War between wars

The Yemeni war puzzle is endless. One war doesn't end and another one begins. Everything seems to be conspiring against peace for the thirty million people of one of the countries that is apparently lucky enough to lie on two continents, surrounded by two historical seas since the biblical times of the Queen of Sheba - the Arabian and the Red - and located in the middle of the Gulf of Aden, from which the bulk of the maritime oil traffic between the Middle East and Europe is controlled.

Yemen is the only country in the area that is not ruled by a feudal monarchy, that arouses the greatest temptations among its neighbours, that is richest in history and poorest in natural resources, and that is most agitated by tribal struggles to which confrontations between religious fanatics have recently been added. The North of the country, bordering Oman and Saudi Arabia, has been independent since 1918, thanks to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.

The South, on the other hand, remained under English rule until 1967 when it was proclaimed a republic. For a time, always marked by confrontation between the two sides, the territory remained divided into two states: the Republic of Yemen with its capital in Sana'a and the People's Republic of Yemen with its capital in Aden, supported by a few communist countries. International intervention managed to settle the differences and in 1990 unification was achieved with the capital in Sana'a, official recognition by the United Nations and the presidency of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

But the coexistence was never easy, and it was complicated by a powerful interference between an impoverished population and a corrupt administration of the Islamist organisation Ansar al Sair, from the orbit of Al-Qaeda. The absence of an influential political authority in the whole country and increasing clashes of religious and then political roots, derived from the growing influence of Saudi Arabian and Shiite Iranian interests, increasingly caused a confusion in which it was often not known who was fighting against whom.

After the upheavals caused by the Arab springs, when tension gained strength in the area, in 2015 open conflict broke out in the North where the numerous Houthi tribes of the Shiite faith, supported by Tehran, confronted the government presided over by Saleh. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sent troops and modern military equipment which, contrary to expectations, proved insufficient to resolve the conflict quickly. Five years later, the war continues, although it is currently undergoing a fragile truce.

President Saleh, who had manoeuvred to modify the constitution in order to remain in power indefinitely, was assassinated in 2017 and was replaced by the vice-president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, who, after also suffering an attack, resigned and went into exile in Arabia, but returned a few days later to install the provisional capital in Aden - although he personally continues to live in Riyadh - from where he "tele-governs" the global disruption in which the country is immersed. Apart from the two governments that divide up the bulk of the territory, five provinces do not accept either of them and maintain their own administrations responding to nationalist interests and religious fanaticism. 

In Sana'a, the official capital, despite resistance from the army itself and from Saudis and Emiratis, the bulk of power is held by the Houthis, led by the warlord Mahidi al Masha. In the South, meanwhile, the independentistas continued to demand the division of the country despite the fact that they officially hold the official national president and the provisional capital. In August last year they tried to control the neuralgic centres of power and proclaim self-determination, although the presence of Emirati forces, mainly located on the island of Socotra, managed to quell the attempt.

But for a short time. The global truce that the coronavirus pandemic has imposed in other African conflicts, in the South of Yemen has been taken advantage of by the secessionists opposed to all the already active confrontations to proclaim autonomy as a previous step towards recovering independence. In order to achieve this and further entangle the puzzle in the politics of the area, they have now done so with the support of a significant part of the Emirate forces that, paradoxically, are in the region to defend the unity of the state.