For much of the Yemen war, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) appeared aligned under the umbrella of the Saudi-led coalition, united by the declared objective of rolling back Houthi control and restoring Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Yet developments over the past months have brought into sharper relief a growing divergence between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi-one that has reshaped dynamics on the ground in southern Yemen and reopened long-suppressed debates over sovereignty, accountability, and the future balance of power in the country.
For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org
In addition to power shifts, accusations of human rights abuses involving UAE-backed forces have come back into focus, specifically regarding allegations of secret prisons in Yemen.
The Southern Transitional Council (STC), a UAE-backed actor, has sought to consolidate control over southern governorates and advance a renewed secessionist project. Its recent military setbacks, the Emirati recalibration that followed, Saudi Arabia’s parallel push to convene Yemeni factions in Riyadh, and renewed scrutiny of human rights violations have together marked a turning point in the conflict’s southern theater. At the same time, the Houthis, while not aligned with Riyadh, remain a central factor shaping Saudi calculations following the Gaza war and the collapse of earlier understandings.
Yemen today is governed not by a single center of power but by overlapping authorities, armed groups, and external sponsors. According to Abdulghani Al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, this fragmentation is the result of both internal rivalries and deliberate external strategies.
“The Houthis took over the capital of Yemen, Sana’a, in 2014 and expelled the elected president,” Al-Iryani told The Media Line. “As a result, the government of Saudi Arabia enlisted the help of many countries in the region in a Saudi-led coalition to evict the Houthis from the capital and restore the legitimate government.”
That objective was never achieved. “When it became clear that there’s no advance towards the objective, the members of the coalition withdrew and only the United Arab Emirates stayed with a sizable contribution of weapons and funds and fighters and soldiers,” Al-Iryani explained.
The UAE’s continued involvement reshaped the south. “The UAE managed to expel the Houthis from the port city of Aden in the south and from most of the south,” he continued. “And the forces that it has funded and supported, several, actually, nearly a dozen armed groups, took over the south.”
Among those groups, the STC emerged as the dominant political-military actor. “The temporary capital was controlled by an armed group called the Southern Transitional Council, which is backed by the UAE,” Al-Iryani said. “And it seeks secession from Yemen and restoration of the old People’s Democratic Republic of South Yemen,” he added.
He stressed that the STC’s internal makeup is inherently volatile. “The Southern Transitional Council is a collection of socialist generals and activists from the Yemen Socialist Party,” he said, “and they are allied, they are joined by extreme Salafists,” he added.
“The combination is very strange, but that is, I think, intended,” he noted. “They believe that their religious duty is to exterminate the Houthis because the Houthis are Shia.”
In late 2025, STC forces moved eastward toward Hadramawt and Al-Mahrah-an advance widely seen as an attempt to complete control over the territory of pre-1990 South Yemen.
Tawfik Al-Hamidi, a Yemeni lawyer, human rights activist, and politician working with the SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, told The Media Line that since Dec. 2025, Yemen has witnessed a major shift following the movement of forces affiliated with the STC toward the eastern governorates of Hadramawt and Al-Mahrah.
“This move appeared aimed at completing control over all territories that previously constituted South Yemen before 1990,” he said, adding that “the advance was reportedly backed by the United Arab Emirates, which has financed and supported STC forces-estimated at over 100,000 personnel-and supplied them with advanced weapons, including armored vehicles.”
Saudi Arabia reacted forcefully. “Saudi Arabia viewed this step as a direct threat to its national security and strategic depth,” Al-Hamidi said, particularly in light of the Bab al-Mandab strait and statements by senior STC leaders signaling readiness to normalize relations with Israel in the event of southern secession.
After the STC refused to withdraw, “Saudi Arabia turned to military intervention, following an official mandate from the internationally recognized Yemeni government to protect civilians in Hadramawt,” Al-Hamidi noted.
Al-Iryani described the outcome starkly: “It was a big defeat. The soldiers that withdrew from the east left all the heavy weaponry behind. And they became disorganized. It was a very hectic withdrawal,” he said.
Saudi Arabia then moved to contain the crisis politically. “The STC had no choice but to accept the ceasefire and was given instructions to come to Riyadh for south-south talks,” Al-Iryani continued.
“The delegation of the STC arrived in Riyadh, minus the chairman of the STC, General al-Zoubaidi, who was whisked by the UAE to Abu Dhabi,” he noted. “As it stands now, he is calling for resistance, while his delegation has, under Saudi pressure, dissolved itself,” he added.
Al-Iryani placed the STC episode within a broader Emirati regional strategy. “The UAE attached itself to the US and to Israel and attempts by all means to make itself useful to these two powers,” he said. “And since the US was worried about the Islamist uprising that started with the Arab Spring, the UAE made it its task to destroy Islamist parties throughout the region,” he added.
“The UAE chose an extreme strategy of basically planning to exterminate the Muslim Brotherhood but supporting extremist groups in doing so as well,” he noted.
Proxy war in Yemen
In Yemen, this translated into proxy warfare. “That is why … instead of forming one strong militia in the south, they formed a dozen militias so that even if Saudi can control some, they cannot control them all,” Al-Iryani said.
“Currently, there are Yemeni mercenaries for the Emirates,” he added. “They have these armed groups that they have formed and supported and trained, and they can use them to destabilize the country and obstruct any peace aspects in the long run.”
While Riyadh does not support the Houthis, Al-Iryani emphasized that Saudi-Houthi relations had entered a pragmatic phase before October 7.
“For the past three years, the Houthis were under the impression they had made a deal with Saudi Arabia,” he said. “They figured since we’re going to get all the land that we want on the negotiation table, why fight now as we used to?” he added.
That understanding unraveled after the Gaza war. “That has changed from the Saudi side by the strong, aggressive stance of the Houthis in support of the people of Gaza,” he said.
“The Saudis tolerated the losses that the Houthis’ activity in the Red Sea caused them,” Al-Iryani noted. “But when the fighting formally stopped in Gaza with the current ceasefire, it became clear to the Houthis that the Saudis have no interest in going back to the agreement that they had negotiated before October 7th,” he explained.
He stressed that Saudi Arabia remains focused on limiting Houthi influence rather than accommodating it. “I believe that the Saudis are committed to ending the war,” Al-Iryani said. “It is in their best interest to stop the fighting because it affects them directly as a neighboring country,” he noted.
As military and political dynamics shifted, long-standing allegations against UAE-backed forces resurfaced.
“Regarding the secret prisons operated by the UAE in Yemen, this is not a new issue,” a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a told The Media Line under conditions of anonymity. “It has been documented for years in reports issued by local and international human rights organizations,” he said.
“These reports did not receive sufficient attention due to the political and military alignment between the UAE and Saudi Arabia,” he added, “which has had severe repercussions on Yemeni civilians who have paid a heavy price as a result of the expansion of Emirati influence in several southern provinces,” he continued.
UAE officials have denied accusations that it is running secret prisons in Yemen. The Media Line reached out to multiple sources for more details, but they did not respond.
Al-Hamidi detailed the record. “On May 25, 2017, SAM for Rights and Liberties announced the discovery of dozens of secret detention sites in Aden, Hadramawt, and Shabwa, operated by unlawful forces backed by the UAE,” he said.
“Most alarming, however, are reports revealing coordination between UAE-backed forces and elements linked to al-Qaida,” Al-Hamidi added. “This raises serious concerns about the nature of this coordination and its role in fueling extremism rather than combating it.”
Al-Hamidi added that subsequent documentation by the SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties expanded on these findings. According to reports published by the organization in the years that followed, including investigations into enforced disappearances and a comprehensive report titled “The Long Absence,” the network of secret detention facilities was accompanied by systematic patterns of disappearance, with dozens of detainees remaining unaccounted for.
“Dozens of victims remain missing to this day,” Al-Hamidi said, warning that many cases have faded from public attention despite being fully documented by human rights organizations.
From Sana’a, the Yemeni journalist warned of the broader consequences. “What the UAE has done goes far beyond the framework of the Arab Coalition, constituting grave human rights violations, a breach of Yemeni sovereignty, and a violation of international law,” he said.
“Ultimately, the continued presence of the UAE in Yemen has contributed significantly to prolonging the conflict, strengthening Houthi influence, and creating an unstable environment in which the threat of terrorism is used as a political tool against opponents,” he added.
Looking ahead, assessments of Saudi–Emirati relations diverge sharply.
“In my view, it is unlikely that we will see a further confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen,” the Yemeni journalist said, “despite the clear differences in their objectives and approaches,” he added.
“The relationship between the two countries is based on a broader strategic partnership that goes beyond the Yemeni file,” he noted, “which is why disagreements are usually managed behind the scenes rather than through open confrontation,” he added.
Al-Iryani offered a far bleaker outlook. “I think that the break between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is going to be permanent,” he said, citing Abu Dhabi’s alignment with Israel, still seen as a hostile actor for Riyadh.
“The current withdrawal of STC and formally with it of the Emirates doesn’t end the fighting on the ground, it helps Riyadh to gain back control gradually, but for sure this is far from over,” Al-Iryani said.
As Yemen enters yet another phase of recalibration, the retreat of the STC, Saudi Arabia’s renewed political initiative in Riyadh, the reassessment of the Houthi file after Gaza, and the resurfacing of long-documented human rights violations together underscore how unresolved the conflict remains.
What has changed is that the fault lines within the coalition itself, long present beneath the surface, are now shaping events as decisively as the war’s original divisions, leaving Yemen caught between competing regional agendas, fragile local actors, and an elusive path toward stability.