The Southern Transitional Council (STC) was an armed secessionist group in Yemen that sought to undo the unification of Yemen (1990) and was one of the main belligerents in the Yemeni Civil War until 2026. The group emerged in 2017 after Yemeni Pres. Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who in 2015 had moved the government to Aden in southern Yemen after fleeing Sanaa in northern Yemen, dismissed a southern governor from his post. The STC accused Hadi’s government of marginalizing southerners and occasionally clashed with government forces, but it nonetheless sided with Hadi’s government against the Houthi rebels throughout most of the civil war. The group received backing from the United Arab Emirates. The Saudi-brokered Riyadh Agreement (2020) brought members of the STC into Hadi’s cabinet, but the agreement failed to placate the STC in the long run. In December 2025 the STC launched a campaign to wrest much of southern Yemen from government control. A counteroffensive with Saudi support led to the STC’s defeat and formal disbanding in January 2026.
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