The Viability of a Partitioned Yemen: Challenges to a Southern State

Over the past year and a half, the war in Yemen has turned into a low-intensity conflict, punctuated by periodic clashes that have done little to alter the lines of control. In the northern highlands, the Houthis – a Zaydi Shia militia group – maintain control, much as they have since taking the capital of Sanaa in September 2014. In the south, a coalition of forces under the Presidential Leadership Council, which sometimes fights the Houthis and sometimes one another, is in charge. Neither the Houthis nor the Presidential Leadership Council are capable of imposing their will on the rest of the country. Saudi Arabia has held direct talks with the Houthis in recent months and appears more eager than ever to find an exit from Yemen.  

All of this raises an important question: What does a postwar Yemen look like? If the war were to end today, the likely result would be the partition of Yemen into a North Yemen ruled by the Houthis and a South Yemen under the control of the Presidential Leadership Council. But are either the Houthis or the Presidential Leadership Council capable of governing a viable, peaceful, and independent state? This two-part series looks at the challenges facing both groups as they seek to move from ruling in war to governing in peace.

Yemen’s North is held by a single group – the Houthis; in contrast, the South is divided among four major factions, all of which want to dominate any future state. But while an independent, Houthi-led North would face a trio of interrelated challenges – political, governmental, and economic – an independent South would face a single, overarching question: Would South Yemen be a state for Southerners, or would it be the anti-Houthi Yemeni state?

On the surface it may seem surprising that the only challenge the South has to overcome is political. After all, much like the Houthi-held North, South Yemen is facing a host of problems. By some measures, the Southern economy is in worse shape than that in the North. The electrical grid, along with most infrastructure in the South, is antiquated, overtaxed, and in desperate need of overhaul after years of neglect from the central government in Sanaa. Most national businesses are headquartered in Sanaa, which gives the Houthis an advantage when it comes to taxation. However, after years of war and being fleeced by Houthi authorities, some of these companies are relocating to the South. The central bank in Aden, after years of false starts following the split in 2016, is finally finding its feet and is the only Yemeni branch connected to international banking systems.

Perhaps most notably on the economic side is the value of the Yemeni rial in the North versus the South. In the North, the Yemeni rial typically trades around 600-650 to 1 against the U.S. dollar, while in the South the rial has been much more volatile, trading around 1,100-1,400 to 1 against the dollar. But some analysts have suggested that the Houthi government is keeping the price – which prior to the conflict was 250-1 against the dollar – artificially strong by “suppressing demand and completely controlling supply.” Such measures, however, are unlikely to work indefinitely in a postconflict scenario. For the Houthis, this is an economic challenge. But for the South, this is a political problem because a future Southern state will control almost all of Yemen’s oil and gas fields. That gives the South an economic base if it is politically unified and can figure out how to utilize the revenue.

By the same token, what could be seen as a military problem for the South – that there is no unified command structure for the various armed groups – is actually a political problem. Tariq Saleh’s forces – the National Resistance Forces – report to him, troops loyal to the Southern Transitional Council follow the orders of Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the STC president, while regular army units ostensibly report to the head of the Presidential Leadership Council or, in some cases, lean closer to the ideology and political goals of Islah, a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated political party in Yemen. Complicating matters further is that many of these units receive arms and funding from either the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, which are also pursuing contradictory goals in Yemen. Saudi Arabia wants to get out of Yemen with its border protected and a security deal with the Houthis in place, while the UAE is looking to empower its allies in the South and weaken Islah.

Any future Southern state will have to decide whether it wants to be the anti-Houthi Yemeni state, as envisioned by Tariq Saleh and Islah, or if it wants to be an independent state for Southerners, as desired by the STC. For years this has been at the heart of tensions in the South. This is why the STC and then-President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s troops came to blows in 2019, and why each of the four main groups in the South maintains its own command-and-control structure over its troops. Each one is willing to fight to defend its vision of what a future state in the South should look like.

This is also why Saudi Arabia and, to a much lesser degree, the UAE have attempted to broker a series of compromises between these two competing visions of the Southern state. In 2019, after the STC and army units loyal to Hadi clashed, the Riyadh Agreement was supposed to paper over the differences and bring the militaries back under a single command structure. That didn’t work, so Saudi Arabia proposed the Riyadh Agreement part two. Not surprisingly, that was just as unsuccessful as the original. Next, in April 2022, Saudi Arabia forced Hadi out and replaced him with the eight-man Presidential Leadership Council. Like previous efforts, the council was designed to broker a compromise between these two competing visions for the future. All of the major players, Tariq Saleh, the STC, Islah, and what remained of the United Nations-recognized government, got a seat on the council. But none of it did any good.

The STC continues to press for an independent Southern state for Southerners, which would leave no room for Tariq Saleh, a Northerner whose family fought against the South in the 1994 civil war, or for Islah, many of whose members also fought against the South in 1994.

This is the South’s existential challenge. What makes this particular political problem so daunting is that there is no middle ground. Compromise has been tried time and again in the South, and each time it has failed.

This means that when Saudi Arabia and the Houthis finally conclude a peace deal, and Saudi Arabia withdraws from Yemen, it won’t be the end of the war in the South. Instead, in all likelihood, it will spawn a new round of fighting as the STC, Islah, Tariq Saleh, and the Presidential Leadership Council battle it out over their respective visions for the Southern state.

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