2. Yemen’s Civil War: A Structural Analysis
Box 1: The roots of Yemen’s civil war
Much has been written about the roots of Yemen’s war and about international responses to it. The drivers of conflict in Yemen include the country’s debilitating and kleptocratic patronage system; the gradual rupture of a regime made up of a Sana’a-based military, tribal, religious and political order; and the rise to national prominence in the 2000s of formerly peripheral and marginalized identity and territorial groups, including the Houthis, southern secessionists and tribal groups. Tensions boiled over in 2011 when a youth uprising was co-opted and used as cover for infighting within the elite. Many of these tensions were left unresolved during the political transition of 2012–14. Two Chatham House publications – Yemen: Corruption, Capital Flight and Global Drivers of Conflict (2013) and Yemen: Stemming the Rise of a Chaos State (2016) – deal with these issues in considerable detail.7
As argued above, a UN-led peace process structured entirely around a ceasefire and political accord between the (now effectively dissolved) Houthi–Saleh alliance and the Hadi government is not only unlikely to succeed, but could also spark renewed conflict. The country’s ‘big war’, already in reality made up of a series of ‘small wars’, could splinter further into a series of complex, localized conflicts that are even harder to resolve.8
From the standpoint of the international community, President Hadi retains technical legitimacy, enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 2216 of 2015. Yet armed forces loyal to the Houthis retain control of the capital, most key government institutions and up to 60–70 per cent of the country’s military resources.9 It is these two nominal ‘sides’ that, under the structure of the current UN mediation plan, must make peace with one another.
But the Houthis and the Hadi government are just two actors among a multiplicity of groups, and face their own internal divisions – as evidenced most recently by the Houthis’ battle with loyalists of former president Saleh for control of Sana’a. From the perspective of many Yemenis, especially those outside the Houthi-controlled highlands in the north and west, the Houthis and President Hadi have no more or less legitimacy than other local leaders and identity groups with a degree of ‘grounded legitimacy’10 stemming from their provision of state-like services. These services are often delivered without the support of the de facto authorities in Sana’a or the Hadi administrations, and in many cases in the face of active resistance from the Hadi government. Some local groups are able to function due to support from third parties, most notably from the UAE in the case of southern Yemen.
In an illustration of the extent to which the state, in any formal sense, has fractured, Yemen now has two central bank headquarters, in Sana’a and Aden; and two ministries of finance, also in Sana’a and Aden. In addition, two governorates, Hadramawt and Mareb, have what are in effect makeshift central banks and manage their own finances. Despite a ream of public announcements, President Hadi has been unable to bring the many militias and military units in non-Houthi-controlled Yemen under a unified chain of command. Moreover, many of the militias operating in what can be termed ‘liberated’ Yemen – that is, the areas outside Houthi control – are focused less on the war, the front lines of which are in reality limited to 10 locations at most, and more on building up their power and outmanoeuvring their rivals. In early December 2017, the alliance between the Houthis and loyalists of former president Saleh collapsed, with open conflict breaking out between the two sides in Sana’a. So entrenched have territorial divisions become that this did not alter the overall national-level picture of the conflict, however.
Fierce fighting continues in and around the city of Taiz, at multiple locations in the Al Bayda governorate, and to a lesser extent in the Sa’dah, Shabwa, Hajja, Al Jawf and Sana’a governorates.
Fierce fighting continues in and around the city of Taiz, at multiple locations in the Al Bayda governorate, and to a lesser extent in the Sa’dah, Shabwa, Hajja, Al Jawf and Sana’a governorates. In early 2017, militias backed by the UAE launched one of the few structured military campaigns into Houthi–Saleh-controlled territory since 2015 when they pushed up the country’s western coast to the small port city of Mokha. The same UAE-backed forces have since targeted a key road leading from western Taiz to the major port of Hodeidah, a prominent supply route for Houthi fighters and a possible entry point for any military campaign to take the port, which the UAE and Saudi Arabia have also mooted assaulting from the sea.
Below is a brief account of the evolution of the conflict, which includes a structural analysis of the broad contours of the current areas of territorial control, the front lines and the internal dynamics of each territory.
A structural analysis
Yemen’s civil war was precipitated by a slow-burning coup. In September 2014 the Houthis, a northern Yemeni hybrid military/religious/political grouping, seized Sana’a with the backing of military units and tribal groups loyal to the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Houthi militias and Saleh loyalists then quickly spread south, east and west from the capital. In early 2015, the Houthis placed President Hadi under house arrest. After escaping and taking refuge in the southern city of Aden, President Hadi fled for Saudi Arabia after Saleh loyalists in the air force began bombing the city in March 2015.
The Houthi–Saleh alliance faced little resistance in the highland heartlands of the former Zaydi imamate: the governorates of Sa’dah, Hajja, Amran, Sana’a, Hodeidah, Dhammar and, to an extent, Ibb. But its forces soon became bogged down in battles against local fighters in the tribal areas to the east and northeast of Sana’a; in the city of Taiz; in the central governorate of Al Bayda; and in the governorates of what was independent South Yemen (Al Dhale, Lahj, Aden, Abyan and, in particular, Shabwa – the alliance did not make it as far as Hadramawt or Al Mahra in the east).
In a surprise move, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia entered the conflict in March 2015 with an intense campaign of aerial bombardment. It announced its intention to back what it termed ‘pro-government’ fighters. In Al Jawf, Mareb and Al Bayda, those who fought against the Houthi–Saleh alliance were largely drawn from local tribal groups. They were later joined by military units consisting of loyalists of General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a one-time Saleh ally affiliated with Islah, Yemen’s main Sunni Islamist political party. In Taiz, where tribal identity is less pronounced, fighters came from a mix of political backgrounds, with Islah-backed forces, directed by a local leader, Hamoud Saeed al-Mikhlafi, organizing resistance to the Houthi–Saleh alliance.
Map 1: Yemen – internal divisions
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Map 1: Yemen – internal divisions
In the south, resistance was mounted by untrained secessionists – among them ex-military officers who were veterans of the formerly independent southern state, along with conservative Sunni groups. First in Aden and later in Taiz, a new form of armed group emerged, consisting of dedicated, religiously motivated fighters affiliated to young, conservative Salafist leaders who had fought the Houthis during running battles around a Salafist madrassa in the Houthi heartland of Sa’dah between 2010 and 2014.
Broad definitions of allegiances are problematic. Until its split in December 2017, for example, the Houthi–Saleh alliance had always been a marriage of convenience. The uneasy arrangement collapsed when, after several days of fighting, Saleh was killed by Houthi forces in Sana’a on 4 December. Yet the two groups had morphed, to a degree, into a hybrid fighting force that was broadly nationalist in outlook and in which loyalties remained complex, layered and fluid, making an assessment of the balance of power between the two difficult. Before the split, many observers had assumed that they were evenly matched, even though Houthi insiders claimed that they had taken a dominant position in front-line fighting and provision of local security. The speed and relative ease with which the Houthis ultimately overpowered Saleh loyalists demonstrated the extent to which they had gained the upper hand.
Internationalization of the conflict
The more parties involved in a conflict, the longer it is likely to last and the harder a peace accord will be to broker. The involvement of third-party states also prolongs civil conflicts, particularly if their interventions are balanced out by one another and create a stalemate that is relatively low-cost for them. As Christopher Phillips writes:
[T]he more external actors involved, the longer civil war is likely to last…. they are unlikely to cease their involvement until their independent agendas are met and the more agendas in play, the more difficult for any resolution to satisfy all players.11
Yemen’s civil war has become increasingly internationalized since March 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition initiated an intensive aerial campaign across the country that continues to this day. UAE troops entered Aden in mid-2015 and helped secure the city before developing an increasingly visible and assertive role in the south, training and equipping different militias. Saudi Arabia has also trained and equipped troops. Initially, Saudi support for forces in Yemen was largely directed through President Hadi, but more recently it has flowed through Ali Mohsen, who in 2016 was named vice-president of Yemen and deputy supreme commander of the armed forces.
A division of labour between members of the Saudi-led coalition has become increasingly apparent. The UAE drives the military campaign and efforts to provide security in the south of Yemen – including cooperation with the US on counterterrorism initiatives – while Saudi Arabia is the main sponsor of the fighting in the north and west and leads the aerial campaign.
The divisions go beyond territorial demarcations. The UAE’s web of patronage is marked by an absence of, and indeed opposition to, any group or individual with links to Islah, which has a Muslim Brotherhood wing and is often described as ‘the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood’.12 The UAE’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed, abhors the Muslim Brotherhood, perceiving it and its affiliates as a threat to Emirati and regional political stability.
UAE forces have been accused of persecuting Islah-affiliated individuals in southern Yemen, most notably in Aden and southern Hadramawt, and of working to isolate the group’s affiliates in Taiz.13 Islah-affiliated groups directed by the powerful Ali Mohsen play a leading role in the war in the north, most notably in Mareb and Al Jawf, as well as in Taiz to the south. Many Yemenis have come to see the coalition war effort as being driven by a not entirely joined-up Ali Mohsen–Islah–Saudi Arabia nexus on the one hand, and by a UAE–secessionist–Salafi network on the other. Tensions are clearly visible in areas where both sets of actors are present, such as Aden and Taiz. Such tensions could well be sowing the seeds of future conflict between the two sides or some permutation of their components.
Iran, meanwhile, has long been accused by Saudi Arabia, the US and others of backing the Houthis, and is widely held to have increased its support for the group since Saudi Arabia entered the fray in 2015. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.
A new status quo
At the outset of the war, front lines were fluid and it was difficult to discern who was fighting whom. The confusion was compounded by the Houthi–Saleh alliance’s rapid expansion. The alliance’s arrival in some parts of Yemen was not in every case the result of a mass influx of troops, but rather reflected moves by Saleh loyalist military units already stationed in those areas to join Houthi militias that had been gathering nearby. The combined units then simply announced their presence, as happened in Aden and Taiz.
At the outset of the war, front lines were fluid and it was difficult to discern who was fighting whom.
At the same time, the Hadi government made a practice of claiming that resistance to the Houthi–Saleh alliance was being mounted by the ‘national army’ and Hadi loyalists. However, many of the groups fighting the alliance were informally assembled local militias, which complained of a lack of support from and communication with the government. The lack of cohesion and general confusion made it hard to discern patterns and groups that could be analysed.
Since 2015, however, most front lines and divisions of territorial control have calcified. A broad status quo of military power, governance and territorial subdivision has emerged. The internal coherence of each territory is influenced by the degree of conflict, the extent to which any one group has a monopoly over violence, and the availability of resources to sustain local structures (and, arguably, conflict). A sign that the main players in each territory do not expect major shifts in the nationwide balance of power can be seen in the extent to which they have engaged in internal political jostling for position since the spring of 2017. This has been evidenced, in particular, by the fighting between the Houthis and Saleh loyalists, whose internal rivalry ended in an intense battle for control of Sana’a in which the Houthis prevailed.
What follows is an account of the new internal status quo, based on digital mapping undertaken by Chatham House (see Introduction) to outline the different areas of control, smuggling routes and key influencers.14
Highlands and West Yemen
Before a schism in early December 2017, the Houthi–Saleh alliance jointly controlled seven of Yemen’s 21 governorates – Sa’dah, Hajja, Amran, Hodeidah, Sana’a, Dhammar and Ibb – in their entirety. It was also in direct contestation for control of the Taiz and Al Bayda governorates, and controlled or was contesting limited territory in five more (Al Jawf, Mareb, Al Dhale, Lahj and Shabwa). Despite infighting between the former allies, the Houthis still control the same territories and the front lines remain largely unchanged (in the aftermath of the fighting in Sana’a, UAE-backed southern troops gained some ground on Yemen’s west coast). Saleh loyalists do not control any territory at the time of publication.
The alliance was the only military power in the region under its control, and had become increasingly embedded in state institutions since the seizure of Sana’a by the Houthis in September 2014.15 It also formed governing councils, most recently (in July 2016) announcing a 10-member Supreme Political Council made up of an equal number of representatives of the Houthis and Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC), historically Yemen’s most powerful political party. The council formed a self-declared National Salvation Government in October 2016.
The Houthi–Saleh alliance, long seen as one of expediency, was never likely to be sustainable in the long term. In August 2017, tensions between the two sides mounted in the days before a major GPC rally in Sana’a. A few days after the rally, fighting broke out between rival pro-Houthi and pro-Saleh gunmen. A cooling-off period followed, with the GPC and Houthi representatives announcing de-escalation measures. However, open fighting between the erstwhile allies erupted on the streets of Sana’a in early December 2017. This ended with a decisive victory for the Houthis, including the death of Saleh and a number of senior GPC leaders.
At the heart of the alliance had been an increasingly integrated military and security structure, made up of units from pro-Saleh wings of Yemen’s armed and security services (the Republican Guard and the Central Security Forces, in particular) and the Houthis’ less clearly structured Popular Committees, informal militias built around cell-like structures with relatively fluid command lines. The Houthis also built parallel security structures within pre-existing state institutions, injecting their own operatives into the country’s main intelligence agencies (the National Security Bureau and the Political Security Organization); and using irregular, local Popular Committee militiamen – the so-called ‘Houthi neighbourhood watch’ – instead of conventional police forces to patrol checkpoints in urban spaces and villages.16
What emerged was a hybrid structure, with the Houthis integrating some conventional military and special forces-style tactics, along with the use of heavy weaponry not previously available to the movement, and the Republican Guard and Central Security Forces adapting to the Houthis’ fluid, insurgent approach to warfare.
In interviews before the internal split, officials and insiders in north Yemen described a quiet tug of war between the Houthis and Saleh over control of the military and security services. Saleh and his inner circle battled to maintain the combination of policy, finance, human resources, training operations and other structures required to sustain the armed forces over a prolonged period, while the Houthis promoted their own, more organic forms of resource management.17 For example, when Houthi militia commanders are killed, removed or promoted, their replacements are generally sourced from within the ranks of their units on the basis of military acumen and popular perceptions of their abilities rather than in observance of any formal hierarchy. This resulted in many combined Houthi–Saleh units falling under the leadership of young Houthi commanders and becoming increasingly ‘Houthified’.
The balance of power shifted significantly in the Houthis’ favour in October 2016, when a funeral hall in Sana’a was bombed by aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition. Among those killed were Major General Ali al-Jaifi, the commander of the Republican Guard, and Abdulqader Hilal, the mayor of Sana’a. The two men were seen as Saleh loyalists but had served as mediators, easing tensions between different parts of the Houthi–Saleh alliance, and were a somewhat moderating force in their approach to military and security affairs.18
The balance of power shifted significantly in the Houthis’ favour in October 2016, when a funeral hall in Sana’a was bombed by aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition.
A subsequent spat between the Houthi and Saleh leaderships prevented the appointment of a replacement for al-Jaifi, further weakening command-and-control structures, and strengthening the parallel, less structured networks preferred by the Houthis. By mid-2017, well-informed contacts were convinced that day-to-day battlefield operations were almost entirely directed by the Houthis’ senior leadership, while Saleh loyalists were increasingly marginalized in defence and security structures. The Houthis, meanwhile, claimed that Saleh’s nephew, Tareq Mohammed Saleh, the de facto leader of the family’s military forces, was training soldiers but not deploying them to the battlefield.
In the run-up to the December 2017 schism, interviewees had argued that tribal leaders in the northwest – particularly those of seven key tribes around Sana’a, the so-called ‘collar tribes’ – had become more closely aligned with Saleh (with whom their allegiances have historically lain). But, in the view of a well-informed source in Sana’a, tribal leaders – whose primary responsibility is to their tribes – are pragmatic and will ultimately work with the likely winner in any conflict rather than engage in what they think is a losing battle for control of the country.19 In the event, they chose to remain neutral during the fighting in Sana’a and chose to work alongside the Houthis once the latter had emerged as the clear winners. This was despite entreaties from both Saleh and Ali Mohsen, who is said to have lobbied tribal leaders to fight alongside the former president (in the days before his death, Saleh announced a split with the Houthis and called for a ‘new page’ to be opened in relations with the Saudi-led coalition; this was widely seen as a pre-planned signal that he was switching his allegiances).
While the Houthis have built up a dominant military and economic position, they have become increasingly unpopular among Yemenis in the highlands and west of Yemen. This is in no small part due to their tendency towards political repression, their heavy-handed tactics, their disrespect towards tribal leaders, and the growing perception that they are looting state resources and that their leadership is enriching itself while Yemen starves.
In one survey, living conditions and governance in the parts of Yemen controlled by the former Houthi–Saleh alliance were perceived as notably worse than in the rest of the country, although local security was perceived to be better than elsewhere.20 While those polled attributed the weakness of governance and lack of basic services to the war in general, the data show that the state is generally visible as a security actor in the northwest. This tallies with the perception of the Houthis’ approach to governance as being security-led, and as being focused on the diversion of resources to military operations and the maintenance of a police state.
Yet this dissatisfaction did not translate to a willingness to challenge the Houthis’ rule. When Saleh announced his split from the Houthis, he called for an ‘uprising’ against them but received surprisingly little support. The Houthis quickly quelled unrest in the highlands and west coast of Yemen and soon gained the upper hand in Sana’a. Since Saleh’s death – allegedly followed by the arbitrary execution of many key loyalists – morale has sunk among the Houthis’ critics.21 There is ‘no hope’ for anyone to dislodge the Houthis, one Sana’a resident said soon after the former president’s death. Saleh had been seen as the last resort for those who hoped to dislodge the Houthis. ‘In 2011 we wanted to get rid of him, but by this year we wanted him back if it meant getting rid of the Houthis,’ he said. ‘But now there is no chance. It seems like nobody can beat them.’22
The south
Five of Yemen’s southern governorates – Aden, Lahj, Al Dhale, Abyan and Shabwa – and its two easternmost governorates – Hadramawt and Al Mahra – are ostensibly controlled by the Hadi government and affiliated forces. In reality, the region is subject to varying degrees of control by a mixture of UAE-backed secessionist militias, which are organized into rough military units, emerging police forces, ‘elite forces’ and so-called ‘Security Belts’. Some of the Hadi government’s military allies also operate on the ground, often in competition with UAE-backed forces.
Before 1990, these governorates formed the independent People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). (Most of the territory of the current Al Dhale governorate was carved out of the PDRY-era Lahj province in the 1990s as part of a post-war redistricting process.) The governorates are now collectively – and, for newcomers, confusingly – known as ‘south Yemen’.
While the different groups on the ground in the south saw the former Houthi–Saleh alliance as a common foe, the Houthis have not attempted a serious incursion into the south since 2015. Internal divisions and tensions have thus become the more visible priority in the south. In particular, the UAE and its allies have come to see President Hadi as an impediment to progress, in part because of his government’s failure to establish control over the south and restore services, and in part because of its alliance with Islah-linked groups elsewhere in the country.23
Aden
Internal tensions in the south are most visible in the port city of Aden, previously the capital of the independent south. Control of the city is contested by a variety of different factions: militias and military units loyal to President Hadi, clustered around the presidential palace in central Aden; security forces loyal to the local, UAE-backed former governor, Aydrous al-Zubaidi, around the Mualla district; and UAE-led ‘Security Belt’ forces, many of them Salafist in nature, in much of the rest of the city. Also present are armed secessionist ‘Southern Resistance’ cells, which took part in the liberation of the city from Houthi–Saleh forces in 2015 but have struggled to find a patron since; and other military units with a broad range of alliances. Security in Aden has been disrupted by AQAP and the local wing of ISIS, although many locals say that attacks purportedly by extremists are often led by Saleh-era intelligence services embedded in the south.24
In February 2017, tensions between different factions boiled over when Hadi loyalists attempted to seize control of Aden airport from a local UAE-backed militia. The fighting was halted when a UAE Apache helicopter fired a rocket into a military vehicle occupied by pro-Hadi troops. Local news outlets reported that three people were killed. Later in the month, local militiamen clashed with Hadi loyalists during protests near the presidential palace over unpaid salaries and the Hadi government’s failure to provide medical treatment promised to those who had fought the Houthis in 2015.
In August 2017, news emerged of deal under which many UAE-backed units – and reportedly a considerable proportion of the overall UAE military contingent based in Aden – were to be deployed to other parts of the south. According to local sources, some Saudi and Sudanese troops had been brought into the city. Yet the deal did not lead to substantive change. President Hadi, who had been due to return to Aden from Riyadh, remained – and remains – in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi military contingent is largely confined to the presidential palace and a UAE-run military base. The port and airport remain under the control of UAE-aligned militias.
The ‘tribal south’
In the Lahj, Abyan, Al Dhale and Shabwa governorates, local militias and military units supported by the UAE (in turn supported by the US) have moved to secure territory from AQAP and from the former Houthi–Saleh alliance. The Houthis still control much of Damt district in Al Dhale, Mukayras district in Abyan, and Bayhan district in Shabwa – all reputedly key areas for cross-country trade and smuggling networks (see Chapter 3). They are also contesting territory in Kirsh district in Lahj. The various UAE-backed and government-affiliated military and security forces are largely made up of local men with close ties to the areas in which they operate, with senior military commanders drawn from influential families and tribes. This has led some analysts to designate these areas as the ‘tribal south’.
There is considerable crossover between key tribes and families, the various security forces and emergent local government structures in each governorate. The key military and political leaders in these governorates are uniformly secessionist in outlook. President Hadi has some loyalists in the different governorates (for example, Hadi-backed military units have been at the forefront of fighting with the former Houthi–Saleh alliance in Shabwa), and he has attempted to assert his control over the south by removing pro-UAE leaders and replacing them with his own affiliates. The broad balance of power, however, lies with pro-UAE secessionist groups, and will do so at least for as long as the UAE funds, equips and supports them.
Shortly after the death of Saleh, UAE-backed forces launched a fresh offensive along Yemen’s west coast, using forces drawn largely from Lahj province and backed by Sudanese troops, in the apparent aim of seizing Hodeidah port. The outcome of the campaign had not been decided at the time of publication.
East: divided Hadramawt and Al Mahra
In the telling of local residents, the governorate of Hadramawt has been broadly divided into two spheres of influence and control since the war began. Coastal Hadramawt covers the southern section of the governorate. It runs up to where the highlands of the governorate meet Wadi Hadramawt, which was controlled by AQAP until early 2016 and is now held by UAE-backed militias known as the Hadrami Elite Forces. Northern Wadi Hadramawt and the Empty Quarter, to the north, are largely controlled by military units that have not engaged in the wider civil war. Northern Hadramawt has long been a key location along smuggling routes that link southern and eastern Yemen with Sana’a and Saudi Arabia, and locals have attributed the relatively stability of the area to its importance among influential figures in the elite. However, contacts in Hadramawt have reported a spate of assassinations in the area, leading to fears of a ‘cold war’ for territorial control between loyalists of Saleh and those of Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar (it is unclear how the balance of power will be affected by Saleh’s death).
The governorate of Al Mahra, where there has been no fighting since the war began and which adjoins Oman to the east, is under the ostensible control of local tribes but has become the site of mounting internal tensions. Since the start of the war, Al Mahra’s main border crossing, ports and highways have become entry points for licit and illicit goods as well as objects of competition, with territory jealously guarded. ‘What is going on in Al Mahra is unbelievable,’ said a local researcher. ‘They have even divided the sea. This bit of the sea belongs to this tribe. All the tribes try to control the areas for trade.’25
Key military units in Al Mahra are manned and led by former Saleh regime insiders from the northern highlands (reputedly, the two main infantry brigades are respectively led by a pro-Saleh commander and a pro-Islah commander), while the governorate’s chief of security is a Hadi appointee. Since mid-2017, UAE-backed troops, under the umbrella of the Mahra Elite Forces and largely drawn from the local population, have also become increasingly visible. In November 2017, Saudi-trained and -equipped forces also arrived in the governorate.
Governance across the south is managed at the governorate and district levels. Most interviewees confirmed that local governance and service delivery are in effect organized by individual local leaders, even though members of the Hadi government are based in Aden. Humanitarian metrics and perceptions of governance demonstrate that there is no uniform implementation of governance standards across the south.
Unstable southern politics
A key complaint among southerners interviewed for this paper is that power politics has proven a far higher priority in the south than any attempt at imposing stability or introducing sustainable models of governance. Interviewees said that the power struggle between the Hadi government and the UAE has undermined southern unity, while President Hadi’s tendency to replace popular governors and military leaders who do not directly follow orders, or who are perceived as threatening his position, with less able allies has had a debilitating effect on attempts to build meaningful state structures.
In April 2017, Hadi removed Aydrous al-Zubaidi, a secessionist and military leader, from his post as governor of Aden after al-Zubaidi had repeatedly criticized what he called the ‘Riyadh government’ for doing too little in the south. Soon after, al-Zubaidi announced the formation of a Southern Transitional Council, a body widely perceived as UAE-backed, which promised to govern the south and secure the region’s autonomy from the rest of the country. The governors of Hadramawt and Shabwa were among the southern military and political leaders on the council, but they were removed from their positions by Hadi soon afterwards, apparently because of their support for al-Zubaidi’s plans and their close ties to the UAE.
Hadi’s attempts to assert control have had mixed results. He replaced Ahmed bin Breik, the governor of Hadramawt, with Farah Salem al-Bahsani, the head of the local military regional command. Bahsani is broadly popular among residents. He is said to have a Hadrami nationalist and pro-UAE world view not dissimilar to that of his predecessor. Shabwa residents say that Ahmed Lamlas, a tribal and military leader whom Hadi also removed from his post as governor, had made some progress towards stabilizing an often restive area that has been subject to attacks by AQAP and by the Houthi–Saleh alliance. The Houthis still control territory in Bayhan district, in the northwest of the governorate. ‘Lamlas was well organized, he contacted the tribes, he made a few deals that made the governorate much better than before,’ said a resident. ‘But now the area is out of control. The new governor cannot control anything.’26
Some southerners have questioned the dedication of the Hadi government and members of the coalition – the UAE, in particular – to defeating the Houthi–Saleh alliance, given the relative freedom with which goods, arms and money pass from south to north and vice versa. Land borders, ports and roads in Al Mahra, Hadramawt and Shabwa are said to be key to smuggling operations moving goods into the north, while goods are also said to pass north through Aden, Lahj and Al Dhale. Several southerners argued that the UAE, in particular, was more focused on fighting Islah than on combating the Houthi–Saleh alliance. Before Saleh’s death, a number of southern observers believed that the UAE saw the former president and his family as the lesser evil among key northern power players, considering him to be more pragmatic than the Houthis and more palatable than Islah.27
The northern tribal territories
The governorates of Al Jawf, Mareb and Al Bayda are tribal in nature. They have a history of resistance to centralized rule by the government in Sana’a, due to a mix of tribal, religious and local differences. As in Taiz, local groups in these governorates were among the first to take up arms against the Houthi–Saleh alliance, with varying degrees of success. Because they did not uniformly oppose the alliance, the war has affected the tribes in each governorate in different ways, with the impact on tribal cohesion often proportional to the intensity and duration of the conflict with the alliance.
Mareb has emerged as an apparent success story since the beginning of the war. Away from the front line of Sirwah, where fighting is ongoing, there has been little conflict elsewhere in the governorate since late 2015. Mareb is now almost entirely under the control of local authorities, led by the governor, the popular tribal sheikh Sultan al-Aradah. Mareb was historically the biggest oil-producing region in Yemen, and small volumes of oil and gas continue to be produced, refined and bottled at facilities there. The governor has been able to generate some income from oil and gas sales. He has used these revenues, as well as taxation of goods in the local market, to underwrite the local government.
The civil war has, to an extent, unified a historically fractious group of tribes in Mareb by providing them with a common enemy.
The civil war has, to an extent, unified a historically fractious group of tribes in Mareb by providing them with a common enemy. In this it has helped to resolve broader disputes, at least in the short term. In anticipation of the Houthis’ imminent expansion into the governorate in 2014, the Abeedah tribe of Mareb signed a truce with the Balhareth tribe in Shabwa. This proved particularly important when the Houthi–Saleh alliance attempted to enter Mareb from the east, near Bayhan district, one of the areas under the control of the Balhareth. The war has also helped some political rivalries to ease in Mareb, as members of the GPC have joined forces with allies of its rival Sunni Islamist party, Islah, to defend the governorate from the Houthi–Saleh incursion.28
Improvements in governance and service delivery in Mareb have been so marked that many Marebis say that the situation is better than before the war. In Mareb city, property prices have risen dramatically as the market has boomed. Several infrastructure projects are under way and electricity supply, historically limited to around four districts, now reaches nine out of of 14 districts.29 An influx of people displaced by the war has provided stimulus to the local economy, albeit while straining local resources. A Saba Region University has opened in Mareb city. A previous university, an outpost of Sana’a University, was shuttered years before the war began.30
However, local activists have voiced increasing concerns about the growing dominance of ‘highland’ elite players – known locally as the ‘al hadabah elite’ – over local security structures. Protests in Mareb city on 16 October 2017 reportedly left two people dead, and marked the latest ratcheting-up of tensions between local groups and military and security groups led by Ali Mohsen.31
Al Jawf and Al Bayda
Tribal groups in Al Jawf and Al Bayda have not been able to unite as effectively as those in Mareb. In Al Jawf, this is in part because the Houthis have been present in the governorate since at least 2009. Having gained territorial control and earned local support before the wider civil war broke out, they have been able to exploit differences between members of Yemen’s two main tribal confederations, the Bakil and Hashid.
In Al Bayda, where the conflict is particularly intense, some tribes have chosen to fight alongside the Houthi–Saleh alliance. This reflects their ties both to the Houthis and to Saleh, as well as pre-existing political and tribal rivalries. Al Bayda remains an important prize for the Houthis because of its crucial place in wartime smuggling and trade networks.
Government control
Some attempts have been made to bring the tribes in these areas under the control of the Hadi government. Most of those who fought against the Houthi–Saleh alliance in Mareb and Al Jawf have been enlisted into the army or the newly expanded police and security services. About 12,000 new troops have been added to military units established in Mareb since the beginning of the war, with around 75 per cent of these coming from the governorate.32 Another 7,000 men have been integrated into the military in Al Jawf.33
In Al Bayda, less of an effort has been made to integrate tribal militias into state structures. In mid-2016, President Hadi issued a decree to establish three new brigades in the governorate. However, only one (Brigade ‘117 Meca’) was actually formed.34 Its commander, Abdurrab al-Asbahi, and many of its members are from Al Bayda.
As in the past, the military has come to be seen as a source of partisanship and patronage. Corruption is reportedly rampant among military units, with commanders who have not been involved in front-line fighting becoming the chief beneficiaries of state funds rather than the tribes that have suffered the heaviest casualties during the war. This has weakened morale and is doing little to engender any sense of loyalty to the state instead of to the tribes.35
Senior military commanders and government officials are said to receive payments for entire ‘ghost brigades’ that exist only on paper, a long-standing practice in Yemen. Other forms of corruption include the failure by commanders to pay out the allowances allocated to new recruits; the theft of vehicles provided for front-line fighting; and the sale of heavy weapons on the black market, likely to the benefit of the former Houthi–Saleh alliance.
Taiz: a front-line city
In a complex conflict, the city of Taiz is the most fractured space, with different anti-Houthi militias vying for control of key areas while battling to repel the advance of their northern rivals.
At the outset of the conflict, the fight against Houthi–Saleh forces was led by groups and individuals identified as members or affiliates of Islah. Later, Salafist militias entered the city, seizing some territory and often clashing with Islah militias and the 22nd Mechanized Brigade, a military unit backed by the Hadi government and led by Sadeq al-Sarhan, an ally of Ali Mohsen. A small number of secular, non-military fighters, many of them affiliated with the local Nasserist party, also began the war working alongside Islah-backed militias but later distanced themselves, reputedly under the influence of UAE operatives.36 Locals now describe a broad alliance between UAE-funded groups – including Nasserists, Salafists led by Abu al-Abbas and the 35th Brigade commanded by Adnan al-Hammadi. Another Salafist militia, Kata’eb al-Hassam, operates independently of this alliance and is described by Taiz residents as being in alignment with AQAP.
Currently, forces of the former Houthi–Saleh alliance control the northeast section of Taiz along with the mountains overlooking it, a position the alliance previously used to shell the city. Salafist groups control the central basin of the city. Hadi-affiliated military units with historical ties to Ali Mohsen are sited in the southeast. Key Islah militias are sandwiched between the Salafist forces of Abu al-Abbas and Houthi/Saleh loyalist territory. Until 2016, the Houthi–Saleh alliance had controlled all of the key roads entering Taiz and was thus able to impose a siege on the city. However, local fighters now control a small road leading southwest to the neighbouring Lahj governorate and then on to Aden.
Taizis complain that the cause of the resistance has been damaged by political rivalries, particularly between UAE-backed militias and Islah fighters, and by infighting between the Hadi government and the UAE. By July 2017, UAE-backed militias had consolidated their control over Mokha, to the west of Taiz on the Bab al-Mandeb coast, after pushing Houthi–Saleh forces out of the area, and they had seized the key military camp of Khalid ibn al-Walid that overlooks a major highway interchange linking the north with Mokha and Taiz. A build-up of armoured vehicles led some observers to believe that an offensive was being planned to create a military corridor into Taiz. But troops and vehicles were reportedly pulled back after infighting between Hadi- and UAE-backed forces in Aden.37
Another complaint is that Taiz – as the site of brutal fighting, including the indiscriminate use of artillery in civilian areas by the former Houthi–Saleh alliance – serves a useful military and political purpose. Before the collapse of the alliance in December 2017, it was said to keep Houthi–Saleh forces stretched militarily; withdrawal from the city would have freed up considerable resources. The brutality of the fighting has also allowed the Hadi government and Saudi Arabia to offset criticisms of the Saudi-led aerial campaign. Many Taizis see themselves as abandoned and as little more than chips in a bigger political game.
‘They want to keep the city as a swamp; to do more crimes by shelling, so they can exchange crimes by airstrikes with the crimes of the Houthis here,’ said a local contact. ‘If there is a big operation here, they can do it. The Houthi and Saleh groups have been run out of various different areas. But the infighting is preventing anything from happening.’38
Perim and Socotra
The islands of Perim, to the west of the Bab al-Mandeb coast, and Socotra, in the Gulf of Aden, are reportedly under the control of Emirati military forces, leading to charges from some Yemeni groups that the UAE is ‘stealing’ Yemeni territory as part of a wider regional play for geostrategic power. The UAE is believed to be building an airbase on Perim,39 known in Arabic as Mayunn, which is situated on a strategically important chokepoint in global trade, and also to be developing a plan to turn Socotra into an ecotourism resort, port and military base. UAE news sources have reported that Yemeni forces are being trained on Socotra.
Other sites of contestation
In several districts of Al Jawf, in Nihm in northern Sana’a and in Sirwah in western Mareb, what were violently contested front lines have evolved into relatively defined border regions variously controlled by Houthi and Saleh forces, tribal militias, and military units affiliated with the Ali Mohsen-led First Armoured Brigade. The front lines in these areas ‘haven’t moved an inch’ since late 2016, said a foreign official who monitors the different conflict areas of Yemen.40 Fighting is causing significant casualties, and there is little sign that the conflict in Mareb is likely to shift beyond the current stalemate in the near future. Similarly, in 2015 Saudi-backed forces led by Ali Mohsen loyalists entered Midi, a port town in the northwestern Hajja governorate, but they have made no new ground since.
Map 2: Yemen – front lines and areas of contestation
Map 2: Yemen – front lines and areas of contestation
During 2016, Saudi-backed Yemeni forces, mainly made up of Salafist brigades transported from the south, attempted to open new fronts in key areas of the Jizan–Sa’dah border, which separates Saudi Arabia from Houthi-controlled territory. However, this yielded only a new set of static front lines, and many of the Salafist groups that were fighting in the border areas have since been redeployed to the south and Taiz.
Box 2: Unintended consequences – Yemen’s Salafist problem
Defining the many and continually evolving armed factions fighting in Yemen’s war is a complex task. Different groups have multiple, overlapping identities and loyalties – tribal, political, religious etc. This is particularly true of the numerous Salafist groups that have emerged since the beginning of the war, playing a key role in the battle for Aden in 2015 and in the ongoing struggle for Taiz, as well as in attempts to seize territory from Houthi militias on the border with Saudi Arabia.
The vast majority of Salafist militias find their roots in the Dar al-Hadith Institute, a Salafist network of madrassas and mosques, the most famous of which were located in the Kitaf and Dammaj districts of Sa’dah, the Houthis’ northern heartland. After numerous rounds of fighting between Salafist fighters and Houthi militias, residents of the Dar al-Hadith facilities were forced to evacuate in January 2014 after government mediation. Having scattered across the country in disarray, many groups found a new raison d’être in the fight for Aden against their old foe, the Houthis, in early 2015.
The Salafists’ rise to prominence is often attributed to the backing of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which entered the war by sending military equipment, heavy weaponry and later its own special forces into Aden to work alongside anti-Houthi groups. The Emiratis singled out the well-organized and highly motivated Salafist groups for financial backing, as well as for the supply of military equipment and weapons.
The UAE reportedly sees the Salafists as useful allies because of their organization, dedication to winning battles, and lack of the sort of political aspirations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. But the Salafists do not form a single, monolithic faction. In some cases, competition between different groups has led to armed clashes and resulted in intra-Salafist assassination campaigns. Some Salafist groups have proven themselves to be as extreme as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Some factions, in Taiz in particular, demonstrably include members of AQAP.
Since the liberation of Aden by a broad coalition of southern groups in 2015, the UAE has lost the allegiance of some prominent Salafist figures – in part because of the desire of key groups to engage in a war of sectarian-tinged vengeance with the Houthis. It remains unclear what goals, beyond revenge against the Houthis, the major Salafist groups in the south have, or what role they expect to play within the state or politics in the future.
What can be said with certainty is that the Salafist groups are not proxies for any one actor; nor can they be described as controlled from a foreign capital. Some formerly UAE-backed Salafist militias are now part of military units on the Saudi–Yemeni border, working alongside command structures put in place by Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. Others have aligned themselves with President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s forces in Aden, placing some Salafi groups in opposition to the UAE.
The use of religiously motivated fighters to achieve short-term goals is deeply problematic and has a track record of backfiring in Yemen. In the 1994 north–south civil war, a relatively small number of jihadists, many of them returnees from Afghanistan, were utilized by the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh against the socialist south. The war was won by the regime, but the jihadists empowered during the conflict became the forerunners of AQAP. The rise of the Salafists risks fuelling religiously motivated violence and deepening sectarian divisions in a country previously immune to religious conflict. As the civil war continues, this could have dire, irreversible consequences for the country’s social fabric, setting in motion all too familiar cycles of repression, marginalization, division and revenge.
Analysis by contributing researcher Iona Craig.
7 Hill, G., Salisbury, P., Northedge, L. and Kinninmont, J. (2013), Yemen: Corruption, Capital Flight and Global Drivers of Conflict, Chatham House Report, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/194239; and Salisbury, P. (2016), Yemen: Stemming the Rise of a Chaos State, Research Paper, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/yemen-stemming-rise-chaos-state.
8 Salisbury (2016), Yemen: Stemming the Rise of a Chaos State.
9 UN Security Council (2016), ‘Letter dated 22 January 2016 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen established pursuant to Security Council resolution 2140 (2014) addressed to the President of the Security Council’, http://digitallibrary.un.org/record/819771/files/.
10 See Clements, K. (2010), Traditional, Charismatic and Grounded Legitimacy, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, http://www.gtz.de/de/dokumente/gtz-2010-en-traditional-charismatic-grounded-legitimacy.pdf.
11 Phillips, C. (2016), The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East, Yale University Press,
12 Yadav, S. P. (2017), ‘How war is changing Yemen’s largest Islamist coalition’, Washington Post, 22 March 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/22/how-war-is-changing-yemens-largest-islamist-coalition/?utm_term=.b3a871f47a55. Philbrick Yadav writes: ‘Islah is typically referred to as Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood party, but the reality has always been more complex. Founded in 1990, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah) was a diverse coalition from the outset, bringing together members of the Muslim Brotherhood and tribal leaders, Salafists and conservative business executives.’
13 Human Rights Watch (2017), ‘Yemen: UAE Backs Abusive Local Forces: Resolve ‘Disappearances’, Grant Access to Detention Sites’, 22 June 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/22/yemen-uae-backs-abusive-local-forces.
14 For a detailed digital map of the political geography of Yemen’s chaos state, please visit https://yemen-map.chathamhouse.org.
15 From September 2014, the Houthis began to appoint overseers to each ministry office in Sana’a, often supported by more educated and politically sophisticated members of the movement’s political wing and in some cases by former GPC officials. Islah officials were uniformly removed.
16 Author’s interviews in Sana’a and elsewhere in Yemen, January–September 2017.
17 Interviews conducted by a Chatham House consulting researcher in May 2017.
18 Author’s interviews, May and June 2017.
19 ‘The northwestern tribes tend to want to work with whoever is strongest and most likely to win, unless there is a serious attack on their inner workings,’ an individual with close ties to several tribal leaders told the author via a social media messaging platform in September 2017.
20 The data were collated by the Yemen Polling Center, a nonpartisan research centre based in Sana’a and backed by the EU. Yemen Polling Center (2017), Perceptions of the Yemeni public on living conditions and security-related issues, http://www.yemenpolling.org/advocacy/upfiles/YPCPublications_YPC-Data–Perceptions-of-the-Yemeni-public-on-living-conditions-and-security-related-issues–May-2017.pdf.
21 Houthi spokesmen claim that Saleh was killed during a gunfight as he attempted to flee the capital, but subsequent reports suggest he was executed at his home in Sana’a. In the days after Saleh’s death, it became clear that a number of his loyalists had also been killed under equally murky circumstances, including his nephew Tareq, his son Khaled and Aref al-Zuka, the assistant secretary general of the GPC.
22 Author’s interview via social media messaging application, 4 December 2017.
23 Assertion based on interviews with several Emirati policymakers in London, Washington and Abu Dhabi over the course of 2017.
24 For a persuasive analytical framework for this argument, see Jerrett, M. and al-Haddar, M. (2017), Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: From Global Insurgent to State Enforcer, Hate Speech International, https://www.hate-speech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/From-Global-Insurgent-to-State-Enforcer.pdf.
25 Author’s interview with south Yemeni researcher via social media messaging application, August 2017.
26 Author’s interview via social media messaging, September 2017.
27 Several diplomats, interviewed between June and October 2017, echo this sentiment.
28 Author’s interview with local journalist, 4 May 2017; author’s interview with local leader, 24 April 2017.
29 Consultant researcher’s interview with governor secretary in Mareb, 5 December 2016.
30 Hadarm.net (2017), ‘Discussions under way over construction of three new faculty buildings at Mareb’s Saba University’ [munaqashat ‘iiedad tasamim li’iinsha’ maban lthlath kliyat bijamieat ‘iiqlim saba bimarib], Hadarm.net, 13 March 2017, http://www.hadarem.net/?ac=3&no=25287.
31 Local sources indicate that the Mareb security governorate leadership is drawn entirely from outside the governorate, as is the local Special Forces chain of command and that of the Political Security Organization (PSO).
32 Consultant researcher’s interview with military official in Mareb, 27 April 2017.
33 Author’s interview with a military officer in charge of enforcing fingerprints, 27 April 2017. It is hard to confirm the figures given to the author for all governorates, as there is a lack of transparency surrounding the enlistment process.
34 ‘Meca’ stands for ‘mechanized’.
35 A military general from Al Bayda indicated that the commander of the brigade formed specifically to liberate Al Bayda had no prior military training. Interview, 7 May 2017. Several former military officers, resistance fighters and activists indicate that thousands have been hired into senior positions with no prior training or military experience. Thousands were enlisted but did not take part in the fight against Houthis. A resistance fighter mentioned a figure of 9,000 men. Several also complain that corruption in the pro-Hadi military is worse than it was during the Saleh era.
36 According to local residents.
37 Author’s interviews with key southern contacts, September 2017.
38 Author’s interview via Skype, July 2017.
39 Binnie. J. (2017), ‘Large runway construction project underway on Yemen’s Mayyun/Perim island in Bab al-Mandab, probably another UAE military base in the making’, tweet by IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly editor Jeremy Binnie, 17 February 2017. The tweet includes a map of the project. See https://twitter.com/jeremybinnie/status/832555853337284608.
40 Author’s interview via Skype, September 2017.