In the first week of December 2025, forces aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC) launched the most significant military challenge to the rump Yemeni state in exile since the outbreak of the civil war. Within days, they had established control over an estimated 90% of the populated territory of the former South Yemen, including the governorates of Hadhramaut and Shabwah, which together contain approximately 80% of Yemen’s proven oil reserves. The STC followed its military advance with a constitutional declaration proclaiming the establishment of a “State of South Arabia” and outlining a two-year transition towards full independence.
The campaign proved remarkably short-lived, as by 9 January 2026, sustained Saudi airstrikes and a coordinated counter-offensive by forces loyal to the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) had reversed all of the STC’s territorial gains. Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, the STC’s president, fled to Abu Dhabi, and the organization was claimed to have been formally dissolved under Saudi pressure. Like usual, international attention quickly moved on, and the episode came to be viewed as a failed bid for southern independence.
This interpretation, however, mistakes military defeat for political resolution, as the military destruction of the STC did not resolve the southern question. It removed its most visible institutional expression while leaving the underlying political, economic, and regional grievances intact. The conditions that enabled the December 2025 offensive remain largely unchanged, and no alternative political settlement has emerged to address them. The significance of the offensive therefore lies not simply in the speed of its collapse, but in what its initial success revealed about the continuing fragility of the internationally recognised Yemeni state and the enduring strength of southern separatist aspirations. The question is whether that distinction is being taken seriously by the regional and international actors who will shape what comes next.
A Grievance that Predates the movements that carry it
The southern political question is not a product of the current war, nor of the STC, nor even of the 2011 Arab Spring. It is rooted in a unification that, from the south’s perspective, was never equal. South Yemen existed as an independent state as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen from 1967 until 1990, with its own institutions, military, and national identity built across twenty-three years of sovereign governance. When the two Yemens were merged forcibly after what amounted to an invasion from the North, southerners expected a genuine partnership but gradually, political authority consolidated in Sanaa and Southern military officers were dismissed en masse. Land and businesses were redistributed to northern loyalists, and oil revenues concentrated in the former south flowed northward. When the south declared secession in 1994, it was defeated within two months. Southern leaders fled by boat, and the dispossession that followed of land, of positions, of political voice, was never addressed, never acknowledged, and never resolved.
The Southern Movement (Al-Hirak) emerged in 2007 as a peaceful campaign led by retired southern officers demanding pensions and recognition, not as a secessionist or militant organization. State repression, combined with the collapse of Yemeni authority and UAE backing, transformed the movement into the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in 2017, and they became more organized, militarized, and explicitly committed to independence. The STC did not create southern identity or its grievances, but it inherited them, institutionalized them, and gave them military expression. The historical trajectory is clear, as the movement was defeated in 1994, re-emerged in 2007, was restructured in 2017, allegedly dissolved in 2026, and is now already reappearing in the streets of Aden. Every attempt to suppress it has failed to eliminate the underlying demand for southern self-determination, and there is little reason to conclude that January 2026 will be any different.
What the December Offensive Was Actually About
The STC’s decision in December 2025 was a calculated attempt to reshape the political landscape before it hardened without southern representation. Throughout 2025, Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah (the group that forms the backbone of the self-styled “National Salvation Government” and rules almost all of North Yemen and are called the Houthis by the Western press) were moving towards a framework to reduce the conflict, yet the south remained largely absent from those discussions. For the STC, this created a narrowing window of political opportunity. If a settlement was reached without resolving the question of southern self-determination, the political order that followed would likely preserve Yemen’s territorial unity and leave the STC with little leverage. Seizing territory and declaring statehood was therefore less an act of military opportunism than an effort to create political facts on the ground that could not be ignored. The strategy was high risk, but it reflected the STC’s assessment that exclusion from negotiations posed a greater threat than confrontation itself.
The STC’s key miscalculation was its expectation that UAE support would outweigh Saudi opposition. Since 2017, Abu Dhabi had been the council’s principal backer, but the advance into Hadhramaut, placing Saudi Arabia’s southern border and much of Yemen’s oil infrastructure under STC control, crossed a strategic red line for Riyadh. Saudi Arabia intervened decisively, while the UAE declined to support an operation it had not endorsed. After travelling to Abu Dhabi instead of responding to a Saudi summons, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi lost his seat on the PLC and faced treason charges from the rump internationally recognized government. The STC’s apparent dissolution followed within days, although its leadership immediately rejected the decision as illegitimate and made under duress. Saudi Arabia reversed the STC’s military gains, but it did not resolve the political grievances that had driven the movement’s resurgence.
The Dissolution That Changed Little
The STC’s dissolution in January 2026 altered the political landscape far less than it appeared. Although Riyadh secured a formal reversal of the declaration of independence, the balance of power in southern Yemen remained largely intact. The STC continued to dominate Aden’s security institutions, retained influence over local administration across much of the south, and preserved its military structures. While several officials associated with the offensive were removed from government, these measures addressed political leadership rather than the social and institutional foundations of the movement. Protests resumed in Aden within days, underscoring that support for southern self-determination had not diminished with the organization’s formal “dissolution”.
This distinction is critical because the STC is an organization and the southern cause is a political movement rooted in decades of unresolved grievances. Saudi claims that the leadership was dissolving the STC did not resolve the underlying dispute over the relationship between northern and southern Yemen. That question has repeatedly been contained, postponed, or managed by regional actors, but never politically settled. As a result, the organization may or may not disappear, yet the movement that produced it remains capable of re-emerging in new forms, carrying the same demands.
What Needs to Happen
A durable settlement in Yemen requires the southern question to be addressed as a central political issue rather than a secondary concern. Although Saudi Arabia has repeatedly proposed a Southern Dialogue Conference, it has yet to establish a timetable, agenda, or negotiating framework (and indeed it is doubtful any oppossition delegates would attend given that those that last went to Saudi were held in Riyadh and not allowed to return). At the same time, the Presidential Leadership Council remains politically fragmented and heavily dependent on external support, limiting its ability to negotiate a credible settlement on behalf of southern constituencies. As UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg warned in 2021, a sustainable peace cannot be achieved without meaningful southern participation. Nearly five years later, the mechanisms to deliver that participation remain absent.
Any future dialogue must reflect the diversity of southern politics rather than treating the south as a single actor. Hadhramaut, Aden, Shabwah, and Abyan each have distinct political priorities and interests that require representation in any lasting settlement. Saudi Arabia demonstrated in January 2026 that it could reverse the STC’s military advances and restore the existing political order, but the intervention was directed as much against UAE-backed forces as against the STC itself, and it has left Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s southern strategies openly at odds. Any credible dialogue process will need Saudi-UAE reconciliation on the matter of the south, or external patronage rather than Yemeni politics will keep deciding outcomes on the ground. What it did not resolve were the grievances that continue to drive demands for greater southern autonomy and representation. Military intervention may contain a crisis, but it cannot settle the political dispute that has persisted since 1994. Until that question is addressed through an inclusive political process, instability in southern Yemen is likely to endure.
The Next Century Foundation has a session on Yemen in its forthcoming zoom conference, “Healing the Nations” should you wish to attend.
Featured image above is of Basateen, a poor area of Aden – photo:© European Union/ECHO/H.Veit is from https://www.flickr.com/
