Today is the 20th anniversary of the unification of north and south Yemen (an event that I wrote about in detail in my online e-book, 
The Birth of Modern Yemen).

In 1990, the north-south union made a lot of sense and in principle it still does today, but because of the way unification was carried out, and the subsequent souring of relations between northern and southern leaders, the brief war of secession in 1994 – won by the northern forces – came as no great surprise.

But if anyone had predicted in 1990 that 20 years later southern Yemen would once again be in the throes of a separatist struggle, I would have found it hard to believe them.

Yesterday, AFP reports ...

The man who led South Yemen's short-lived secession in 1994 asked the United Nations ... to send a commission of inquiry into what he said was the people's right to self-determination.

Ali Salem al-Baid said the UN commission should recognise "the right of the inhabitants (of South Yemen) to independence and to the reestablishment of their sovereign state with Aden as its capital."

He said in a statement ahead of Saturday's 20th anniversary of the country's first unification that separatists had "set next year as a target for independence."

The irony here, which AFP fails to mention, is that al-Baid was not only a central figure in the 1994 secession attempt but had earlier steered the south, almost single-handedly, into union with the north.

The people of the south certainly have many grievances but it's a giant leap from that to deducing that they need a separate state. The problems faced in the south may be more deeply felt but they are very similar in nature to those in the rest of the country.

De-unification might solve some of those problems but it would also create new ones too.

Southerners should keep in mind that their real quarrel is not with the people of the north but with the regime of Ali Abdullah Salih.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 22 May 2010.