The UAE’s Three Strategic Interests in Yemen

In March 2015, when Saudi Arabia announced the beginning of military operations in Yemen from Washington, DC, Adel al-Jubeir, then the Saudi ambassador to the United States, made clear that the kingdom was not going it alone in Yemen. “We have a coalition of over 10 countries that will participate in these operations,” he told assembled reporters.

Very quickly, however, it became clear that while much of the coalition was offering only token support, the United Arab Emirates was a full partner in Saudi Arabia’s war. But Saudi Arabia and the UAE have had very different goals in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has had a single, overarching goal: push the Houthis out of Sanaa, restore President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power, and prevent the rise of a Hezbollah-like group with strong ties to Iran on its southern border.

The UAE, on the other hand, has had three distinct goals in Yemen, each of which have fed into its broader regional strategy. First, it wanted to be a good ally and partner. This was most obviously the case with Saudi Arabia, which asked for its military help in fighting the Houthis. But the UAE has also assisted the United States – the other important country for Emirati foreign policy – on the ground in Yemen by combatting al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Second, the UAE wanted to weaken the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, which in Yemen meant the Islah Party. Third, as part of its strategy to present itself as a commercial and logistics hub, the UAE has prioritized strategic coastlines and shipping lanes throughout the region. Yemen, of course, is located at the corner of the Arabian Peninsula and sits along key Red Sea shipping lanes. Emirati actions in Yemen since 2015 can best be understood through the prism of these three strategic goals.

Shortly after Saudi Arabia announced the beginning of its intervention into Yemen in March 2015, the UAE inserted a number of troops into Aden and, along with local allies, pushed the Houthis out of the southern port city in July. But the counteroffensive to expel the Houthis from Sanaa soon ran out of steam hundreds of miles short of its goal.

In April 2016, on the eve of peace talks in Kuwait, Hadi removed Khaled Bahah as his vice president. Hadi’s move was likely an effort at self-preservation, as the former “interim” president was worried that he could be removed from office as part of a peace deal. To avoid this perceived fate, Hadi named Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar – a man many in the West were concerned about due to his ties to jihadis – as his new vice president. Hadi was essentially betting that the United States and the United Nations would rather leave him in office than get stuck with Ali Mohsen.

But Hadi’s self-protection gambit alienated the UAE, which was close to Bahah and mistrusted Ali Mohsen due to his ties to Islah and the Muslim Brotherhood. To offset Islah’s rise, the UAE began forming and funding local proxy militias, such as the Security Belt Forces and Hadrami Elite Forces, which operated outside Yemeni command and control. Most of these units, which also included the Support and Backup Brigades, Shabwani Elite Forces, and Giants Brigades, were stationed along Yemen’s coastlines.

This allowed the UAE to advance two of its goal simultaneously. First, it gave the UAE control of local armed groups, which it could use to counter and isolate Islah. Second, by positioning most of these groups along Yemen’s coast, which were matched by UAE bases and ports in the Horn of Africa, it allowed the UAE to safeguard Red Sea shipping lanes and its own regional strategy.

In 2017, the UAE backed a group of fired Hadi officials who formed the pro-secessionist Southern Transitional Council. Some of the preexisting UAE proxy militias, particularly the Security Belt Forces and Support and Backup Brigades, acted as the STC’s standing army, flying Southern flags and, at times, coming into conflict with pro-Hadi forces.

But the STC made clear that its problem was not with Hadi himself but rather with his Islah-leaning government. For instance, the director of Hadi’s presidential office, Abdullah al-Alimi, was a member of Islah, who controlled the flow of paperwork to the president and, as a result, could put his finger on the scale for promotions within the government and military.

By 2019, three things came together to force a major UAE drawdown in Yemen. First, unlike Saudi Arabia, which had relatively few ground troops in combat in Yemen, the UAE (particularly some of the country’s “smaller and poorer emirates”) had suffered a disproportionately high number of casualties that were increasingly difficult to justify at home. Second, even though Saudi Arabia bore the brunt of the reputational costs of the war in the West, the UAE was finding it difficult to justify its presence in the country, particularly amid repeated allegations of torture, assassinations, and forced disappearances. Finally, and perhaps most important, after three years of training local proxy forces, the UAE could withdraw most of its troops from Yemen and still maintain a significant degree of influence in the country.

This is perhaps best illustrated by the fighting in northern Shabwa and southern Marib in January and February.

In late 2021 and early 2022, Houthi forces managed to take control of three governorates in northern Shabwa as well as large parts of southern Marib. For the UAE, Houthi incursions into Shabwa crossed a red line. Marib is often considered part of Northern Yemen and its oil and gas fields are key to Houthi desires for an independent state. However, should the Houthis take Shabwa, which also has oil and gas fields, they would effectively split the South in two, separating the capital Aden from the oil and gas fields in Hadramout and destroying any hopes of an independent Southern state under STC control.

To prevent this, the UAE moved units of the Giants Brigades from their bases on the Red Sea coast to Shabwa, where they quickly pushed the Houthis out of the governorate and back into Marib. The Houthis responded by directly attacking the UAE, forcefully demonstrating the group’s ability to expand the war.

The UAE signed on to the war in Yemen, at least partly, as a way of managing its relationship with Saudi Arabia. Once its troops were on the ground, it also used them to aid the United States in its fight against al-Qaeda. The creation of local proxy forces allowed the UAE to simultaneously weaken the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood while also protecting key shipping lanes through control of the coastline. But while the length of the war, and the associated costs – both reputational and in terms of casualties – has led the UAE to recalibrate its position in Yemen, it has not forced it to completely withdraw from the country.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, the UAE can likely live with a Houthi-controlled government in the north. What it can’t live with is Houthi control of the entire country. For the UAE, influence in southern Yemen, through the STC, remains a key part of its regional strategy.

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