Yemen: the other face

For just over eight years now, the only news coming out of Yemen has been about conflict, war and destruction. A reality that is picked up by half the world's media and even social networks, especially in geographically distant countries, such as Europe and America, which only receive this stereotype of this Arab country torn apart by war and fighting for almost a decade.

Although this is the palpable reality in several regions, especially in the north of the country including the capital Sana'a, there is a completely different reality in other regions of Yemen, such as the cities and governorates of the south and the west coast of the country.

The Yemeni civil war broke out in September 2014 after a violent coup d'état carried out by an Iranian-backed Shiite group, which then took control of the capital and seized political power before expanding into the southern governorates without respecting or taking into account the specificities of the region and the differences in history and geography, which explains the fact that this armed group encountered very violent resistance in Aden and the rest of the southern governorates. These provinces were in themselves opposed to the dominance of the northern provinces.

With the help of a Saudi-led military coalition, the southerners were able to liberate their governorates and all the enclaves that were part of the South Yemeni state before the unification in 1990, and by mid-2017, the cities of South Yemen began to be liberated, Yemen's southern cities began to regain a sense of stability after another war fought by the so-called southern separatist resistance led by Major General Aidarous al-Zubaidi against the Al-Qaeda terrorist movement and ISIS, which wanted to take advantage of the power vacuum to control Aden and the southern governorates, including Hadhramaut, the country's largest province.

Since then, the war and fighting has been concentrated in the governorates of North Yemen, which remains under the tight control of the Shiite Houthi movement.

Meanwhile, the situation in the southern governorates is completely different, where life has returned to normality and stability, and where security has helped to bring about a remarkable recovery of the local economy and business activity has expanded and continues to grow and exceed all expectations.

The reasons here are many, analysts and experts believe that the most important of them is to normalise the situation and restore stability to these governorates, in addition to restoring security and controlling the borders of the southern governorates from Houthi attacks, which helped to create an attractive environment not only for internal displacement; Aden alone hosts more than a million displaced people who fled Houthi oppression, but also in the flow of capital from northern Yemen, where most local, even regional and international companies and organisations moved their centres and businesses to Aden or Mukalla in Hadhramaut.

Today, the city of Aden is experiencing unprecedented expansion and urban growth, where many residential towns and shopping streets have sprung up, and more than thirty large shopping centres have opened in the city over the past three years, when before the war there were hardly any such shops.

The figures indicate that the city's commercial harbour has witnessed, for almost two years, the most commercial activity in decades.

Are not all these together a cause for surprise and astonishment and a paradox that reflects the complexity of the political and social situation in Yemen?

Virtually all or most of the southern cities are controlled by the Transitional Council, which is the largest representative entity of the Southern Movement announced in 2007. Most of the factions of this movement have been dissolved within the framework of the Council, which is the one that applies to the southern resistance forces and factions, which since 2017 have been under the leadership of the Transitional Council led by the southern strongman, Aidarous al-Zubaidi.

The council was formed in 2017, and in less than two years was able to control and secure most of the southern provinces after fighting two fierce wars with the Houthis, another against Al-Qaeda and ISIS, being able to defeat Al-Qaeda's branch in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen and is ranked as the most powerful branch in the world of the international terrorist organisation.