campaign in March of the same year, which was supposed to be a quick fix to bring Hadi back.
As the war dragged on the UAE trained some 90,000 Yemenis, including those who recently took over
Aden, to fight the Houthis as well as Yemen’s pernicious branch of al-Qaeda and Isis.
Four years on and nearly 100,000 people have been killed, while close to 13 million people have been
pushed the brink of famine.
While everyone thinks the war in Yemen is between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government the real
war, which is starting right now, is between the north and the south of the country
According to the United Nations, the worst outbreak of cholera in recorded history has raged through the
country. Two-thirds of Yemenis rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
That said, in December the Houthis and the Yemeni government signed an UN-backed peace agreement in
Stockholm that was supposed to be the breakthrough that would start with a joint withdrawal of troops from
Hodeidah, Yemen’s most strategic port and supply lifeline.
In June, the UAE announced a drawdown of Emirati forces around Hodeidah as part of a unilateral
“confidence-boosting measure” to kickstart the stalled peace process.
But since the anti-Houthi forces are now fighting one another, that appears to be somewhat redundant.
Meanwhile the Houthis are standing on the sidelines pointing at Aden as proof that Hadi, his Gulf backers
and the separatists are unfit to rule.
This AFPTV screen grab from a video made on 1
August shows Yemeni security forces rushing at
the scene of a missile attack on a military camp
west of Yemen’s government-held second city
Aden (AFP)This latest deadly flare-up started three weeks ago, when the Houthis claimed they were behind a
devastating drone and missile attack in Aden which killed dozens of separatist forces, including their most
senior commander Munir Mahmoud al-Yafi, more commonly known as Abu Yamamah.
Many assumed there must have been a group helping the Houthis, given how far south and how devastating
the attack had been.
The STC blamed Islah, a political party associated with the Muslim Brotherhood that is part of the coalition
supporting President Hadi.
On 1 August, just hours after the attack, an STC leader, Naser al-Khubaji, marooned on a gilt sofa in an Abu
Dhabi hotel, warned The Independent that the separatists would never let the killing of Abu Yamamah go.