From their makeshift base in Mahra, a southeastern Yemen province, the fighters – cheeks fat with qat –
strategise about the Southern Transitional Council’s (STC) effective ousting of the recognised government.
The STC’s demand for an independent south and its daring takeover of Aden crippled the Yemeni
government and ripped apart a Saudi Arabia-led coalition that it was supposed to be fighting with against
the Houthi rebels.
The overthrow ricocheted into the eastern corners of Yemen in Mahra, a province which, although a part of
historic South Yemen before the country was unified in 1990, has little love for the STC, demonstrating the
dangerous faultlines splitting Yemen apart.
These Mahra tribesmen warn that a protracted STC offensive would not only trigger a fresh war between
the north and south of the conflict-riddled country, but more worryingly, one within the south itself.
They talk of a war within a war within another war in a nation already in the grips of the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis, where 13 million people are currently on the brink of famine.
“We think danger is coming to us,” Sheikh Ali Salem al-Huraizi, the former deputy governor of Mahra, tells
The Independent.
The controversial but powerful tribal leader, with piercing, chatoyant eyes, is known as “the general” by
loyalists who pen pop songs about him. He commands a legion of heavily armed Mahri men who see him as
the last bulwark against the encroachment of Saudi Arabia into their province.
His critics, however, call him an anti-Gulf agitator and say he is backed by neighbouring Oman.
Tribesmen in Mahra, east Yemen greet the
news of the STC’s takeover of Aden with alarm
(Bel Trew)Sheikh Huraizi’s followers in Mahra, alongside many others, believe in a united Yemen but have clashed
with the UAE and more recently Saudi Arabia over their military presence in the country.
Like many Yemenis they also blame the UAE for the rise of the STC, whose forces were hosted, trained and
armed by Abu Dhabi to fight the Houthis.
“We believe in one Yemen, so Mahra will have to defend itself,” Huraizi adds, gesturing to a line of bullet-
pocked pick-up trucks frilled with RPGs and heavy machine guns. “In the next few weeks we will train our
guys to be ready.”
The scenes of quiet panic in Mahra underline the devastating complexity of Yemen, which has foiled so
many past attempts by outsiders to control it.