Yemen: Everyone’s playground
The turbulence that engulfed the global order during Donald Trump’s presidency found a grim parallel in Yemen’s descent into deeper chaos in 2025. What began as a domestic conflict long ago has metastasised into a multilayered arena where rival states pursue competing agendas through proxies, while civilians endure devastation on a staggering scale.
By year’s end, Yemen’s southern provinces had become the stage for an unprecedented rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates-two powers long viewed as strategic partners and anchors of Gulf stability. This rupture came into stark relief in December, when Saudi airstrikes hit Mukalla port in Hadramout. Riyadh claimed the attacks targeted vessels ferrying weapons to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist movement seeking to resurrect an independent South Yemen. Saudi military spokesmen alleged the ships had disabled tracking systems and unloaded arms to strengthen STC control over Aden and surrounding provinces. Abu Dhabi firmly rejected these accusations, insisting the cargo
was civilian and accusing Saudi Arabia of acting in bad faith. Soon after, the UAE announced the withdrawal of its remaining forces, framing the move as a strategic recalibration rather than a retreat.
Behind these denials lay a deeper contest. Analysts observed that the STC’s rapid expansion-most notably its takeover of PetroMasila, Yemen’s most important oil facility-posed a direct challenge to Saudi strategic interests. A UAE-aligned entity consolidating power along Saudi Arabia’s southern border threatened to redraw the balance of influence inside Yemen. What had once been a coordinated intervention against the Houthis now resembled a struggle between rival patrons competing for ports, pipelines, and political leverage.
The divergence in Saudi and Emirati priorities has been evident for years. Riyadh’s overriding concern has been to contain the Houthis and block Iranian influence from Yemen’s north. Abu Dhabi, by contrast, has focused on securing maritime routes, ports, and commercial infrastructure along the southern coast. The STC, nurtured by the UAE, became the vehicle for this ambition. The result has been chronic fragmentation: parallel authorities, overlapping militias, and repeated clashes that have hollowed out Yemen’s already fragile institutions.
This external tug-of-war has come at a catastrophic cost to Yemen’s economy and people. Despite possessing an estimated three billion barrels of oil and substantial mineral deposits, Yemen remains unable to translate natural wealth into livelihoods. Extraction is sporadic, militarised, and controlled by armed factions. Revenues that could sustain public services instead bankroll militias. According to UN agencies, over 20 million Yemenis face food insecurity, with nearly half at risk of starvation-a stark indictment of how geopolitical manipulation has eclipsed human survival.
Compounding Yemen’s internal fractures is its centrality to one of the world’s most vital maritime corridors. The Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb strait have become increasingly dangerous as the Houthis, bolstered by Iranian technical support, expanded attacks on commercial shipping. Using drones and anti-ship missiles, they have disrupted oil tankers and cargo vessels transiting a route that carries roughly five per cent of global seaborne crude. The consequences have rippled outward: soaring insurance premiums, rerouted shipping, and heightened alarm among energy importers from Europe to East Asia. Israel has also been drawn into this expanding theatre. Concerned about Iranian-backed forces operating near strategic chokepoints, it has launched limited strikes on suspected Houthi infrastructure, citing retaliation for missile and drone attacks. While tactically constrained, these actions symbolise the internationalisation of the Yemen conflict. What was once a local insurgency now threatens global supply chains and regional security calculations.
The roots of this crisis run deep. Yemen’s unification in 1990 fused two historically distinct entities whose political cohesion was always fragile. The Houthi movement emerged in the north amid long-standing grievances, eventually seizing Sanaa in 2014. The Saudi-led intervention the following year, joined by the UAE, transformed these domestic tensions into a regional proxy war. Over a decade, the conflict has fostered extremist offshoots, including Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which exploit lawlessness and fractured authority.
Famine has become both consequence and instrument of war. Blockades, airstrikes on ports and farms, and the destruction of supply chains have repeatedly choked humanitarian access. Past episodes, such as the assault on Hudaydah, demonstrated how military pressure intended to weaken the Houthis instead deepened civilian suffering and resentment.
These dynamics have inadvertently expanded Iran’s influence, allowing it to present itself as a supporter of resistance amid devastation. Houthi rhetoric underscores the conflict’s intractability. Their slogans and statements frame the war as part of a broader struggle against Western and Israeli power, ensuring ideological rigidity even when tactical pauses occur. For civilians, ideology offers no refuge. Displacement, disease, hunger, and poverty remain daily realities across both Houthi-held territories and contested southern regions. The Saudi-UAE rivalry has laid bare the fragility of alliances built on convenience rather than shared vision. Meanwhile, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland across the Gulf of Aden adds another strategic layer, heightening sensitivities around Yemen’s southern ports and maritime approaches. China, too, watches closely from its base in Djibouti, aware that instability along the Bab al-Mandeb threatens the arteries of global trade and its own Belt and Road ambitions. Yemen today stands as a tragic paradox: a land of resources reduced to ruin, a society caught between rival patrons and militant agendas. As regional powers manoeuvre and global actors calculate, ordinary Yemenis remain trapped on a blood-soaked chessboard, their future hostage to forces far beyond their control.
The writer is a columnist based in Colombo; views are personal
