Yemen's conference: No proper end ON JANUARY 21st, the very day Yemen's vaunted "conference of national dialogue" completed its ten months of work, assassins struck at two of its most prominent participants. Ahmed Sharaf el-Din, a lawyer for a movement representing the Houthis, a disaffected northern group, was shot dead on his way to the conference. Two hours later, Abdulwahab al-Ansi, secretary-general of the Islah party, Yemen's main Islamist group, was not in his car when it was blown up, but his son was injured by the blast. These two acts of violence highlighted the country's continuing instability. The conference, which was meant, among other things, to make recommendations for a new constitution, concluded four months later than intended. Elections planned for next month have been indefinitely postponed. Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who in 2012 replaced a longtime dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, looks set to remain president for the foreseeable future. Members of the parliament formed a decade ago seem likely to keep their seats. In theory, a new constitution is the new priority. But stopping the present wave of violence is what people want most urgently. Yemen is riven with anxiety. Violence in north and south has continued nearly unabated, with sectarian enmities rampant. In the north the Houthis, who follow the Zaidi school of Shia Islam, have more or less controlled the province of Saada since the uprising of 2011. More recently they have faced thousands of Sunni Islamist tribesmen, as fighting has intensified around a Salafist institute in the town of Dammaj. A series of ceasefires this month halted most of the violence. But clashes have persisted in Amran province. The formerly independent south is seething, too. Parts of the Hadhramawt have been in the throes of a tribal revolt since December, when government troops accidentally shot dead a local tribal leader. Tribesmen have taken aim at the Yemeni army and at installations belonging to foreign oil firms. Clumsy efforts by government forces to swat tribal fighters in the south-western province of Dhale have resulted in many civilian deaths in an area long a bastion of separatism. An Aden-based television channel owned by Ali Salem al-Beidh, a secessionist leader, has broadcast angrily in the name of "southern resistance." Acknowledging attacks on Yemeni troops in Dhale and Lahej, the statement was interpreted in Sana'a, the capital, virtually as a declaration of war. Though the national dialogue conference was supposed to resolve grievances of the southerners, most of their political factions boycotted or left it several months ago. Indeed, it remains questionable whether Yemen can be truly reunited.