The Role of Hirak and the Southern Transitional Council

Abstract

During Yemen’s street protests of 2011, and later during the war between 2015 and 2019, developments in the south were largely distinct from events in the north. To begin with, the demands of southern protesters in 2011 were unlike demands in the north because at the time southerners had been holding continuous street protests since 2007, four years before the northern opposition imported the “Arab Spring” model from Tunis and Cairo. Between 2007 and 2011, mass street protests in the south were part of a popular movement called al-Hirak, “the Movement,” which drew hundreds of thousands of citizens to the streets. When warfare erupted in early 2015, combat on southern lands increasingly played out as a war within the war, separate from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition operations in the north against Houthi rebels and remnant loyalists of Saleh. The most significant wartime difference between the north and the south happened when the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) was announced in Aden on May 11, 2017. Just over two years later, the STC came to power in Aden after routing forces loyal to President Hadi during street battles in August 2019.