The alliance of convenience that held together former enemies in Yemen’s civil war is fracturing, as various bonds within the warring sides come unstuck.



On Tuesday, fighters allied with the pro-secession Southern Transitional Council (STC) surrounded the presidential palace in Aden, the seat of the internationally recognised government of Yemen. Their presence has forced the prime minister to prepare to flee, and demonstrates that the unlikely bond between the two in their fight against Houthi rebels has come to an end.



Last month, there was a similar break in another unlikely alliance, albeit on the other side of the conflict in the rebel-held north.

In Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, Houthi rebels who had taken over the city in 2014 with help from forces loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh killed the former president. The Houthis accused him of changing sides and taking a conciliatory approach to Saudi Arabia, which backs the Aden-based government of the current president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The fracturing of the STC-Hadi alliance in Yemen’s south and the Houthi-Saleh alliance in the north is pitting former allies against each other in a country known for its complex tribal factions.

This risks making an already stalemated war, which has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, even more intractable.

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Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Guardian: “There’s this theory that if the conflict drags on and on and on, it will develop into a situation where the Houthis will make massive concessions. But what we’re seeing is fracturing and weakening on all sides.

“After today, after the last few days, it’s going to be quite hard for the international power brokers, and this includes the Yemeni government themselves, to marginalise the STC to the extent that they’ve been marginalising them before.”



The war in Yemen, which began in 2014, was primarily a dispute between Houthi rebels previously allied with Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012, and forces loyal to the ousted Hadi, who lives in exile in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.



The internal instability has also been seized upon by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which controls large swaths of land mainly in the country’s eastern territories.



But the civil war is also complicated by the wider geopolitics of the region, as many view it through the prism of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

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Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has led a US and UK-backed military intervention in Yemen, countering the advances of Houthis and launching airstrikes in Sana’a and other major cities that have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.

Saudis and their Sunni Arab allies view Houthi fighters, who belong to the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam, as Iranian proxies and have accused Tehran of militarily backing them with missile supplies, a charge Iran denies.



Baron said tensions over longstanding divisions had been rising between the STC and Hadi’s government. The STC wants a return to an independent south like that which existed before 1990, but the unity of Yemen is a red line for Hadi.

The government of the United Arab Emirates had been supporting STC financially, but Baron believes “it’s foolish to think of the STC, as many view them, simply as Emirati puppets”.

“While the geopolitics of this might have its own significance, I think it’s crucial to remember that we’re talking about a group with domestic Yemeni aims and these are tensions that would exist regardless of whether regional powers would get involved,” he said.

Meanwhile in Sana’a, while the Houthi rebels have suffered some setbacks, “in the bulk of areas they’re in control [and] Houthis have consolidated their hold on power”, he said.



Timeline Yemen's civil war Show Hide 2011 An Arab Spring-inspired uprising forces Yemen’s authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to agree to leave office. 2012 Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, previously Saleh’s deputy, takes over as president following an election. He was the only candidate. He struggles to unite the country’s divided political landscape, cope with food insecurity and al-Qaida threats.

2014 Houthi rebels (who belong to the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam) make advances and begin capturing the north of the country, an area they have historically controlled. In September they enter the capital, Sana’a. Hadi flees to Aden.

2015 A renewed rebel offensive forces Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia, which views the Houthis as an Iranian proxy force. It begins bombing what it says are “military targets” associated with the Houthis and forces loyal to Hadi’s predecessor, Saleh. The Saudi air campaign receives backing from a coalition of Sunni Arab states, as well as logistical support from the US, UK and France.

June 2016 The Saudi-led coalition is included on a UN blacklist of states and groups that violate children’s rights in conflict, reporting it is responsible for 60% of child deaths and injuries. After Riyadh protests, the UN removes it from the list. Human Rights Watch warns of “political manipulation”. At least 6,200 people have been killed, 2.8 million displaced.

October 2016 An airstrike by the Saudi coalition hits a funeral in Sana’a, killing 140. The UN announces a 72-hour ceasefire, which is allegedly broken by both sides.

2017 Devastated by two years of fighting, Yemen is described by the UN as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Millions facing famine and the threat of cholera.

November 2017 Saudi Arabia imposes a blockade on Yemen’s ports, following the firing of a missile at Riyadh from rebel-held territory in Yemen. Medicines, vaccines and food are prevented from entering the country. The heads of the World Food Programme, Unicef and the World Health Organisation warn “untold thousands of innocent victims, among them many children, will die”.

Rebecca Ratcliffe

In a Chatham House report in December, the Yemen expert Peter Salisbury argued that “the conflict had mostly settled into a pragmatic, if economically destructive, stalemate”.

“Yemen more closely resembles a region of mini-states at varying degrees of war with one another, and beset by a complex range of internal politics and conflicts, than a single state engaged in a binary conflict,” he wrote.