Sands of Secession

A Saudi–Emirati rift, not Yemen’s civil war, is now shaping the fate of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest state.

Yemen has never lacked for factions, but rarely have its internal quarrels so nakedly mirrored the rivalries of its foreign patrons. The latest drama in the south where forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government have pushed out the Southern Transitional Council (STC) from the vast provinces of Hadramout and al-Mahra seems like a routine reshuffling of power in a country accustomed to chaos on the surface. But in fact, it marks the open unravelling of the Saudi-Emirati condominium that has underwritten the war since 2015.

Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council, declared that government forces had retaken the two eastern provinces and that all armed groups would now operate under the command of the Saudi-led coalition. That pronouncement was meant less for Yemenis than for foreign ears. Hadramout and al-Mahra account for nearly half of Yemen’s landmass and abut Saudi Arabia’s long, porous border. Control of them gives Riyadh a strategic glacis against Houthi infiltration and Iranian influence. Losing them to the STC - a militia-cum-political movement backed by the United Arab Emirates - had been a humiliation. Regaining them was send a message that Saudi Arabia, and not Abu Dhabi, calls the shots in Yemen’s east.

Yet in Aden, the STC’s bastion, thousands poured onto the streets waving the flag of the old People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which existed as a Marxist state until unification in 1990. Their chants were aimed not at the Houthis, who still control the capital, Sanaa, but at Saudi Arabia and the government it sponsors. The STC’s demand is simple and combustible: the resurrection of an independent South Yemen. Its leaders have long argued that unification brought neglect and plunder by northern elites. Many southerners agree. What has changed is that this grievance has become entangled with a regional power struggle.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE went to war together to prevent the Houthis, an Iran-aligned movement, from dominating Yemen. But their visions for the country have diverged. Riyadh wants a pliant, nominally unified Yemen that secures its southern border. Abu Dhabi, more commercially minded, has built a network of proxy militias along Yemen’s coast and islands, from Aden to Socotra, securing shipping lanes and ports. The STC is the most prominent of these proxies. For the UAE, a friendly, semi-autonomous south offers leverage over trade routes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. For Saudi Arabia, it threatens to fragment a neighbour it wants to stabilise.

The drama surrounding Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the STC’s elusive leader, underlines how poisonous this rivalry has become. Expelled from Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council and accused of treason, Mr Zubaidi failed to turn up for talks in Riyadh. Saudi officials allege that Emirati officers spirited him out, first by boat to Somalia and then by military aircraft to Abu Dhabi. The UAE denies wrongdoing.

The STC’s Riyadh-based delegation has since announced the group’s dissolution, citing internal rifts and regional pressure. Few believe that southern separatism has suddenly evaporated. But the announcement reveals how exposed the STC is without Emirati cover.

None of this brings Yemen any closer to peace. The Houthis remain entrenched in the north, buoyed by Iranian weapons and by Saudi Arabia’s desire to extricate itself from an expensive stalemate. Riyadh has been quietly negotiating with them, even as it cracks down on Emirati-backed secessionists in the south. The war that began as a bid to restore Yemen’s recognised government has become a juggling act: containing Iran, managing the UAE, and avoiding further disintegration.

For Yemenis, the country’s modern history is a cycle of unity and rupture. Unification in 1990 was followed by a southern secession attempt in 1994, crushed by the north. The Arab Spring toppled Ali Abdullah Saleh but unleashed forces that no coalition could control. Today, Yemen is effectively partitioned among the Houthis, the government, and a mosaic of militias.

The latest battles in Hadramout and al-Mahra do not change that fundamental fact. What they do change is the balance among Yemen’s foreign patrons. A Saudi-Emirati divorce would be more destabilising than any local uprising. Without a semblance of coordination between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, Yemen risks becoming not just a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but a theatre for Gulf rivalries as well.