Summer 2019: all over Aden, thousands of enthusiastic citizens wave the flag of the Socialist or, as it is more commonly described, Communist, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). Are they all supporters of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP)? The flag's sky blue triangle with the red star marks its only difference with the plain red, white and black stripes of the flag of the Republic of Yemen (RoY). While most participants in these demonstrations explicitly want to return to the pre- 1990 borders, to the time before the establishment of the RoY by the merger of the PDRY with the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), the nature and scope of the regimes they would like to establish is far less clear. Listening to people, certain objectives are apparent and shared: getting rid of the ‘oppression’ of the North and northerners is a theme shared by the vast majority, regardless of its justification: there is a deep ingrained belief among southerners, particularly in the western part of the country including Aden, that they have been uniquely targeted in oppression and exploitation by northerners and an equally ingrained determination to assimilate all northerners with the (in reality, very few) beneficiaries of the Saleh regime. This is linked to an equally firm refusal to recognise that the vast majority of northerners suffered from the Saleh regime as much as they did but for even longer!

Beyond the shared objective of getting rid of northern oppression, things are rather more divided. Today few claim to support the YSP and certainly the majority of demonstrators as well as graffiti artists make no claim to being socialists, despite having painted this flag all over Aden, the mountains of Dhala and Lahej, and as far away as Mukalla in Hadhramaut. So why is this the most popular flag in what was once Aden and the Protectorates?

The answers are multiple, including first the broad political demand to a return to pre-unification borders but total disagreement about the type of regime that this should bring about… Separatists who support ‘independence’ do not agree on anything else, including the possible name of the future state: they include those who want to revive the Federation of South Arabia, the long-forgotten and short-lived creation of the UK's attempt to unify the statelets of the 1960s to create a ‘state’ after it recognised that it would eventually be leaving South Arabia. Never including all the entities of the Aden Protectorates, the Federation was created in 1962 before Britain's rushed departure in 1967 emerged on the horizon. It was in part prompted by the independence of colonies throughout Africa which suggested the need to plan for a post-British period, particularly as Britain had no intention to invest serious resources into the development of Aden's hinterland.