Southern discontent could fracture Yemen's unity

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) - When Islamists criticized a concert by a Syrian woman singer in Yemen's port city of Aden this month, disaffected southerners took it as yet another slight from their more powerful northern cousins.

Troops and police guarded the half-empty stadium when Asala took the stage, braving a reported threat from al Qaeda to stop the show, but she sang into the early hours with no disruption.

Still, the verbal sniping by Islamist parliamentarians from the north left a sour taste for many in the sleepy southern city, where performances by Arab pop stars are a novelty.

"They've had concerts in Sanaa and Taiz and Hodeida before. Nobody opened his mouth," said Raqiya Humeidan, a woman lawyer, referring to northern cities. "Why is it different in Aden?"

Far less trivial grievances are fuelling discontent here, where many are once again querying the value of the 1990 union between the Marxist-led south and the tribal-dominated north.

Southerners complain they have lost out since unity in access to local power, jobs and land, and some even say they feel they have been subjected to a northern "occupation".

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose army crushed a southern bid to secede in 1994, sees Yemeni unity as the jewel crowning his 30 years in power -- but it does not glint for southerners.

In recent months, protests spearheaded by former soldiers demanding pension rights have met a tough response from the security forces, with several people killed or wounded.

"They took our lands, our jobs and our wealth," Humeidan said. "We all feel they treat us with hate. So people are saying: 'If that's what you mean by unity, we don't want it'."

Aden, under British rule from 1839 to 1967, was the capital of the former People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, which stumbled into unity with the north 18 years ago when its Cold War patron, the Soviet Union, was itself nearing collapse.

The south is home to only a fifth of Yemen's 22 million people, but it generates much of the impoverished Arab country's revenue. Up to 80 percent of oil production now comes from the south, which also has fisheries and Aden's port and refinery.

"Many people in the south now feel they have been unfairly treated," said Sarah Phillips, an Australian researcher on Yemen. "They feel that they have got these great resources and they are not seeing the benefits of them."

SENSE OF EXCLUSION

Southerners ask why the governors of all seven southern provinces should be from the north. They also complain of a systematic land grab by well-connected northerners.

The owners of property nationalized under communist rule in the 1970s were to have been compensated after unity.