"Unity or Death" Assassinating South Yemen Military Personnel

After the assassination of Colonel Ali Muqbil in Mansoura Aden yesterday, even though ISIS in Yemen claimed responsibility, southerners questioned who's really behind the killing. They didn't ask why, but asked when will these assassinations end.

For the people of South Yemen, news of an assassination of  military leaders, security officers, political leaders, activists isn't actually news, it's a routine announcement that we have all heard since South and North Yemen united in 1990.


Those assassinations started right after unity. 53 southern military and political leaders were assassinated between 1991-1993. After the civil war of 1994 and the occupation of South Yemen by north Yemeni forces since, the assassinations of southern leaders became one of the ways the government of Yemen enforced its "unity or death" policy on the people of South Yemen.

According to a report by "Sah" Organization for Human Rights, based in Aden which was sent to Abdulattif Al-Zayani, and Nabil Al-Arabi in 2013, 200 southern officers were assassinated in the period between 2006 to 2013 in Sana'a and the southern cities. In each of these assassinations the authorities did not catch a single killer. During the two years of 2012 and 2013, 80 senior southern officers were killed in southern Yemen in mysterious circumstances which the government attributed all to Al-Qaida without doing any investigations.

While southern military personnel and southern leaders were a constant target, during 2012-2013 where 80 southern officers were assassinated, 1 northern officer was killed while the makeup of the Yemeni military is 80% from northern Yemen.

Since Aden and most of the southern Yemen provinces were liberated from Houthi-Saleh forces in July 2015, and as demands for South Yemen independence grow stronger, assassinations of southern leaders and security personnel have been more frequent.