DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia on Thursday called on Emirati-backed separatists in southern Yemen to withdraw from two governorates it now controls, a move that threatened to spark a confrontation within a fragile coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the country’s north.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry’s statement came in an effort to put public pressure on the Southern Transitional Council, a Yemeni separatist force long supported by the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia supports the National Shield Forces of Yemen’s internationally backed government in the war against the Houthis.
The separatists’ actions “led to an unjustified escalation that harmed the interests of all segments of the Yemeni people, as well as the southern cause and coalition efforts,” the ministry said. “The kingdom emphasizes the importance of cooperation between all Yemeni factions and components to exercise restraint and avoid any measures that could destabilize security and stability.”
Meanwhile, the Houthis buried four of their fighters, including the top commander of the missile and drone group, who was believed to have been killed in March, in the first round of US airstrikes that hit the rebels in March.
Negotiations in progress
The Southern Transitional Council moved into Yemen’s Hadramout and Mahra governorates earlier this month. The Saudi statement said mediation efforts were underway for the council’s forces to return to their “previous positions outside the two governorates and hand over the camps in those areas” to the National Shield Forces.
“These efforts remain ongoing,” the ministry said.
The local authority of Hadramout governorate said it supported the Saudi announcement and called on Emirati-backed separatists to withdraw to positions outside the governorates.
Those aligned with the council have increasingly flown the flag of South Yemen, which was a separate country from 1967-1990. Demonstrators gathered in the southern port city of Aden on Thursday to support political forces calling for South Yemen to secede from Yemen again.
After the Houthis captured Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north in 2014, Aden has been the seat of power for the internationally recognized government and forces aligned against the Houthi rebels.
The separatists’ actions have strained the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have close ties and are members of the OPEC oil cartel but have also competed for influence and international business in recent years.
There has also been an escalation of violence in Sudan, another Red Sea nation, where the kingdom and the Emirates are backing opposing forces in an ongoing war.
More chaos
The Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile. Iran denies arming the rebels, although Iranian-made weapons have been found on the battlefield and in shipping bound for Yemen, despite a UN arms embargo.
A Saudi-led coalition, armed with American weapons and intelligence, went to war on the side of Yemen’s exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting have pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.
The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including combatants and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
The Houthis have launched attacks on hundreds of ships in the Red Sea corridor because of the Israel-Hamas war, significantly disrupting regional shipping.
While traffic has picked up recently in the lull in attacks, many shippers continue to bypass Africa via the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Further chaos in Yemen could draw the United States back.
Washington launched an intense bombing campaign against the rebels earlier this year, which US President Donald Trump halted just before his trip to the Middle East in October. The Biden administration has also conducted strikes against the Houthis, including using B-2 bombers to target what it described as underground bunkers used by the Houthis.
In Sanaa, crowds gathered as men in uniform carried coffins draped in the Yemeni flag and covered in flowers during funerals for the four Houthi fighters.
The dead fighters include Major General Zakaria Abdullah Yahya Hajar, whom analysts have identified as the group’s drone and missile chief. US forces targeted Hajar, who allegedly received training from the Quds Expeditionary Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, in a March strike in Sanaa.
Houthi has not provided any information on how or when he died. However, a transcript of a conversation between top US officials on the Signal messaging app, later published by The Atlantic magazine, included then-national security adviser Mike Waltz referencing the initial March 15 strike targeting a Houthi missile commander.
“The first target — their top missile guy — we had a positive ID on him going into his girlfriend’s building and now he’s down,” Waltz wrote at the time.
The Houthis have increasingly threatened Saudi Arabia and taken dozens of workers from UN agencies and other aid groups prisoner, claiming without evidence that they were spies – something fiercely denied by the United Nations and others.