Southern Yemeni Ex-Soldiers Demand Jobs

By AHMED AL-HAJJ
The Associated Press
Saturday, September 1, 2007; 9:21 PM

SAN'A, Yemen -- Riot police fired bullets and tear gas Saturday to disperse thousands of retired officers and soldiers in southern Yemen who gathered to demand a place in the country's military again, police and protesters said.

The demonstration, which was the second of its kind in the past month, underlined increasing tensions between southern and northern Yemen 13 years after a civil war. The protesters were largely members of the army of south Yemen who were ousted after being defeated by northern forces.

The Yemeni government deployed dozens of armored vehicles Saturday and sealed off several roads in the southern port city of Aden, 200 miles south of the capital Sana'a, where the protest was taking place, according to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The security measures were intended to prevent additional people from joining the demonstration. During the first protest in early August, one person was reportedly killed and some 1,000 arrested when thousands of demonstrators marching toward downtown Aden clashed with police.

The government said it had responded to the former military personnel's demands by allowing more than 7,000 of them back into the army, but Abdu al-Muatari, the spokesman for the retired officers, said that was only a partial solution.

"Protests will continue until all demands are met," al-Muatari told The Associated Press. "We want to feel that we are citizens and partners and not followers."

Al-Muatari said police and soldiers rounded up more than 200 people in Aden, adding that the clashes had prevented schools and government institutions from operating Saturday.

A local official in southern Yemen's Hadramawt valley, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, said that the clashes continued late into the night Saturday and that at least 19 protesters were wounded in the southern cities of Aden and al-Mukalla, 350 miles southeast of San'a.

Protesters complain the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is ignoring discrimination at the hands of the northerner-dominated leadership.

North and South Yemen were united in 1990, with Saleh _ who had been the north's president _ remaining in his post. In 1994, rebels announced the secession of the south, and battled northern forces for several months in a civil war that ended in their defeat.

Afterward, about 60,000 southern servicemen were discharged from the army, and many of them fled abroad. Most have since returned, attracted by amnesty and promises they would be allowed to re-enlist.

But many have not been allowed back into the military, which is dominated by northerners. At the same time, southerners complain that they are kept out of government jobs _ a main source of employment in the south _ in favor of northerners brought in to fill the bureaucracy and security forces.

Northerners also continue to hold large tracts of land in the south granted to them after the civil war.