Singapore, 4/12/2022: The political track in NRM hosted the well-known politician Dr. Saad Eddin Bin Taleb, former Minister of Industry and Trade, to speak about the current challenges and opportunities for solutions to the Yemeni crisis, and his visions for Hadramout.
In the meeting, which was attended by a large number of NRM members from various tracks, Ben Taleb talked about the aspirations of Hadramout, or what he called “the Hadhrami dream”, and reviewed how Hadramout was affected by the political transformations that Yemen went through since the independence of the south in 1967 until the formation of the Republic of Yemen in 1990, and how it became a victim of the successive corrupt authoritarian regimes.
He added that the aspirations of Hadramout today will only accept a decentralized federal system, but not like the one that was suggested by the new constitution, “which does not have many of the advantages of federal systems”, as he said.
Bin Taleb said that Hadramout’s hope is to decide its own future and that it will be given the right to self-determination and the ability to exit from any form of Yemeni federation if its political system deviates from its constitutional obligations towards its regions.
Bin Taleb also stated that he has not seen any proposal of a southern federal state by the Southern Transitional Council (STC), stressing that the suffering of Hadramout is always due to the intervention of the central government, which always deals with Hadramout on the basis of the oil wealth it possesses. He ended by saying that despite these being the current stances of Hadramout, realism is still possible if treatments are done properly.
At the end of the meeting, a number of discussions emerged. While some NR members welcomed the ideas brought forward by Bin Taleb, others were sceptical and argued that such propositions during times of war and the challenges facing the Yemeni state may lead to the fragmentation of Yemen entirely, consequently endangering the interests of the Yemeni people in all local regions, and paving the way to endless struggle and fighting.