Whither Yemen?
Yemen’s decade-long civil war took an unexpected turn in December 2025. Fighting broke out between the internationally recognized government and Southern Transitional Council (STC), who shared control of territory not held by Ansarullah (the Houthi rebels). The STC offensive captured swathes of eastern Yemen’s Hadramawt and Mahrah provinces from their nominal allies. Prior to the offensive, tensions had escalated when Saudi-backed tribal forces threatened southern Yemen’s economy by disrupting oil extraction in Hadramawt province (Yemen Online, 2025). As Saudi Arabia launches airstrikes on STC forces and Saudi-backed troops mass on Yemen’s northern border, the country is being pushed to the brink by regional competition between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (England, 2025).
An Unhappy Marriage
Prior to 1990 two states existed on present-day Yemen’s territory; the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). North Yemen gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1918 under a Zaidi Shiite monarchy which was toppled by a coup d’etat in 1962. The Zaidi loyalists who eventually formed Ansarullah responded by taking up arms against the Egypt and Saudi-backed republican forces and then President Ali Abdallah Saleh after he seized power in 1978 (Riedel, 2017). Following independence from Great Britain in 1967 and a military coup in 1969 South Yemen aligned with the Soviet Union (BBC, 2019).
Unification under northern President Saleh in 1990 went awry. In 1994 tensions over repression against the southern leadership, plus the North’s larger population and influence over southern oil reserves led to a brief civil war (IISS, 1995, P. 155-59). Economic crisis ensued when Saudi Arabia responded to Yemen’s declaration of neutrality towards Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait by severing economic assistance and expelling Yemeni migrants (Carapico, 1991). Saleh’s corrupt governance and Islamist parties’ financial support to the returning migrants contributed to the emergence of al-Qaeda cells, with Saleh exploiting the threat of terrorism after 9/11 to gain diplomatic and financial assistance from the United States (De Wall, 2015, P. 184; Blumi, 2018, P. 157).
The Coming of Ansarullah
Yemen was rocked by Arab Spring protests in 2011 amid simultaneous insurgencies by Ansarullah, Al-Qaeda and southern secessionists (IISS, 2011, P. 80). Under international pressure Saleh stepped down from the presidency and was succeeded by Vice President Hadi in 2012, but aligned with his former enemies Ansarullah to reestablish his political influence (Al Jazeera, 2014). The unpopularity of the internationally-backed Hadi government coupled with cuts to fuel subsidies led to mass protests in 2014. Civil war broke out as Ansarullah seized Sana’a with minimal resistance that September and Hadi fled to Aden in January 2015 (Alley, 2014).
At Hadi’s request Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in Yemen to quash Ansarullah’s radical ideology and stop Iran using the group to gain influence in the Red Sea (Ylonen, 2024, P. 98). The Saudi-led coalition’s 2015-2022 campaign failed to dislodge Ansarullah and deepened Yemen’s acute humanitarian crisis. A UN-mediated truce was reached in April 2022 and has held since. As further negotiations with Ansarullah stalled, the group has utilized Iranian technology to suppress political opponents and NGOs, asserting its regional influence with drone and missile strikes on Israel and Red Sea shipping (Stark, 2023; Al-Muslimi, 2024).
Breakdown in southern Yemen?
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have pursued divergent interests in Yemen despite their shared anti-Ansarullah stance. The UAE grew suspicious of Hadi’s appointment of a general with links to the Islamist al-Islah party in 2016, arming south Yemeni forces who formed the separatist STC in 2017 under southern politician Aidarous al-Zubaidi (ACLED, 2023). Hadi’s resignation and the creation of the eight-man Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) in 2022, split evenly between Saudi and Emirati-backed politicians, failed to unify the anti-Ansarullah coalition and placate the mistrust between the STC and Saudi-backed groups (Ali-Khan, 2023).
By supporting the STC the UAE secures southern Yemen’s ports on the Gulf of Aden, complementing its presence in Puntland and Somaliland and solidifying its influence over East African and Red Sea trade routes. But the UAE’s vision for an independent South Yemen is incompatible with the preference of Saudi Arabia and Saudi-backed PLC members for a unified Yemen capable of stabilizing the Saudi-Yemen border (Kreig, 2025). The prospect of 2023’s Chinese-mediated Saudi-Iranian dialogue and recent Israeli belligerence resulting in a Saudi-Ansarullah rapprochement, in turn reducing Saudi Arabia’s interest in supporting the PLC, may have aggravated the STC’s hostility towards Saudi Arabia (IISS, 2024, P. 185).
Ansarullah will feel emboldened by the STC’s offensive and subsequent Saudi airstrikes on STC forces in Hadramawt (England, 2025). The group could advance eastwards in the event of a protracted intra-PLC conflict. This would end the 2022 truce and endanger the oil and gas reserves of Hadramawt, Marib and Shabwa provinces vital to an independent South Yemen’s economic recovery (Al Aulaqi, 2020). Ansarullah’s recent cooperation with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula against the internationally recognized government, including weapons transfers and coordinated military action, indicate that PLC infighting could trigger renewed jihadist activity in STC-held Abyan and Shabwa provinces (UNSC, 2024).
Conflict Outlook
Should the STC achieve South Yemen’s secession without conflict with Ansarullah or Saudi-backed forces it would benefit from the south’s significant hydrocarbon reserves, position on Asia-Europe sea lanes and could better address Iranian and Ansarullah weapons smuggling through eastern Yemen. Secession from Yemen would infuriate Oman and Saudi Arabia by depriving the latter of its influence over non-Ansarullah territory and making permanent the de-facto division of Yemen.
Ansarullah could pressure the PLC and exploit the inability of Saudia Arabia and the UAE to reach a consensus on southern Yemen to advance its interests. Despite setbacks from American and Israeli airstrikes, Ansarullah remains Yemen’s most potent military actor and will use the threat of attacks on Red Sea commercial traffic to extract concessions from Saudia Arabia and the US (Juneau, 2024). With Iranian support, Ansarullah can exploit the PLC’s dysfunction to expand its weapons smuggling networks in the Red Sea and intensify cooperation with al-Shabab, Islamic State Somalia and other Islamist groups in the Horn of Africa (Jalal and al-Jabarni, 2025).
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