DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia on Thursday called on Emirati-backed separatists in southern Yemen to withdraw from two governorates they now control, a move that has threatened to spark a confrontation within a fragile coalition that has been battling the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the country's north.
The statement from Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry appeared aimed at putting public pressure on the Southern Transitional Council,
a separatist Yemeni force long supported by the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia backs the National Shield Forces of Yemen's internationally backed government in the war against the Houthis.
The separatists' actions have “resulted in an unjustified escalation that harmed the interests of all segments of Yemeni people, as well as the southern cause and the coalition’s efforts,” the ministry said. “The kingdom stresses the importance of cooperation among all Yemeni factions and components to exercise restraint and avoid any measures that could destabilize security and stability.”
Meanwhile, the Houthis buried four of their fighters, including the group's top missile and drone commander who was presumed killed in March, in the first round of U.S. airstrikes to hit the rebels in March.
The Southern Transitional Council moved earlier this month into Yemen's governorates of Hadramout and Mahra. The Saudi statement said that meditation efforts were underway to have the council's forces return to “their previous positions outside of the two governorates and hand over the camps in those areas” to the National Shield Forces.
“These efforts remain in progress,” the ministry said.
The local Hadramout governorate's authority said that it supported the Saudi announcement and called for the Emirati-backed separatists to withdraw to positions outside the governorates.
Those aligned with the council have increasingly flown the flag of the flag of South Yemen, which was a separate country from 1967-1990. Demonstrators rallied on Thursday in the southern port city of Aden to support political forces calling for South Yemen to again secede from Yemen.
Following the capture of Yemen's capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north by the Houthis in 2014, Aden has been the seat of power for the internationally recognized government and forces aligned against the Houthi rebels.
The actions by the separatists have put pressure on the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which maintain close relations and are members of the OPEC oil cartel, but also have competed for influence and international business in recent years.
There has also been an escalation of violence in Sudan, another nation in the Red Sea where the kingdom and the Emirates support opposing forces in an ongoing war.
The Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile. Iran denies arming the rebels, although Iranian-manufactured weaponry has been found on the battlefield and in sea shipments heading to Yemen despite a U.N. arms embargo.
A Saudi-led coalition armed with U.S. weaponry and intelligence entered the war on the side of Yemen’s exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting have pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.
The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the globe’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
The Houthis have launched attacks on hundreds of ships in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war, greatly disrupting regional shipping.
While traffic has inched up recently in the lull in attacks, many shippers continue to go around Africa through the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Further chaos in Yemen could again draw in the United States.
Washington launched an intense bombing campaign targeting the rebels earlier this year that U.S. President Donald Trump halted just before his trip to the Middle East in October. The Biden administration also conducted strikes against the Houthis, including using B-2 bombers to target what it described as underground bunkers used by the Houthis.
In Sanaa, crowds gathered as uniformed men carried five coffins draped in Yemen’s flag and topped with flowers during the funerals for the four Houthi fighters.
The dead fighters include Maj. Gen. Zakaria Abdullah Yahya Hajar, whom analysts identified as the group’s drone and missile chief. U.S. forces reportedly targeted Hajar, who allegedly received training from the expeditionary Quds Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, in a strike in March in Sanaa.
The Houthis provided no information on how or when he died. However, a transcript of a discussion between top American officials on the messaging app Signal later published by The Atlantic magazine included then national security adviser Mike Waltz referencing the initial March 15 attack targeting a Houthi missile commander.
“The first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz wrote at the time.
The Houthis have increasingly threatened Saudi Arabia and taken dozens of workers at U.N. agencies and other aid groups as prisoners, alleging without evidence that they were spies — something fiercely denied by the United Nations and others.
