How Yemen Broke the Saudi-UAE Alliance

For years, Yemen's civil war has seemed quite simple. A Theocratic militia allied to Iran illegally captured the state, forcing the legitimate government into exile, which a Saudi-led military coalition has been fighting to restore. Yet, as is now abundantly clear, different visions about Yemen's future drove apart the two leading powers in that coalition. I mean the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Both have their own long-term national security objectives. The one prioritizing the defense of the existing nation state, the other laser focused on combating the Muslim Brotherhood while pursuing its own unique strategic interests. Barack Shaban, a Yemeni researcher and political analyst, has spent years watching those tensions develop inside Yemeni politics, inside regional alliances far from the public eye. He explains how those fault lines formed, the role Yemeni political divisions played in the crisis, and how eventually tensions between the two Gulf superpowers exploded into open hostility. I'm Thomas Small, this is my conflicted conversation with Barack Shaban. Barack, hello, hello, it's so nice to see you, welcome back to conflicted, how are you man? I'm doing good, very happy to see you too. Anytime something happens in Yemen, my first thought is we got to get Barack Shaban, dear friend of the show, I dare say first friend of the show because Barack, you were the first third party to come on to conflicted for that incredible tour de force, five episode arc on the history of Yemen, which most people say is probably like the highlight of conflicted. I certainly consider it to be one of our best arcs, and I'm so glad that you've agreed to come back on to talk about what's going on in Yemen today. It is such a pleasure, I'm always happy to speak with you, and like always, Yemen never sees two amazes. No, not at all, I mean, most recently, on the 30th of December, just under two weeks ago, as of this recording, the world woke up, and once again, Yemen was in the headlines. It was very surreal, Thomas, I woke up, we were gathered with the family for Christmas, and I see my brother, and he said, what do you think? Did you see what happened? I said, what do you mean, what are you talking about? He said, open the news quickly, I opened the news, and I see a Yemeni TV presenter stating the declaration by the Yemeni President that the UAE has to leave, and they have 24 hours to evacuate. And when you say the President of Yemen, you mean President Rashad Al Al Alimi, the head of the Presidential Council, which is the formally UN-recognized governing body for Yemen, you don't mean the leader of the Houthis who govern from Sana Abdul-Milacle-Houthi. Yes, and that is important, because that's the government that even the UAE recognizes as the legitimate government of Yemen, and that is the President that supposedly the UAE and Saudi Arabia are in a coalition to support. You know, one of the most remarkable things about what we all woke up to on the 30th of December was the fact that long, simmering tensions, sometimes that, you know, that broke out into open hostility between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which insiders, and people who really know what's going on in Yemen and in the wider regional geopolitics, always knew about. This wasn't a secret, but it came out into the open and was made public in a truly unprecedented way, which gives everyone scope now to discuss it rather more openly than in the past. Here on conflicted, we always framed the Civil War as more or less a black versus white, Houthi versus coalition conflict. In order to simplify the narrative, we rather underplayed the tensions within the anti-Houthi coalition. But now those tensions have exploded into the public in a big way, so we're going to spend this episode trying to make sense of those tensions rooted in the history specifically of the Civil War. And for that reason, in order to understand it, I'm sorry dear listeners, we do have to go back to 2015. Yes, Thomas. If you go back to 2015, the day Saudi Arabia announced a coalition to support the Yemeni present at the time, Abdul Abumal-Soradhi, the Houthis were literally inside Aden in the South of Yemen. The Houthis looked like they have taken control of the whole territory. So Saudi Arabia announced forming a coalition and multiple countries announced joining but three important countries, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. At the beginning, Saudi Arabia and Qatar worked more formulating the political side of the coalition to support this political entity known as the government of Yemen, which was literally in ruins. The state had collapsed and what has remained are basically remnants of a Yemeni army, literally local tribesmen supporting Abdul Abumal-Soradhi and a loose network of fighters who are fighting the Houthis. You say the state had collapsed. I think we need to call a spade a spade here. The state had been destroyed by the Houthis who in a coup overthrew it in alliance with the ousted former dictator of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The reason that Saudi and Qatar were more immediately involved in formulating political solutions to this crisis is because before, in the olden days, even before the Arab Spring, it was Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent, Qatar, that already were more involved in internal politics inside Yemen, especially inside the old North Yemen, where the capital Sanaa is, and which became the political heartland of the newly unified Yemen from 1990 onwards. So for a long time, Saudi Arabia was intimately involved in Yemeni politics, working closely at times with Ali Abdullah Saleh. But also with deep connections to a very important opposition party, the Islah party, which was a very important political player, again, focused largely on the North, but also nationwide. Yes, exactly. Saudi Arabia had deep connections with the tribal network in Yemen. There are actually many tribesmen who have residency or dual citizenship between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and they have forged very, very close relationship with the royal family in Saudi Arabia. That also includes tribal figures, who inside Yemen have been part of the Islah Alliance, the Islah network of tribal and military and economic alliance inside Yemen. So Saudi Arabia in a way had connections with all sides, everyone inside the country, and they viewed that as important for their own national interest. Absolutely. Yemen and Saudi Arabia share an extremely long and porous border. So Saudi Arabia has a national interest in Yemen, to a greater degree than its partners in the coalition who are based on the Arabian or Persian Gulf and do not share a land border with Yemen. But another thing to point out, we're talking about the Islah party. It's a broad tent party comprised of three pillars. And as you say, tribal networks, and when you hear tribe, dear listeners, you mustn't think a classical Arabian nomadic kind of tribe. That's not how tribes work in North Yemen, and you also mustn't think of like poor people only, because the tribal networks in Yemen are extremely wealthy, extremely politically powerful, and globally connected. So we say tribes, but these are very, very wealthy, powerful, often militarized networks of power in Yemen. So there's the tribal networks, part of which were aligned with the Islah party. There was a military strong man who was a pillar of the previous Ali Abdullah Saleh regime. His name is Ali Musin al-Ahmar. He was also affiliated with the Islah party, and was the means whereby the old dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh was able to relate to the Islah party and through the Islah party to other actors, including Saudi Arabia. And the third pillar of the Islah party, and this is important, is political Islamist Muslim Brotherhood affiliated activists. So the Islah party has these three pillars. Tribes, Ali Musin al-Ahmar and his military connections, and the Muslim Brotherhood. And it's that third pillar that always meant that the United Arab Emirates was extremely skeptical of the Islah party, especially in the Arab Spring era when the United Arab Emirates decided that the Muslim Brotherhood was enemy number one for the Middle East. Yeah. So the connections of Saudi Arabia, as you mentioned, were historic to the north, but they also have historic connections to the south. Many Hadrami families, for example. So the Hadramat is an area of the south along the coast, a bit towards the east along the coast of Yemen, focused on the port of Al-Mukhalla. Yes, many Hadrami families have lived in Saudi Arabia, and many of them are big, big names in Saudi Arabia. The most notorious being bin Laden. Yeah, one of them. As an example, they have banks, construction, and many industries in Saudi Arabia. Now going back to the coalition, Qatar and Saudi Arabia suggested at that time to Abdul Mansor Haddi, the Yemeni president, to appoint a deputy, a VP, when Haddi arrived to Riyadh. He was old. He was supposed to rule just for the transitional period. He looked very sick. They were really concerned about his health. What would happen if he would die? It was around that time that I actually met President Haddi, though it was almost eleven years ago. He already did look very old and quite weak. I think he'd been shocked by what had happened to him. He was essentially sent in to exile because the country that he oversaw was toppled in a coup. Haddi had also had, when you met him, he just survived an assassination attempt. So you can imagine the circumstances he was under at that time. But just also to remind the listeners, President Haddi had been the dictator Ali Abbalah Salah's vice president. And then when Salah stepped down during the Arab Spring, during a negotiation involving the GCC, the UN, the US, and the EU, and Yemeni partners, a deal was struck where Haddi, the previous vice president, would become president of a transitional government while a new constitution was agreed for the country. It was this process that, and it's more complicated than just this, but it's this process that the Houthis overturned and forced President Haddi into exile in Riyadh, which is where he was when the Saudis said, "Look, dude, you need a vice president." But also going back to, for example, the role of Qatar, Qatar was actually at the time a member of the Security Council. The UN Security Council. And it helped to draft something called the 2216 Resolution, which reinforced the legitimacy of the Yemeni government and the presidency of Abdul Abba Mansoor Haddi as the legitimate government of Yemen and formulated a UN mandate for the coalition to come and intervene. You can imagine how the geopolitics were working, Qatar had a seat, a temporary seat on the UN Security Council, which gave it power, which meant the Saudis were working with Qatar. A country that, as we all know, Saudi has on and off again bad relations with. But at that time, Qatar was useful to the Saudis as they were trying to create this coalition because it was through Qatar that Saudi had access to the UN Security Council. Exactly. So both countries came to President Haddi and they suggested to appoint Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. So he's one of the pillars of the Islah party, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a military strongman who was linked to the Islah party. After he had left Sana'a in 2014, he was living in Saudi Arabia. But he was kind of behind the scenes working with the tribes, with the former generals trying to bring together the former Yemeni army to fight the Houthis. Now at that time, President Haddi rejected this idea. He felt that he would be under the thumb of Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, despite his old age, is more dynamic, very energetic, have very strong and deep connections, especially to the north of Yemen. Haddi felt that if he had agreed, he would be pushed to the sideline. I mean, if you think about how the politics had worked before the Arab Spring, Haddi had been chosen by Ali Abdullah Saleh to be his vice president because he was understood to be a little bit bitable, a bit weaker. And as he's from Abyan, a southern province, he was seen as a candidate that would kind of neutralize any southern separatist instincts, like the south would be represented in the cabinet by a vice president, who was also weak enough that Ali Abdullah Saleh could control him. Whereas Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar was a childhood friend of Ali Abdullah Saleh, was extremely strong and was useful to Saleh in that regard as he could knock heads together in the north amongst the tribes, and in the many wars that Saleh waged against the Houthis when the Houthis began to organize, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar was really the commander of those wars and was a hammer of the Houthis. President Haddi was suggested that Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar should be his vice president, but that was rejected. Exactly. So Haddi, at the time, had a prime minister called Khalid Baha, a typical administrator, the technocrat, he was a minister of oil and minerals, he was an oil engineer himself, not a typical politician, not a tribesman, a technocrat, Haddi agreed to appoint him as his deputy. So you can imagine the dynamics at the time, in Riyadh. In the south of Yemen, you have a very loose network of fighters known as the southern resistance, it's kind of a unifying umbrella for everyone in the south. So these are fighters from Aiden, from Hadram out, from Shabwa, from Abyan, all these areas in the south stretching into the east up to the Amani border. Exactly. We refer to them in Yemen as the eastern provinces. So there were pockets of resistance literally in every province fighting the Houthis, composed of everyone in the south. So you'd have Salafists, members of Islam, local tribesmen, but you also have southern secessionists, and those southern secessionists are very important because they are fighting the Houthis, but they're not fully aligned with the broader aim of the coalition, which is to reinstate Yemening government for a unified Yemen. They kind of view it as a necessary step to have more autonomy, more control over their own regions. We need to remind the listener here that until 1990, south Yemen was its own state. It was a communist state allied with the Soviet Union, but even before that, all the way back in history, for most of South Arabian history, the mountainous north, and the coastal desert southeast, were not politically united, with one very important exception during the Hemiarite kingdom from about 100 BC to 380. So about 400 years, all of South Arabia was united under one kingdom, and this had a cultural memory of a strong united Yemen. But for most of that time, Yemen was not politically united. The cause of political union for all of Yemen is a project that was never fully realized, not even from 1990 onwards when a new United Yemeni republic came into being, because the dynamics, the separatist dynamics, and the dictator qualities of Ali Abdullah Saleh never allowed that republic to fully form, it was sort of in the womb still when the Arabs spring started. And it's also part of the Arab nationalism project when Nasr came to Yemen. He had this dream that Yemen would be united, because all Arabs in his head should be united. So that's why up until today, many Egyptians are supportive, very strong defenders of the unity of Yemen, because they feel a deep connection as if it's their own project. Now that's really interesting. It didn't happen even immediately during Nasr's time, but eventually it happened. So they feel they were part of that legacy. So the listener can imagine the feelings inside Yemen, the feelings in the Arab world, but also how the unity was handled, do you have real grievances in the South of Yemen who felt under the thumb of Ali Abdullah Saleh, not really part of a united country. And if you are a southerner and you're proud of your southern heritage, you've just watched the government in the North be toppled by, in your mind, a crazy, zadi extremist movement from the far North and they've come down into your own South and they're killing, you know, your own people. You must have thought the North is just a problem if you had those sympathies already. Yeah, I mean, I remember the words of a very known Yemen official who is from Abyan himself and he will be very important in our story today. His name is Ahmad Al-Masari. He was a close associate of Ali Abdullah Saleh and he was one of his strong men in the South of Yemen who always relied on him during elections and so on. Who told Ali Abdullah Saleh to his face, we in the South united to be the Republic of Yemen, not to become the Hashemite Kingdom under the rule of Abdul Malik al-Houthi. So if you think we're going to continue in this unity, you're delusional. When he left, he walked out of Sana and went all the way to Aydin where the sudden separatist or secessionist movement hailed him as, yeah, finally some, you know, big names are coming out of the Saleh regime and are joining our cause. So you can see, dear listeners, why we went back to 2015. We need to lay out the game board here. There's so many different players. Now, how are we going to bring the Emirates into the story? Okay, so in 2015, the Emirates went to Saudi Arabia and said, I can provide tactical support on the ground support, something that Saudi Arabia desperately needed at that time. There were Saudi officers, but the heavy reliance was really on the former Yemeni army generals who were shattered spread across Yemen and outside Yemen, you're trying to bring them together. But the United Arab Emirates said, I can provide tactical support, logistical support on the ground, and then we can start pushing the Houthis from inside Aydin. They sent their actual troops were in July 2015 because of tactical support on the ground, the UAE with the southern resistance managed to kick out the Houthis from Aydin. And then they started moving very quickly across the southern provinces. They started to push the Houthis one after the other. I remember 2016, we thought that the whole Houthi era is about to collapse because of how quickly the provinces were collapsing. Yeah, I think we need to give credit to the Emirates and their remarkable ability to coordinate the Yemeni troops on the ground. The Emirati armed forces is not vast, but it is extremely well appointed, and it has a very good reputation. The current president of the UAE, Muhammad bin Zayed, was a soldier himself and played a big role in building up that force in close partnership with the United States. So Emirati, special ops, especially, but also command and control logistics coordination on the ground was extremely vital to those efforts. But before we go on, we have to talk about something else, Barat, which is something that Aiman, my co-host, our mutual friend revealed on an episode that we released just this Tuesday, which is that at the very beginning when Saudi Arabia was putting together the Arab coalition against the Houthis, the Emirates came to the kingdom and said, "Look, what are we going to do if we fail to dislodge the Houthis from Sanaa?" Already then, the Emirates were extremely open to, indeed, supportive of the idea that South Yemen should return to being an independent country if that were to happen. Now, one might think that that was always the Emirates preferred solution anyway. For two major reasons. First of all, national interest, because the Emirates know they can very much benefit from an independent South Yemen, whose ports are controlled by the Emirates, whose natural resources fall within the Emirates, energy, security, commercial nexus, etc. But for another reason, as well. Like the Emirates, those southeastern coastal regions of Yemen were in the British Empire, were part of the British Empire's network of allied states around the Arabian littoral around the Arabian coast. So there is a deep shared historical and indeed political relationship between Emirates like Abu Dhabi and the others, and these places, Aiden, Hadramaut, Muqalla, Mocha, etc. along the south coast of Yemen. So one can imagine the Emirates going to that meeting already thinking, you know, in our mind, this whole unified Yemen idea, it's not really in our interests. A strong and independent South Yemen would more be in our interests. I think that could possibly be the case. Of course I trust Amin's sources, he sometimes talk to people that maybe me and you don't have access to, but I can tell you the Saudi approach to many Yemenis, including myself, which they've said from the beginning, that they have no intention of breaking Yemen. And the future of Yemen will only be decided by Yemenis. Now their main aim is that they need a stable and friendly government in the north of Yemen to dislodge the Houthis, the Houthis is a problem for Yemen, and also a problem for the Saudis. And that's why they are intervening. The last thing the Saudis want is an independent north Yemen dominated by the Houthis right on its border. That's just like out of the question for the Saudis. They might even agree on paper that an independent South Yemen would be great for everyone, but if it resulted in a north Yemen being dominated by the Houthis, they'd say absolutely not that is non-negotiable. Now, let's return to this question of Hadis vice president. Okay. So Khaled Baha'i became the vice president and the prime minister of Yemen. Now these discussions are happening in Riyadh. The situation in the ground is very complicated. You would have the Houthis just left Aidan. You have this southern resistance, a group of militants really on the ground that now the government and the coalition, you know, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to bring together. And on paper, they are supposed to be under the umbrella of a new ministry of defense and ministry of interior. So the state has to get back together. The situation on the ground was still, of course, very messy. There were cells of Al Qaeda who were controlling pockets inside Aidan itself. But the general mood was the southern resistance made it. They pushed the Houthis out with the help of the United Arab Emirates. The Emirates actually even lost troops. Some of their soldiers were killed in the Battle of Aidan. So they were hailed inside Aidan as heroes. Almost all factions saw them as saviors. And so with that energy behind them slowly over the course of the next 12 months, the coalition's forces on the ground coordinated by the Emirates while being provided air support from the Saudis made incredible gains. They stampeded across the south towards the Babel Mandeb straight, liberated it, started to make their way up the West Coast. They penetrated into the north towards the important city of Taz, towards the important province, sort of north-ish east central Mattrib where a lot of Yemen's oil wealth is based. They were making big gains. They're heading towards Sanaa. So there was a lot of momentum in that early 18 months, say. Yes. So in 2016, as you mentioned, they even went to Mattib. The first time you'd have Islam members working alongside Emirati officers, fighting the Houthis and they've made incredible gains, then it all suddenly stopped. So when the troops reached literally to the outskirts of Taz, very important city in the heart of central Yemen, they stopped. Many justifications were being provided. We have to assess the situation. We need to develop a plan. But the resistance inside Taz, the tribesmen and the fighters and the military generals, did manage to push the Houthis out of the main city. So they were waiting, desperately waiting for the support and aid to come from the coalition, similar to what happened in Aden, and they waited, and waited, and waited. But support didn't come. You were very interested in the situation in Taz in those early years. In fact, when I met you, you were very animated about the situation on the ground in Taz. You were aware that it wasn't being reported, because it didn't neatly fall within the media's framing of the civil war at that time. If that story was reported, it would give a different angle to the whole war in Yemen, different from what was being reported inside the United Kingdom or the United States. All of the campaign in London or in D.C. was to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia. When this was happening in Taz, the Houthis managed to surround Taz. They enforced a really brutal siege on the city. By the way, for the listener to understand, this is Yemen's most populated province. It is the most populated area in Yemen. Yemen's kind of intellectual hub. The most educated amongst all Yemenis are the Tazi people, so they have contributed enormously across Yemen. Now, Taz was under heavy, heavy siege. They prevented water from coming in. They prevented oxygen canisters from going into hospitals. Food was being blocked, literally a whole city living under siege under agony. It was being besieged by the Houthis, and the best gift you could give them is if you start giving a narrative that if only Saudi Arabia stopped, this war will be over. Yes, in the West Saudi Arabia was being framed as the aggressor in this war, which was extremely simplistic. But if we zero in on this situation in Taz, you have a very populist city, a very politically mobilized, very sophisticated middle-class city, surrounded by Houthi troops who are laying siege to it, so inside the city, militant resistance networks have formed to some extent dominated by the Islam party, as it happens, were surrounded by the Houthi forces, and then those Houthi forces were becoming increasingly surrounded by the Emirati-organized resistance forces. It was a very strange situation, and as you say, the Emirati-supported advance just sort of stopped and was not intervening to end the Houthi siege of the city. This is happening at the same time while the question of the vice president of Yemen was once again rising to the fore. So that man, Khalid Baha, the technocrat, had been appointed vice president, but in 2016, as Taz was under siege, Baha was dismissed, and Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar was appointed vice president. I.e., the man with those close ties to the Islam party, which in the Emirat eyes is the Muslim Brotherhood party of Yemen. Exactly, Thomas. So you can imagine the political dynamics here. The United Arab Emirates who are becoming increasingly influential on the ground are not happy with the pickings of President Haddi, they're seeing the Islam party gaining influence in the government. While on the ground, they were hesitant to push into Taz because they viewed, and maybe rightly so, that the majority of what's called the resistance inside Taz were dominated by Islam. When Khalid Baha himself in a podcast that he just did last month, he said one of the reasons he didn't go into Taz was because Taz was dominated, or the fighters were dominated by Islam party, and the last thing they wanted to do is support a Muslim Brotherhood affiliated group. This meant, unfortunately, for the city of Taz, for the people of Taz that they had to live and endure a brutal siege by the Houthis that stayed for a long, long time. So let's leave Taz for now and go back to the dynamic between Padi, President Haddi, the official president of Yemen in Riyadh, backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates now have formulated strong connections to local leaders on the ground. To their credit, there was pockets of al-Qaeda-controlled neighborhoods or areas inside Aden and the outskirts of Aden that they crushed, again, doing the same thing, tactical support, with close connection with the local fighters on the ground, managed to push the remaining affiliates of al-Qaeda out of the city. Now for the people, and I've interviewed many, many people inside Aden at the time, they were happy that the al-Qaeda were being pushed and being crushed, but they were not satisfied with the means, the method were brutal. And while that was happening also, the cast of this accusation of being Muslim Brotherhood or being affiliated with terrorist network was a wide cast. It meant detaining many people, it meant nitrates, it meant creating informal detention centers. So the same people who were once very supportive of what the UAE did inside Aden were starting to hesitate, they're starting to wonder of what's going to happen to the future, because their minds, their methods, the method of these southern factions supported by the UAE were very brutal. It was around this time as well that reports were emerging of a group of Western mercenaries organized by and paid for by the Emirates, who were effectively acting as assassins, bumping off members, you know, maybe of al-Qaeda, but certainly of the Islam Party that were politically inconvenient to the growing presence in the South of a UAE-sponsored political reality. So the UAE was entrenching in the South. It built a number of bases, a military base in Aden, several bases across the South. Behind the scenes, slowly, slowly, the Emirates were creating a new political military reality across the South. And they were heavily reliant on those, again, those southern secessionists. The interesting thing, Thomas, about this mercenary group is that they were hired by the UAE in 2015, in around August 2015, which kind of shows that the intention at the time was that they are hiring mercenaries for the specific goal, which they state themselves, is assassinating members of the Islam Party. And we have to see this in the wider context. First, at this point, the Emirates had set itself totally against the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East in the Arab Spring era. The Emirates are also mobilizing forces and actively intervening in theaters like Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc., against any political actors aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. This includes Yemen as well, even though the Islam Party is only partially Muslim Brotherhood, and was part of Saudi Arabia's political diplomatic dance as it tried to create the conditions for the Houthis to be expelled from the North and a United Yemen to re-emerge. So on the one hand, the Emirates are just kind of against the Muslim Brotherhood, and working to convince Saudi Arabia to become increasingly against the Muslim Brotherhood as well. And yet, the Islam Party is not entirely simply the Muslim Brotherhood. And so there's this other dimension, which may be, all along the Emirates were hoping for an independent south Yemen to emerge, and the Islam Party got in the way of that because it was so well organized as a political party, and it had its foundation in the North. So it was always going to stand a thwart any goal, which the southern separatists certainly had to create an independent southern Yemen. Exactly. As you mentioned, Thomas, the Islam Party is much more complicated than just the Muslim Brotherhood title. Yes, you have members of the Muslim Brotherhood, but you have the tribal connections. You have the military connections, and it's more of a national coalition, similar like the General People's Congress, the GPC Salah's Party. They look very much alike, and because Islam were also part of the government of Yemen, they have ministers, they are in the parliament, actually one of the people that the mercenaries were targeting a very well-known member of parliament, who was a member of Islam. So you'd have actual parliament members, politicians who, in this case, survived an assassination attempt. But also you'd have this network of secret prisons that the Associated Press did a detailed report on, a network of secret prisons run by the United Arab Emirates. So they would come to people at night, they would snatch them from their homes, and then they would disappear. You would have activists, you would have people who are maybe loosely affiliated to Islam, maybe Imams, and then their family would go to the General Attorney's Office, they would go to the police, and they would tell them simply, we know they are with the UAE, there is nothing we can do. They are not formally under our jurisdiction. There is kind of this paramilitary group that is running its own system outside the formal structure of the government of Yemen, or what's supposed to be the government of Yemen at the time. So you can see that here already in 2017, behind the scenes, tensions between the Saudis and the Emirates over the question of Yemen were already very real. And I think this is a good place to introduce a new character in this drama, Aida Rus Azubadi, who in 2017 was the governor of Aiden, working for President Hadid. There was a very interesting thing, because Aida Rus Azubadi was appointed in December 2015, following the assassination of the previous governor of Aiden, but that's a different story. But Aida Rus Azubadi was the governor, normally under the leadership of President Hadid, but he is closely connected to the UAE officers on the ground. Yemen officials in the Yemeni presidency would constantly complain that Hadid would be in Aiden, but Aida Rus Azubadi would not come and meet him. They would not attend the military and security committee meetings, because he's busy meeting the Emirati officers. He didn't feel actually he needed Abdulrahman Surah Hadid. He's being very well supported. He have now actual troops on the ground. So when Hadid was fed up and sacked him in 2017, the Emirates supported Aida Rus Azubadi to create something called the Southern Transitional Council, SDC. The Southern Transitional Council, which will play a huge role in the story moving forward, and which was on the headlines on December 30th and since, because it was the Southern Transitional Council that recently was, according to reports, more or less held captive in Riyadh and forced to announce their own dissolution, which then it appeared was not true. So the Southern Transitional Council is founded at this point in 2017, when Aida Rus Azubadi is sacked from the governorship of Aiden, but the Emirates worked with him to create this new Southern Separatist political body. And it's an interesting political body, because unlike other political bodies, it has its own counterterrorism unit. It has its own troops. It has its own paramilitary groups that are effectively in control. When you have the forces of the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior, which are less trained, less armed, and come again, that official that I mentioned at the beginning, who left Sanaa in protest of the Houthis taken over Ahmad al-Masari, becoming the Minister of Interior inside Aiden, a strong Southern figure. The Minister of Interior in the Arab world is basically like the government's policeman. It means he's in charge of internal security services. Exactly. So you always want someone very strong. You can't just appoint anyone to this position. Immediately, Ahmad al-Masari, the new Minister of Interior, clashed with Aida Rus Azubadi. He was fed up of the paramilitary groups constantly intervening. It was kind of an era that the people of Aiden would call a reign of terror, that they feel you're living in Aiden. You're supposed to be liberated from the Houthis. On paper, you're living in an area under the control of the Yemeni government, but actually you're not. Those paramilitary groups are more powerful than the government and can come and snatch you from your home at any time. So Ahmad al-Masari, the new Minister of Interior, had started to come out publicly and speak that the UAE needs to shut down all of the informal detention centers and started to push them to actually start pushing prisoners to the formal detention centers. At the beginning, the UAE complied, they started releasing many people. And this is when the story started to emerge of the horrors that they were facing inside those prisons. And again, I think this needs to be understood in the context of the war on terror era. The same sort of networks, black sites, night raids, et cetera, that was going on throughout many different places where it was understood that Salafi G had his terrorism was a problem. Certainly Afghanistan had institutions and activities like that. And the Emirates with the STC and other partners on the ground in South Yemen were supporting these activities. But in their minds, and what they would say is they're also fighting al-Qaeda, which does exist throughout these areas. They are resisting Salafi G hadism, Salafism, which they feel is a big threat. And at the same time, they're working with the STC and Southern Yemeni secessionists who are involved in a different political project from the political project of the UN-recognized government of Yemen. So I don't want to make a good versus evil sort of story here. It's really just politics in a South Arabian war zone where the state is weak, it's collapsed. And people have different views about the way forward. Increasingly, the Emirates and the Saudis have a different view. It seems quite clear now. And this became public, really, I think, in a big way for the first time, an incident over 2017 and 2018 on the island of Sokutra. So the thing of the island of Sokutra, again, to remind the listener, we have at this time Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar is the Vice President, had he had sacked, even from being the Prime Minister. So there is a new Prime Minister called Ahmad bin Darir. And you have this strong minister of interior, who's living in Aiden, Ahmad al-Masri, who's trying to assert government control inside the southern provinces. The issue of Sokutra actually left a bad taste for many Yemenis, even those who are very much strongly supportive of their coalition to ask the Houthis, they view that Yemen should have close ties with its Gulf neighbors. Sokutra is an island very, very far from the fighting, however, the UAE did send their own troops into Sokutra and started to build a base inside Sokutra, kind of mirroring what they were doing inside Aiden and the South. I mean, you say it's far from the fighting, but it is not far from the horn of Africa. And so Sokutra is of geostrategic importance if you're trying to create a naval network projecting your power into Africa. Yeah. As you mentioned in Thomas, it's not about, you know, good versus evil, but trying to understand the geopolitics of the region, but for a regular Yemeni, who would say, okay, now the UAE clearly have other agendas here. There's something different that they're trying to achieve, different from what we are hoping to achieve. There are no Houthis in Sokutra. And then when the tension started to arise, the prime minister, who's in Aiden at the time, flew to Sokutra to demand from the UAE officers to live. And then you'd start to having those Emirati commentators, nothing in terms of official statements, but something very close. There was this famous lady who was on Abu Dhabi channel saying, how dare he, the prime minister of Yemen, go to Sokutra? What is he doing there? You'd have something of these kind of statements feeling more comfortable to state things that are provocative to many Yemenis. And when the tensions were rising, the Saudis intervened. They said, okay, we're going to mediate. They asked the Emiratis to downsize their presence in Sokutra, promising the Yemeni government that they will get things resolved. At the same time, when there are tensions again in Aiden and in southern provinces between Emirati-backed forces and the Yemeni government. That's right. In 2018, fighting renews in Aiden between the Yemeni government and the Arab Coalition allied with Saudi and the STC increasingly seen as an Emirati ally. So Aiden, which had been so fantastically liberated, largely down to Emirati support in July 2015, three years later, is now embroiled in intra-coalition fighting, like a civil war has broken out in Aiden within the coalition. And this peaks in 2019. So this renewed set of fighting in 2019 happened. The Minister of Interior, Mr. Rahmat Al-Masri, is kind of pushing the STC to shut down their detention sites. But he also goes after a very important figure. His name is Haniban Burek. He is actually the deputy of Aiden, so Aiden, so Zabidi again, is the leader of the STC, the head of the STC. And Haniban Burek is his deputy. Haniban Burek is a salafi figure, very well known. He played an important role in the fight against the Houthis in 2015. And now his deputy head of the STC, he was accused in a criminal investigation of assassinating a very, very famous salafi leader, who is also known amongst the resistance fighters. He was killed in 2016 under vague circumstances, no one knows what actually happened. But in 2019, criminal investigation, quite strong evidence, they found exchanges between Haniban Burek and a small unit of assassins, who were directed to kill this leader. Now the family of the victim were demanding answers. And while this was happening, you can imagine, situation is already very tense inside Aiden, fighting's breakout again. So Haniban Burek, who was accused of assassinating this figure three years earlier, he breaks with the government and moves to take control in Aiden. Yeah. Now he is publicly saying their aim is now to take full control and announce the southern state, fighting's breakout for several days, then the STC forces on the ground get enormous backing from the UAE military forces who are also in Aiden. And that helps tilt the odds to the favor of the STC, eventually they manage to move the government out of Aiden totally in 2019. When they did that, they kind of gave them the momentum that they now can push forward and start moving east. So go from Aiden and go to other provinces where they have some presence but not actual control. And they go on from one province to another, they go into Abyan, the neighboring province to Aiden, and then after Abyan, they go into Shabwa. In Shabwa, now they face army units, who at the time were closely connected to Ali Mohsen al-Himar. Now you're fighting the actual Yemeni army that has been being prepared and have actual bases and actual presence on the ground. And long fighting experience, stretching back well into even before the Arab Spring. So these are hardened Yemeni soldiers commanded by ultimately Ali Mohsen al-Himar, the strong man. And when that happened, the STC I think came up against a new reality that actually who are fighting in Aiden are not those experienced military figures, military commanders and soldiers and officers, and it was this group in Shabwa that kind of reversed the tide and start moving in a blitzkrieg all the way, moving from one province to another, doing exactly what the STC did, but in reverse. So the STC is being forced back into Aiden, so it's burst out of Aiden, it's conquered Abyan, it's moved into Shabwa, it's met Ali Mohsen's troops and it's suddenly forced back into Aiden. Now Saudi Arabia was encouraging the Yemeni army to push back, do not allow them to take more territory, exert your control, show your control, they're being supported by Saudi Arabia. So they push all the way until they reach to the outskirts of Aiden, and all of us see that actually Aiden is about to fall. The Yemeni government is going to take control, there is no question about it. And that's when UAE fighter jets fly and starts bombing the Yemeni army's positions. At the time they announced that they've killed something close to 300 soldiers, a big number, and as a result Saudi Arabia quickly jumps in and intervene and saying it's going to mediate between the two sides and demand from everyone to seize hostilities immediately. So the political differences over the future of Yemen, within Yemen and among Yemenis themselves within the Arab coalition have finally really exploded into outright war, frankly. And as you say, the largest voice in the room, Saudi Arabia just bangs its fists on the table and says, we must stop this, calls all parties to re-odd to discuss a quote-unquote road map for unity. An agreement is announced that a new government would be formed, a new military plan would be drawn up to merge all the factions into one entity, a timeline was announced for all of this, it was all very official, but sadly this road map never really materialized. Although on paper it looked good, it's kind of a compromise from everyone, it ensures that the STC is present in the government, but also doesn't discredit the control of the Yemeni government, it doesn't give its sovereign right away, while it kind of in a way absorb the STC into the Yemeni government. Now as everyone knows, not all agreements necessarily materialize, even if they look good in paper, detentions and the trust within the coalition is starting to, the sides are not really trusting each other. According to Aiman, really, it would be around this time that communication between Saudi and the Emirates and between Saudis, allies in Yemen and the Emirates, allies in Yemen just stopped, communication stopped as trust went down. Now it's around this time that the COVID-19 crisis breaks out, taking advantage of that and taking advantage of the division within its enemies. The Houthis from the end of 2020 through to 2022, exploiting these divisions, assault the province of Mutrib and start changing the fight, the Houthis get some energy behind them. The Houthis were watching all of this and they're kind of enjoying the scene. They finally seeing the two big sides of the coalition going head to head, and the trust amongst the coalition is lost, so they mobilize a huge force and what we will later know actually that even Hassan Nasrallah sent. This is the late head of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah. Hassan Nasrallah, yes, the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon sends his top commanders into Yemen and they plan this assault on the province of Mutrib in the north. Now Mutrib was a good example of what could happen if you have a province that is properly managed. The city was booming, opportunities were being created, shops, restaurants, and your university was being built, and your football stadium, the city was flourishing. And if I'm not mistaken, over the course of the Civil War, the Islam Party have played a big role in that well-administered province. Am I right about that? Yes, you know, imagine like those technocrats, those people with experience in different fields fleeing the Houthis take refuge in Madib, and so they're helping in the local governance of Madib. And Madib is a very, very tribal area. One of the places that Saudi Arabia has deep and close historic connections, they also support the local government. Again, it's an interesting example of how Islam can be managed. How both sides can actually run this. When I see how, for example, the Islam Party handled their relationship with Khalid Bahá back in 2016 and 2015, they did a very poor job. They could have worked something similar and said, okay, if the UA doesn't trust us, well, why don't you become our liaison, you could liaison between both sides and start building each other, instead of those tensions boiling up until both sides basically don't trust each other. When the Houthis start mobilizing this big force, from the end of 2020, all the way up until early 2022, Madib witnesses and actually across all the Yemeni battlefronts, the most intense fighting, heavy, heavy fighting happens. There are many people, even top politicians in the Islam Party, who deploy themselves to the frontlines and they die, there's a very famous parliament member, an Islam member who got killed in those fightings. One of the top associates of Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, one of the top commanders, the general Abdel Al-Hadri, he dies in those battles, Abdul Ghanish al-Alan, the head of the Central Security Force in Madib, gets killed in those fighting. So you could see how heavy and intense the fighting is. And like before back in 2015, in the midst of this military crisis, the Emirates bring a lot to the table. They deploy their Giants Brigade, their Amelakites Brigade, as they call them, who had been deployed very, very successfully a couple of years earlier in the West Coast campaign that almost liberated the port of Hodeidah. We've talked about that on conflicted before, we don't want to talk about it again. But in 2021-2022, as the Houthis are making gains in Madib, the UAE deployed the Giants Brigade again, and it's successful. It arrests the Houthi advance and pushes them back towards the mountains. Yes, we're here seeing again this interesting dynamic, UAE deploying the Giants Brigade, which now is like an elite unit, who push, push back the Houthis. And that shakes the Houthis because it tells them we can't actually push you back. And this dynamic is very interesting because you have this constant dichotomy of the UAE are strong and you need them to push back the Houthis. They are good on terms of their tactical units and support on the ground, but also at the same time, the longer they stay, the weaker they make the government. They don't fully operate with the official apparatus of Yemen because of many, many reasons. One of them, of course, is how skeptical they are towards the Islah party or part of the Amelie government. Well, following this, when the Houthi advance was arrested and pushed back, to some degree thanks to Emirati intervention. It seemed maybe that the tensions between the Saudis and the Emiratis were going to be solved. And in 2022, the Saudis began to address, as they thought, Emirati concerns that a unified Yemeni army, which the road map before had explicitly aimed to create. The Emirati concern that such an army would be heavily influenced by the Islah party in their minds, the Muslim Brotherhood. So the Saudis agreed to create a new institution with a different political constitution. Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the long president of Yemen, stepped aside and was replaced. And the idea at this stage was that the new president, Rashad al-Alimi, would create the conditions for renewed cohesion within the coalition. Yes. Rashad al-Alimi came as a figure that all parties, all parties of the coalition, but also all Yemeni parties, would agree to. He had been against the Houthis and had been working with the Yemeni government from the beginning as an advisor to Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. He was, during the times of Sadah, a minister of interior himself. So again, very important to remind the minister of interiors like the state's policeman. If you're Ali Abdullah Saleh's minister of interior, you are one hard bastard. And they formed something called the Presidential Leadership Council, it's known as the PLC. And it's formed of eight members, four southerners and four northerners. Rashad al-Alimi is the head of this council. But also the council is split between strong military individuals who are close to Saudi Arabia or close to Emirates. So you kind of have the top eight men forming a new presidential council. And they are supposed to unify the Yemeni government. To bring all forces and finally unify the Yemeni army. And to bring cohesion and unity back to the Arab coalition. This was the goal. And a new Yemeni military force is created and undergoes training near the Saudi border. The Saudis announced that due to the Presidential decree by Rashad al-Alimi, they are going to support and train this new force called Dar al-Watan, the Homeland Shield. They're trained, as you mentioned, in Sharura at the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It is believed that they are going to comprise thousands of fighters. But no one really pays attention at the time. They're left aside. We're going to come back to them because they then play a very important role. But for now, they're kind of this force at the border that no one pays attention to. Now, almost immediately after the presidential council leadership were sworn in by parliament in Aden, two months later, the STC deployed their forces and attacked Shabbat again. And they come against the same force that they fought in 2019. This time, they enjoy the support of the UAE air power, even drones. And they finally capture Shabbat. Now the STC have control from Aden all the way to Shabbat. So if this presidential council was meant to heal the rift within the coalition, this had spectacularly failed, and the STC is against strength and emboldened supported by the Emirates and has made these gains. And having achieved their conquest, really, their control of Aden, Abyan, and Shabbat, the STC's power is much greater. And for the next three years or so, until a couple of weeks ago, things more or less remained that way. Lots happened politically, as Aemon has talked about, and conflicted a lot, as the Saudis continued to try to create the conditions for Houthi control of Yemen to be stopped or ended in some way. There is an actual ceasefire between the Saudis and the Houthis, which remarkably still exists up until today. It's remarkable, especially when you remember, and I forgot to mention it, the whole October 7th thing, the emergence of the axis of resistance as a real military player, and the Houthis firing ballistic missiles at Israel and being attacked in turn. So a lot is going on. Yeah. It does, as you said, upset some of the arrangements that Saudi Arabia had in place with the Houthis. I mean, the Houthis messed up a big opportunity also when they started to bomb ships in the Red Sea. How do I forget to mention that? They invoked a retaliation by Israel, the Israeli's bomb Sana'a airport, which was operating and bombed the port city of Hadeidah. So the Houthis created a whole mess out of a very good situation. They were very comfortable, but they messed the whole thing. They re-designated as a terrorist organization after being removed. Well, you know, Barat, a Houthis got a Houthi, you know, at the end. They can only be reasonable for so long. But militarily, there was something like stalemate, and according to Aiman, communication really broke down between all the sides. And on the ground, in South Yemen, STC aligned parties became increasingly frustrated at there being no progress. The Saudis weren't revealing what they had in mind. Some voices were saying that the Saudis were cutting a deal with the Houthis in some way to create a new constitution, which would keep them in power. The Saudis denied this, of course, but rumors were flying, tensions were rising, frustrations were growing. And the STC, under this man, Aida Rus Azubedi, felt emboldened. Basically, it was like, forget this, we are going to be South Yemen again. The STC is feeling maybe the time that we push and regain control of what was South Yemen. So Aida Rus Azubedi pushes into Hadramat. This does upset the Saudis, who at the beginning demand from him to withdraw. He kind of ignores it. He sends them more of comforting messages saying, don't worry, we are going to work with you, but we have to take control over the Eastern provinces. They then push into Mahara by the Omani border that makes the Omani very, very nervous. They have been very skeptical by the presence of UAE back forces by their border for quite a long, long time. Their fears are being addressed by the mediation of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia constantly sent invoices into Omani, to Muskat, to assure them that nothing bad is going to happen in Mahara. And in the arrival in Mahara of STC forces is not greeted warmly by a lot of the tribes of Mahara who have strong connections to the tribes of southern Oman. They are much more affiliated with that part of the peninsula, not so much with Aidan. Again, a reminder that the south of Yemen, the old south Yemen, is not united. Exactly. And also Hadramat itself have always felt that they have their own Hadrami identity, that they are meant to be a state by themselves. So they would entertain the idea of being in a united Yemen if it's a federal system, that they want to have Hadramat as having its own autonomous region, or if there is south and the northward split, then they would also like to see a Hadrami state, which historically have existed. There have been periods in Yemen's history where Hadramat was a state. A very powerful and important state in history. It was the Hadramis who formed these remarkable maritime commercial networks across the world really, and brought Islam to places like Indonesia and as far as the Philippines. So the Hadramis have a great history of their own, a great sense of their own identity. And as you say, in the case of Yemen just fragmenting, the Hadramis would say, "Well, why don't we have our own state?" And this is from the Saudi perspective, the absolute worst-case scenario, total fragmentation. But from the Emirati perspective, it's something that they feel they could work with. Yes. The Saudis have also worked with the tribes of Hadramat. They've have received and hosted the tribal figurehead of Hadramat, Amr bin Habrish, constantly in Saudi Arabia. He's received by Prince Khalid bin Salman, MBS own brother, and they're constantly being told rest assured that the Saudis would not allow the SDC to take control over Hadramat. Hadramat is also important, I would like to remind the listener, because it's rich with oil. Oil is always there underneath. It's always there. It's really under the sands. Yes, Yemen's GDP in the 2000s, at one time, more than 50% of it came from the oil from Hadramat. So that's why it's very important. For all of this reasons, when in the end of December, the SDC forces arrived in Hadramat. This is when the Saudis really started to pay attention. But they don't just go into the coastal part of Hadramat. They push north until they reach the city of Saeun, and they finally managed to take control of the last Yemeni army's military camp in the city of Saeun. By now, they are in full control of what was South Yemen, all the way up very close to the Saudi border. So Zubadi knew the time was right, and he took his chance, and it seemed like he had won. His forces, the SDC forces, supported by the Emirates, had basically taken all of South Yemen. The SDC started to send messages that they are ready now to announce the state of South Yemen. They called it South Arabia and said now the former state is back. They start demanding, quite publicly, really, that the head of the presidential council, Oshad al-Alimi, would step down, that the council didn't achieve its objectives, and now they have their own arrangement. Again, UAE media outlets celebrate this new success. They frame it as a success against the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islam Party. But again, as we told, it's much more complicated than this because they have upset the arrangement with the tribes in Mahra, the tribes in Hadramat, and so on. So Saudi Arabia sends a delegation and envoy to Hadramat, they meet with everyone, including the SDC, and they demand from them publicly to withdraw. To take their forces and go back to how things were before December 2025. The SDC ignores it, they send another warning for them, they're saying they have to withdraw, and it looks like Saudi Arabia is not happy. It's not showing until now any kind of military moves, but they are stating quite clearly that they are not abandoning the head of the presidential council, Oshad al-Alimi. OK, I'm on the edge of my seat. What happens next? This is when, in the 30th of December, out of the blue, we wake up to an announcement by the Yemen TV, stating the declaration by President Al-Alimi, who is now being addressed as the commander in chief. So the head of the Yemeni army is demanding that the UAE leave and evacuate Yemen within 24 hours. Now, this is really where it becomes like a Hollywood movie, because you mentioned the Homeland Shield forces. You said, no one was really paying attention to them. They were being organized, financed, trained, armed in this kind of dusty border area near Saudi. And suddenly, like the writers of Rohan appearing at the end of Return of the King, they just burst out, and it's like, actually, this is a very effective fighting force. Yeah, they showed very strong discipline. They looked like they were very well organized. And they started moving into the city of Sayun that the last city that the SDC just took control of. Now, at the beginning, the SDC said, oh, we welcome the Homeland Shield, because many of them actually the majority of the Homeland Shield forces are southerners. So we are willing to work together. And this is when President Alimi says, no, you're going to evacuate and leave. They are going to take control of all camps in the provinces of Hadramat and Al-Mahra. At the same time, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry issues a statement backing the decision of President Alimi, demanding the UAE comply with the demands of the Yemeni presidency, and actually starting to publicly say harsh words against the UAE that they regret that the UAE instigated this insurgency against the Yemeni government and saying they have drifted away from the aims of the coalition. While at the same time, there was a UAE shipment that arrives to the port city of Mukalla of armored vehicles and weapons that Saudi Arabia bombs, actually bombs a UAE shipment of armored vehicles at the port of Mukalla, showing that they are serious. They want them to leave. Well, you know, within a matter of hours, the Emirates reply to these demands, stating, "Okay, we will leave." They obviously defended their own record in Yemen. They disagreed with the Saudi framing of the situation, but they did withdraw. And very quickly, the STC's fortunes transformed. It was very remarkable. So the UAE had been very effective in terms of operational control of how they run their military operations inside Yemen and I think credit has to be given to them. They're very effective. So in 2019, when the initial fighting broke out between the Yemeni government and the STC, the UAE said that they were going to downsize and they did downsize their forces significantly. But even with the limited forces that they still had in Yemen, they still managed to play that tactical support and that operational command to the STC forces, enabling the STC always to have the edge over their opponents. So when the UAE forces started to leave Yemen in the 30th of December, it looked like kind of the brains that was moving the STC forces went away. And what was left was a loose network of militants spread across a vast geography. That accompanied with information warfare deployed by Saudi Arabia through their media outlets, through their writers, through their journalists. And I think they did a master class of information warfare. Now if the listener doesn't know Al-Arabian, Al-Arabian Hadith, the Saudi-owned news channels are the most viewed news channels inside Yemen. They started constantly to cover the advances of the homeland shield. The STC started to feel that they were being defeated. Although they were still control at least more than 80% of the territory. The media had given everyone the impression that they had been defeated already. Yes, because of how the Saudis deployed their media so effectively. The communication between those loose troops were lost. So if you're a commander in a place facing the homeland shield, you're hearing that your friends in the other positions have left and you're all by yourself. So you're either going to fight and be crushed or you just leave. And Saudi Arabia did conduct some earth strikes, but there were very, very few more of like sending warnings that we can use Air Force if necessary. The STC started withdrawing and withdrawing and withdrawing in some places left even their weapons behind. There were footage that Al-Arabian, Al-Arabian Hadith, showed of the homeland shield surrounding huge convoy of armored vehicles and literally just capturing them without any fight. And the momentum suddenly changed, favoring now the Yemeni government. Rashad al-Alimi was appearing on TV and now being more of a statesman, announcing himself as no "I am the commander in chief", removing the military commanders who have joined the STC or announced that they are siding with the STC, starting to remove the governors who had announced or endorsed the STC, we're talking really the first three days of January. Now the forces of Aida-Rosa Zabidi, by himself, in Aidan, really trying to concentrate what's left of his forces inside the city. And this is when Rashad al-Alimi says Saudi Arabia will be hosting a southern, southern dialogue in Riyadh and he calls on the STC to basically leave Aidan and fly to Saudi Arabia. You know, I wish I could say that the hijinks stop there, but this guy Zabidi, who has been in charge of the STC, what do we want to say about him? He was sacked or something. What happened with that? Because, you know, newsflash, he ends up in the Emirates. So how does that all happen? I don't know how to explain it, because we were under the impression that he will be heading the delegation of the STC to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are demanding him to comply with the orders of the Yemeni presidency. He makes a very bizarre announcement that South Yemen is entering a transitional period of two years, and then there's going to be a referendum. Very delusional from the actual changes on the ground. And in the last minutes, before literally the whole delegation were on the plane in Aidan about to depart, Aida-Rosa Zabidi doesn't show up. He disappears for a whole day, no one knows where he is. People think that he went back to his hometown in north of Aidan where he started his insurgency many, many years ago. But then the next day, literally, again, Arabian, Arabic had a leak, the call between him and the Emirati officers of Aida-Rosa Zabidi literally fleeing by a sea to Somali land before he is then taken by a plane all the way to the UAE. And when this news came out, Somalia wasn't pleased, because, of course, they don't recognize Somali land. At the moment, only Israel recognizes Somali land, though other countries are probably going to recognize it before too long, possibly even the UAE. But in this international game of cloak and daggers, Somalia is now annoyed that the Emirates used Somali land as a kind of halfway house to get Zabidi to the Emirates. Anyway, without their erstwhile leader, Zabidi, the STC does fly to Riyadh. And then things get really weird. And frankly, I just think we have to bring this to an end. And I'm not sure maybe you have some real insider knowledge. I don't know if anyone knows exactly what happened. The STC were there in Riyadh. They were shown on television. They seemed to be congenially aligned with the Saudis. They announced their own dissolution and their commitment to working together with the coalition, et cetera, et cetera. Within 24 hours, this was rejected, as crowds came out, especially in Aden supporting the STC. The STC said, no, this was done under duress. The Saudis put pressure on us. We were forced to. Of course, questions of torture and violence as always comes up in these discussions. We're invoked in some quarters. You're like, what the hell is going on? Well, Thomas, I can tell you for a fact, because I am in Saudi Arabia. I am in Riyadh. And I will go and try and meet the delegation of the STC. We're looking forward to talking to them. But now the STC looks like it's split between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Oh, no. Another split. Geez. Louise. I mean, honestly, Abdul Melical Houthi is just licking his lips over there. This is great. The Arab coalition is on life support here. Well, I wouldn't say it in that way, because now for the first time, the Yemeni government, because of those enormous changes that happened on the ground. And now the ability of Rashad al-Alihmi to appoint fire officials in all of the provinces, it's going to be the first time that the Yemeni government can actually state that they are in control of the majority of Yemen. They are running the country from inside the Aden. We don't know what's going to happen. As always, this is Yemen. The story keeps the volume. I mean, I'm glad you said that, Barat, because I don't want people to think that this is just a question of geopolitical cloak and daggers or just rivalry between the Emirates and the Saudis. Of course, that's a big part. As Amin discussed on the show, the Emirates and the Saudis have long had very different governmental philosophies, very different strategic objectives. There has been moments of conflict between them before. Never so big as this, it must be said. But another very important component to all of this is Yemen. And that old saying of Ali Abdullah Saleh, that he was the best at dancing on the heads of snakes. Indeed. Because you get involved in Yemeni politics and you never know what's going to happen. There is no way. There is no way of guaranteeing unity of purpose, total honesty in intentions, follow through on agreements. And none of that is guaranteed because Yemeni politics is deranging. Indeed. It was funny because, like, literally, I mean, you can't get more, more bizarre than this. The former Foreign Minister of Yemen, between, I think, 2017-19, he announced first joining the SDC and he supports what he called President Zubaydi. Now, after things have changed, he is saying, "Oh, I'm willing to come to Riyadh. I would like to talk to the Saudis and to the Yemeni government." So, you know, it just tells you. Oh, dear. Well, you know, what to say? Thank you, Barat, for coming on to conflicted. This has been a long episode. I said it was going to be long, but, you know, it really has painted a much more three-dimensional picture of the Yemeni Civil War. I really want to be nonpartisan here. As we discussed on conflicted two days ago, Saudi Arabia is this continental interior power. It's vast. Very powerful. The Emirates are this maritime commercial power. It's also very powerful, but it operates in a different way. And Yemen is there. Yemen is a great coastal region with a great history of maritime trade. And it is a vast interior continental power made up of deserts and mountains, impenetrable mountains, that border Saudi Arabia. And so these geographical, deeply geopolitical dynamics are playing out on the ground as a new Yemen is fitfully emerging, if it even will. Who knows? Maybe there will be endless fragmentation in chaos in Yemen. Maybe no unitary authority will ever be able to establish control over that whole area. Or maybe a federal system. I mean, you never know. Well, exactly. Well, that's what you've always advocated, Barat. I've always advocated that Yemen is very diverse. It's a big geography. Each province is very proud of their own local identity, actually. So it doesn't make sense that it becomes more a federal system, how it looks like. I think that's up to the Yemenis to decide. But as you said, it was during that battle of Hadramat, when you'd have Saudi writers clearly outstating, this is the Saudi doctrine that Saudi is against the fragmentation of existing states. That's why they had supported the state of Somalia to claim control over Somalia land. So they're against the announcement of Israel to recognize Somalia land. We want to see the current Arab states maintain their shape. And it explains the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. In other theaters, like in Sudan, most spectacularly. Exactly. It also reveals what Saudi is doing in Syria in its opposition to any idea of Kurdish separatism there. Saudi supports Ahmed Asshara and the unitary government in Damascus. This is Saudi's ideological conviction that the established nation states should be maintained. The Emirates, it's all more negotiable for them. And it's funny that on this level, in the Arabian Gulf, the larger global conflict at the moment between the old world order of international law and fixed nation states overseen by the United Nations, is being contested by a return to overt great power politics where states can just do what they like and see what happens. So it's happening on a macro level, on the whole world, it's happening on a micro level in the Middle East. I find the whole thing quite fascinating. There are all sorts of outcomes that could work, I think, for the flourishing of everyone involved. But it's important to just find one of them and to stick with it. That's what I say. Thank you, Barasha Band, for coming back on conflicted. It's been a real tour de force, as always. I love you, man. Good luck there. You're leaving this conversation now to go meet the SDC. Wow. Actually, I am about to have meetings. Of course, I'm going to meet with many Yemeni politicians, but I would like to sit with the SDC delegation, so that's literally what I'm about to do. Well, good luck, man. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you. That was Barasha Band, a Yemeni researcher and political analyst with a profound knowledge of his country's internal and external political dynamics and a real friend of the show. If you'd like to follow him, you'll find links in the show notes. And remember, for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my co-host, Amen Dean, check the show notes for details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a message-heard production. Our executive producers are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzie Andrews.