Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2026, pp. 76-77
Waging Peace
LATE DECEMBER and early January was a whirlwind for Yemen and Arab Gulf politics, as the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) suddenly captured large swathes of territory in Yemen held by Saudi-aligned groups, only to totally collapse when faced with a counteroffensive. In January, the STC announced its dissolution, and the UAE removed all its troops from Yemen. The wild swing of events leaves a power vacuum in southern Yemen, where various groups, including the remnants of the STC, are vying for power. There are also now questions about the regional ramifications of the deepening rivalry between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
Elham Manea, adjunct professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich, told the Carnegie Middle East Center on Jan. 20 that these recent events are the latest in a long history of political disillusionment and fighting within both Yemen and its successionist south. South Yemen was an independent state between 1967-1990, but even during its independence, there was much infighting. While the STC purported to speak for many in the region since it was founded in 2017 amid the country’s civil war, Manea said no one entity can speak for the south. “One could say southern unity itself is contested, not only Yemeni unity,” she noted.
The official STC announcement of dissolvement, which came following talks in Riyadh, “does not mean its political or social support in the south has disappeared,” Manea emphasized, as many on the ground refuse to accept the decision to disband. “It remains an important actor. But its rise and subsequent loss of momentum has underscored the deeper reality that the south is plural, fragmented and cannot be represented by a single faction.”
Having lost this proxy battle, the UAE now stands to have much less influence over Yemen’s future. “They will continue to be there, but not in the direct military prism that we’ve seen,” Manea said. This means Riyadh is now taking the lead, attempting to draw together various southern Yemen factions into a dialogue.
While the UAE and Saudi Arabia were close allies when they formed a coalition in 2015 to attack Yemen to stymie the Houthi uprising, they no longer see themselves on the same page regarding Yemen and other regional matters, from the Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa. The recent infighting among anti-Houthi groups in Yemen is a manifestation of an intensifying UAE-Saudi rivalry that “has been taking shape since at least 2018,” Manea said.
Farea Al-Muslimi, research fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program, lamented that the Yemeni government does not effectively exist. The Houthis are still in control of much of northern Yemen, and the lands held by the internationally recognized Yemeni government are now effectively de facto governed by Riyadh, which has propped up the government since the civil war began. “Today, the government of Yemen is nothing but a small file within the security department within the Saudi Ministry of the Interior,” he said.
Al-Muslimi decried that his homeland has become a battleground for regional actors. “There is no ‘good control’ by any foreign country, whether by Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Iran,” he emphasized. “The day that will be best for Yemen, and that we should always continue to struggle for and work for, is the Yemen in which Yemenis decide.”
Baraa Shiban, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, noted that the U.S. largely defers to Riyadh when it comes to Yemen. “It has consistently been viewed as a Saudi file,” he said. “If you talk to Americans, they will inevitably say, ‘Okay, we need to talk to the Saudis.’ It is viewed through the Saudi prism.”
April Longley Alley, former senior political adviser to the U.N. Special Envoy to Yemen, echoed this same sentiment on a Jan. 20 webinar hosted by the Washington Center for Yemeni Studies. “Yemen is not a priority in Washington, DC,” she said. “It’s not a priority for the Trump administration,” aside from containing the Houthis’ ability to strike Israel and paralyze the Red Sea shipping lane. Washington also does not seem to be focused on containing the Saudi-UAE rivalry. “There’s no concerted mediation to get those two allies on the same page, to address the root causes,” she said.
Alley viewed the prospects of Yemeni reconciliation as low. The Houthis are internally “cohesive” and have “clear positions,” she said, but the other actors remain internally divided. Even if the anti-Houthi factions came together and were able to articulate a cohesive position, the national landscape remains bitterly divided. “The positions of the Yemeni combatants are extremely far apart right now,” she noted.
In fact, she said the government-aligned forces reconciling and coming together could actually stoke greater fighting. “If they are more cohesive and closer together, they might seek to rebalance the playing field militarily before coming back to a national-level process,” she said.
—Dale Sprusansky
