London, Dec 14 (The Conversation) Fighters aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group in southern Yemen, raised their flags in the provinces of Hadramout and Marah in early December. The seizures mean the STC now controls all eight of the provinces that make up the south of the country.

The new status quo looks like a fait accompli for the creation of a separate southern state. It has left Yemen’s internationally recognised government, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), squeezed between a pole in the south and a state run by the Iran-backed Houthi militia in the north.

The STC taps into memories of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen which, until 1990, gave southerners their own state. Yemen’s 1990 unification produced one flag, but many people

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