
Yet the STC’s sudden takeover followed a pattern where separatists and insurgents backed by the United Arab Emirates and/or Israel were undermining the security and territorial integrity of countries across the Middle East and North Africa.
This Emirati ally coming within a stone’s throw of Saudi Arabia became the touchpaper for a rift between erstwhile close allies Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that seems to already be causing a significant regional realignment.
Bidh says the STC is bemused that the Saudis retaliated so aggressively. “We never thought that the Saudis would kill our people,” he says.
“People say it comes from a Riyadh-Abu Dhabi perspective. But does that mean that you will kill us because of that rift? That’s what we don’t get.”
On 30 December, days before the PLC counteroffensive, Saudi Arabia bombed a ship that it said was bringing weapons from the UAE’s Fujairah to the STC, a strike that was accompanied by a stunning rebuke of Emirati policy in Yemen.
The next day, the UAE announced its withdrawal, and began pulling all its troops - and funds, including for vital hospitals - out of the country.
Left behind were a clutch of detention centres that the PLC, former detainees and human rights activists have described as secret torture prisons.
Bidh says the STC had no knowledge of the facilities or such abuse.
“I don’t want to defend the UAE. I’m not speaking on behalf of the UAE,” he says.
“I can’t really comment on something that’s not really proven, but definitely we support any accountability for this thing. So if someone is really guilty of this, then they have to be accountable for it.”
Zubaidi in hiding
Under fire and under pressure, an STC delegation on 7 January flew from Aden to Riyadh for de-escalation talks.
After two days incommunicado, the delegates announced on Saudi television that the STC was disbanding, a statement some members of the organisation insist was made under duress.
Those delegates are still in Saudi Arabia. “I speak to some of them on a regular basis. They are fine and moving around but I don’t think they can leave Riyadh,” Bidh says.
Bidh has not discussed the events that led to their televised statement. “I don’t want to discuss this with them, because I understand the position they were put in. I care more about their wellbeing.”
Zubaidi was supposed to be heading that delegation. Instead, he disappeared.
Bidh says “it was a decision he took because it’s important for him to stay on the ground”. But did he?
When Zubaidi first went into hiding, many assumed he would join his cadres in the hills of al-Dhale, the STC stronghold north of Aden where the group’s fighters had retreated to.
Yet, according to intelligence released by Saudi Arabia, the separatist leader was spirited to the UAE via Somaliland’s Berbera, shunning the life of rugged partisan combat for the austere glass towers of Abu Dhabi. He has not been seen publicly since.
“I won’t comment about his location,” Bidh says. “We can’t disclose his location because of safety, wherever he is.”
Bidh denies that the credibility of Zubaidi and the STC has taken a beating after the separatist leader absconded.
He points to the protests Zubaidi called for, which have repeatedly drawn tens of thousands of people to the streets in Aden and other cities.
“I think we are still in power, even more powerful now. They say ‘you used to have a military and now you don't have it’. Yes, we lost a military battle, but the popular support that we have right now, it's huge. That's the ammo that we have right now,” Bidh says.
Previously, Bidh says, the STC would pay for various logistics when organising rallies. “This time, we didn't pay a penny, and there are more people than ever before. So that's the credibility.”
STC no longer has ‘the burden of government’
Yemenis in Aden tell Middle East Eye that the city has been working better than any time since 2015 now the STC has left and the Saudis have become more assertive.
There are fewer power cuts, more water, and a sense of civic regeneration that has created an air of optimism unfamiliar in a city whose economy has been hollowed out and where civil servants often go unpaid.
“Why? Why now?” Bidh asks. The governor of Aden, Abdulrahman Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Yafei, was previously part of the STC, he notes.
“So what's the difference? It's still the same people, but there is something different there. And I think that's a big question that needs to be answered.”
Bidh describes a dynamic where the STC was held responsible for governing but was powerless to do so.
“We were responsible for delivering services but weren’t able to make any decisions,” he claims.
'We were responsible for delivering services but weren’t able to make any decisions'
- Amr al-Bidh, senior STC official
Yet the juxtaposition between the STC’s armed forces becoming ever more powerful, with advanced weaponry and vehicles supplied by the UAE, while the south was impoverished has been jarring for many Yemenis. Couldn’t that Emirati cash be spent on services instead?
“The money for the government comes from Saudi Arabia. It's known that the one who is supporting and controlling the government is Saudi Arabia. The UAE is doing counter-terrorism operations and that's where we share this alliance where they support our troops,” Bidh says.
The numbers the STC is attracting to its rallies in Aden are impressive. But that popular support is far from universal across the south.
In Hadhramaut, in particular, local tribes bristled at being placed under the Aden yoke, undermining claims that the STC represented the south.
The province covers a third of Yemen’s total territory, and holds 80 percent of the country’s modest oil reserves.
Stretching from the Saudi border to the Indian Ocean, Hadhramaut would have been the jewel in the crown of any future independent south Yemen.
“Hadhramaut is so essential for the south,” says Bidh, pointing to the prevalence of Shafii Islamic scholars from the Hadhrami school across Yemen’s southern provinces.
“They are the ones who create this connection between the tribes in all provinces, the thread that connects them.”
Bidh, who is himself from Hadhramaut, claims the STC doesn’t want to present itself as the single representative of the south anyway.
“We understand the nuances within the south and our project is not to have a centralised governor in Aden who rules,” he says.
“If Zubaidi says that he wants to rule the whole south from Aden, you won't see me here. I'll leave.”
Bidh’s father, Ali Salem al-Beidh, was independent South Yemen’s last president.
He says he doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of that era, “when the Socialist Party centralised everything in Aden”.
If fact, Bidh argues, the Southern Transitional Council no longer has “the burden of government”.
Now, perhaps, we may see the movement for southern independence return to something a little more grassroots. “Transitional” is in the name.
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