Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Sunday Morning, Colombo
US President Donald Trump’s policies battered the global order in ways that were mirrored, if not eclipsed, by the devastation wrought by the Houthis in 2025. In Yemen, what was already a humanitarian catastrophe metastasised into an arena where statecraft, historical grievances, and proxy power projections collided with appalling consequences.
By the end of 2025, Yemen’s southern provinces had become a crucible in which the simmering rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates erupted into open confrontation, exposing fissures in alliances that had long been perceived as the stabilising twin pillars of the Arabian Peninsula.
Simultaneously, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, situated across the Gulf of Aden in the northwestern quadrant of Somalia and abutting the strategic maritime corridor linking the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, intensified anxieties, as the proximity to Yemen’s southern ports rendered the entire Bab el-Mandeb Strait a theatre of latent strategic confrontation.
The genesis of the Saudi-UAE rupture in Yemen, culminating in the December 2025 airstrikes on Mukalla Port, was far from an episodic squabble. Saudi forces targeted vessels allegedly conveying arms to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), a faction asserting secessionist claims over southern Yemen and controlling Aden, Hadhramaut, and Al-Mahra.
According to Brigadier General Turki al-Maliki, the vessels had “disabled tracking systems and unloaded arms and military vehicles” intended to consolidate STC control. Abu Dhabi repudiated these claims, asserting the shipment was non-military and accusing Riyadh of duplicity, while simultaneously announcing the withdrawal of its remaining forces, ostensibly to recalibrate its counterterrorism posture.
Analysts such as Firas Maksad of Eurasia Group argued that the STC’s offensive, including its seizure of PetroMasila, Yemen’s principal oil facility, imperilled Saudi Arabia’s strategic depth and projected a de facto UAE-controlled buffer along Riyadh’s southern frontier.
The STC’s ambitions were historically nurtured by Abu Dhabi, which sought to construct a pliant proxy capable of securing ports, maritime access, and logistical dominion over the southern Red Sea littoral. This, however, collided with Saudi prerogatives, which were primarily concerned with preventing Iranian influence from traversing Yemen northwards and constraining Houthi incursions.
The divergence in objectives has created an environment in which Yemeni sovereignty is continuously subordinated to external calculation: Saudi Arabia’s attempts to buttress the internationally recognised Presidential Leadership Council and the UAE’s cultivation of STC authority have wrought both administrative incoherence and violent territorial contests.
As a result, Yemen’s internal economy has been cannibalised; even though the country holds reserves of approximately three billion barrels of crude oil and significant deposits of gold, copper, and zinc, extraction remains sporadic, militarised, and subject to factional predation, leaving civilians to endure famine, poverty, and systemic dislocation.
According to United Nations agencies, more than 20 million Yemenis remain food insecure, with nearly 10 million at risk of starvation. These figures elucidate a dissonance: a nation endowed with natural wealth yet incapable of converting resources into subsistence or societal stability, largely because external patrons manipulate its assets to fortify proxies rather than civilian welfare.
The Red Sea, historically a conduit of global trade, became a lethal bottleneck in 2025. Houthi maritime operations, empowered by Iranian technical assistance, have increasingly targeted commercial vessels, tankers, and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) shipments, causing disruptions that reverberate through global energy markets.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the fulcrum of this theatre, channels upwards of 4.8 million barrels of oil daily, representing nearly 5% of the world’s seaborne crude transport. The Houthis’ capability to threaten this corridor, using drones and anti-ship missile systems sourced clandestinely from Tehran, has elevated insurance premiums, rerouted shipping lanes, and generated acute anxiety among energy importers in Europe and Asia.
Israel, wary of Iranian-proxy entrenchment near maritime chokepoints, has conducted targeted strikes against presumed Houthi logistical nodes, ostensibly in retaliation for missile and drone attacks against its territory. These strikes, while tactically limited, exemplify the internationalisation of the Yemen crisis, transforming local insurgencies into flashpoints with global supply chain implications.
The historical underpinnings of this conflagration are instructive. Yemen’s northern and southern polities, historically divided into separate sultanates and federations until the 1990 unification, have remained politically tenuous.
The Houthi insurgency, originating in the Saada Governorate in the early 2000s, leveraged both historical marginalisation and contemporary grievances to seize northern territories, culminating in the 2014 capture of Sanaa. Saudi Arabia’s 2015 intervention, ostensibly to restore the Hadi government, and the concomitant UAE military engagement marked the transposition of domestic grievances into a regional proxy battleground.
The decade-long conflict has facilitated the importation of extremism, notably through the entrenchment of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Islamic State franchises, which exploit the vacuum created by foreign-backed militias and fractured governance.
Famine, as an instrument of both consequence and coercion, has been exacerbated by coalition blockades, airstrikes on infrastructure, and the destruction of agricultural supply chains. Historical incidents, such as the Saudi-led coalition’s siege of Hudaydah in 2018, resulted in widespread civilian casualties and hampered humanitarian deliveries.
These interventions, while intended to curtail Houthi leverage, have paradoxically entrenched anti-coalition sentiment, fostered radicalisation, and permitted external actors, including Iran, to project influence under the guise of humanitarian or technical assistance.
The Houthi banners, emblazoned with slogans condemning the West and explicitly mentioning Israel, articulate a continuity of enmity that belies any near-term prospect for negotiation. Statements released by the Ansar Allah leadership repeatedly frame the conflict as a confrontation with what they term “Zionist aggression and imperial complicity,” fortifying ideological cohesion even as operational pragmatism occasionally dictates tactical restraint.
Analysts note that such rhetoric ensures that the geopolitical and sectarian dimensions of the war will persist irrespective of local or international mediation attempts. Civilians, trapped on this bloodiest chessboard, continue to bear the brunt: displacement, starvation, disease, and systemic deprivation remain ubiquitous, particularly in northern provinces under Houthi control and southern areas contested by the STC.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while ostensibly combating extremism, have themselves perpetuated impoverishment. Military campaigns, blockade enforcement, and the manipulation of ports and oil facilities for proxy funding have siphoned potential revenue streams from local governance structures.
Concurrently, both states have projected influence into Sudan, Syria, and elsewhere, demonstrating a propensity to treat Yemen as both a geopolitical buffer and a financial reservoir for extraterritorial ambitions.
China, with its naval base in Djibouti and burgeoning interest in the Bab el-Mandeb corridor, monitors these developments closely, integrating maritime security considerations into broader Belt and Road imperatives. Beijing’s engagement underscores the globalisation of what was once a localised insurgency: strategic chokepoints in Yemen’s littoral are now vectors of transcontinental competition.
Saudi-UAE rivalry has exposed the fissility of alliances and revealed that economic and military power, even among the ostensibly dominant Arab states, cannot guarantee stability in Yemen.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, lying along the northwestern Somali coast near the Bab el-Mandeb, introduces an additional layer of maritime and strategic calculation, creating proximity to Yemen’s southern ports that accentuates the stakes for both regional powers and international shipping interests.
Houthi capability, strengthened technically by Iran, ensures that this corridor remains contested, while civilian populations remain caught between bombardments, economic deprivation, and famine. What an unfortunate fate for a country endowed with natural wealth yet ravaged by poverty, manipulated by regional hegemons, and ensnared in a cycle of violence that shows no immediate prospect of reprieve.
