The Saudi-Emirati conflict over Yemen has long been simmering, but the emerging alliance between Israel and the UAE – and their policy of weakening larger traditional powers across the region – has forced Riyadh, against its nature, to take a tough stance.
Abu Dhabi was memorably described more than a decade ago by former US Centcom commander James Mattis as “Little Sparta” for punching above its weight. Shared obsessions with Tel Aviv on issues like Iran, Islamist political parties, and the US as a protector brought these two regional disruptors together in the 2020 Abraham Accords, overseen by the first Trump administration.
After the death of former Emirati ruler Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan in 2004, the UAE moved in a direction opposed to his pan-Arab, consensus-based approach. This new path was forged by his son, Mohammed bin Zayed, who served as the eminence grise under his father’s successor, and became de facto ruler from 2014 until he formally assumed the presidency in 2022.
The militarism Mattis referenced was not the iron-fisted thuggery of Israel, but rather intervention through proxies bought by vast oil wealth without a care for public opinion; indeed, the policy of making UAE nationals only around 10% of the country’s population of more than 11 million people has rendered domestic opposition negligible.
But the Arab Spring uprisings gave the ruling family a start, as even among the enfeebled constituency of UAE nationals, voices rose asking for a role in governance. Islamist intellectuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, present in the state’s administration since independence from Britain, were deemed to be the rabble-rousers responsible for giving people ideas above their station.
The UAE subsequently teamed up with Saudi Arabia to tackle Islamist electoral forces across the region, who were drawing various forms of backing from Turkey and Qatar, from Egypt, to Libya, to Turkey itself, if Turkish government suspicions of an UAE hand in the failed coup attempt of 2016 are to be credited.
For the UAE, no less than Israel, the Gaza war presented an opportunity to end the influence of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. As UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash put it in October, “the maximalist views on the Palestinian issue are no longer valid” – though with Hamas and other key Palestinian factions agreeing on a two-state solution, it’s not clear what concessions are being sought.
Military intervention
On Yemen, it was Saudi Arabia that invited the UAE to take up a partnership role in its military intervention to remove the Houthis movement from power in Sanaa, after the group forced out the Gulf Cooperation Council-backed government in 2014. Shaken at the prospect of the Houthis acting as an Iran-backed, Hezbollah-style antagonist on its border, Riyadh continued its support for Yemen’s Islamist al-Islah party.
Riyadh had little choice but to turn to Abu Dhabi, since Egypt, Pakistan and other countries were not willing to provide troops for a war they suspected would end in a quagmire. Abu Dhabi said yes, but Saudi naivety over Emirati intentions was extreme.
The UAE’s interest quickly manifested as not so much a project to challenge the Houthis, but rather to establish the south as its own sphere of influence, mainly through proxies.
With UAE backing, the Giants Brigades were set up in 2015, the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in 2017, and the National Resistance Forces shortly thereafter. These arrangements gave the Emiratis leverage and control over key ports and the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia secured mercenaries from the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), but Abu Dhabi dug much deeper into that relationship – to the extent that it now stands accused of backing the RSF against Sudan’s government, despite atrocities committed by the group’s fighters.
But the UAE has also collaborated with Israel in Yemen, establishing military bases, radar systems and surveillance infrastructure on the strategic islands of Socotra, Perim, Abd al-Kuri and Zuqar – all well-documented, if little discussed.
Israel’s recent recognition of Somaliland comes as the natural consequence of its Emirati ally building up the breakaway region of Somalia through road construction, a port at Berbera, upgrading Hargeisa’s airport, and a military base – all while maintaining a formal stance of support for Mogadishu.
Turkey, the region’s major sponsor of Brotherhood-linked Islamist groups, has its own military and commercial presence in the Horn of Africa, with heavy investments in Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
Abu Dhabi has carved out its southern Yemen satrapy in a similar manner, within the framework of formal support for the Yemeni republic and its exiled government. UAE backing for at least three members of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council (Aidarous al-Zubaidi, Abdulrahman al-Muharrami, Faraj al-Bahsani) two of whom are STC separatists, has effectively paralysed the body.
Riyadh drops the ball
STC leader al-Zubaidi knows the script well. If he wants to secure eventual independence, he will need the support of the UAE and Israel to get over US scepticism about dividing a country already seen as too troublesome to expend more effort on.
Over the past year, Zubaidi has been pushing the line that there are only two standing powers in Yemen: the Houthis in the north and the STC in the south. Recognising the south is a quick path to bringing stability on Western terms, while further isolating the Iran-backed Houthis, whom the Americans fear are drawing closer to China and Russia.
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, Zubaidi was explicit that the STC is already making plans for his future state to join the Abraham Accords.
How Saudi Arabia, the traditional power in Yemen and key political and financial sponsor of its STC-inclusive government, could let the situation slip so far from its control is perplexing to both its Yemeni clients and regional counterparts.
The barely concealed secret about the Yemeni conflict is that since 2022, when a UN-brokered truce was agreed, Riyadh has viewed peace with the Houthis as the best way to secure its interests – not least with $1.25 trillion in giga-projects coming online over the next decade, as the kingdom shifts from ultraconservative isolation to mass tourism.
The Gaza ceasefire in October has allowed Riyadh to quietly restart talks on normalising ties with the Houthis, which were put on ice after the 7 October 2023 attacks. Stymying those talks has been a key STC-UAE goal, since what was supposed to follow a Saudi-Houthi peace deal were government-Houthi talks on a new Yemen that would divide revenues, including oil and gas receipts from southern fields.
Biding its time to take military control of inland Hadhramaut and Mahrah, the STC acted now out of concern that Saudi Arabia and Oman were buoying a nascent Hadrami separatist movement that would ruin the southern project. Saudi Arabia has also filled Mahrah with its own affiliated National Shield militia over the past year.
As for the UAE, it appears the broader goal is to work closely with Israel to weaken major powers – such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran – and fragment the regional order, viewing this as the best means for two rogue political entities to survive in their current forms and resist pressure to change.
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Source: MEE
