ADEN (AFP) - Almost two decades after unification and 15 years after a failed secession bid, southern Yemen feels so estranged from the north that the country's unity has been thrown into question.

Anger among a large part of the some four million people living in the impoverished south has reignited separatist sentiment and caused an upsurge in violence in recent weeks.

At least 16 people, including five members of the security forces, have been killed in clashes in the south since demonstrations erupted in April.

"It has reached dangerous levels of racial hatred. It's like the northerners are another race," a local journalist said.

A businessman in Aden who asked not to be identified told AFP it was "clear" that the violence would escalate in the coming months.

The confrontation "could be long and bloody, since it won't be a battle between two armies," as in the short-lived attempt at secession by the south in 1994, he said.

The current unrest has its roots in the years after Yemeni unification which was proclaimed on May 22, 1990, particularly in the period that followed the 1994 civil war which lasted less than two months.

Known from 1970 as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and run by a socialist government, the south, which was part of the Soviet bloc, was independent from 1967, when the British left, until 1990.

"As soon as the northerners came here they just helped themselves -- they looted the land and the economic resources," the businessman said. The north "acted in 1994 as if they were an invader in a defeated country".

The issue of land ownership is particularly thorny. Stories of northerners given huge free tracts of land in the south abound.

"It's mainly people in power, especially military personnel," the Aden businessman said.

But Sheikh Salem Banaffa, general manager of the real estate and urban planning department in Aden province, said: "There is no advantage, no privilege for anybody."

"These are rumours," he said of the free land allegations. "It's not true."

In addition to the land ownership issue, disenchantment with employment conditions runs deep, with many southerners convinced that jobs in the south are reserved for northerners.

-- 'Separation is not a viable option' --

Estimated at 40 percent for the whole country, unemployment is thought to be much higher in the south.

A minister who resigned last year, Abdul Kader Hilal, is now a member of a government commission on the south.

He sees "some similarities" between the current situation in Yemen and in Germany after 1989 when the West merged with the ex-communist East, a former Soviet satellite.

"The southerners do not care about separation, about the north or the south. What they care about is their rights, health, education, electricity and water supply services," he told AFP, indirectly confirming the state's failure to provide basic services.

Many such factors have combined to rekindle separatist ideas, with some southerners claiming their region has been "colonised" by the north.

Such sentiment has led to the birth of the "Southern Movement," a loose coalition of opposition groups, from former socialists who were in power in Aden until 1990 to hard-core Islamists who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s along with Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Even Al-Qaeda's Arabian Peninsula wing has publicly pledged its support for the south against the central government.

Government circles blame the current unrest on the economic crisis, insisting that some unemployed people are being manipulated and exploited by supporters of southern independence, as others are by Al-Qaeda.

This viewpoint looks upon the problem not as one of discrimination but of a lack of development.

Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that the Sanaa government is worried, with President Ali Abdullah Saleh himself warning in April of the risks of Yemen breaking up into "several entities".

Hilal thinks the solution lies in "giving local authorities full responsibilities," and says reform to that effect is in the pipeline.

For many in the south it will be too little too late, but not everyone in the south believes that independence is the solution.

"Separation is not a viable option, because 80 percent of the population of Yemen (estimated at 24 million) live in the north, but the north only has 20 percent of the resources," the businessman said, referring to the fact that most oil and gas fields are in the south.

Independence of the south would create "a powderkeg," with northerners rushing south en masse, he predicted. (By CHRISTIAN CHAISE)