Several Wars in One Country: Yemen's Houthis, Southern Separatists and Regional Powers

Thinking of Yemen as a single-front civil war blurs the picture, which is why the Al Jazeera English video opens with a sharp frame: several wars are being fought inside one country at the same time. In the north and west the Houthis hold the capital Sanaa, a broad stretch of territory and the Red Sea littoral including the port of Hodeidah toward the Bab al-Mandab strait. On the other side stands the internationally recognized government, but it is described less as a unified army than as a coalition in name only, bringing together Islah-linked elements, command networks from the Ali Abdullah Saleh era and southern factions that distrust one another. That is why the anti-Houthi camp has remained divided for years.

From Zaydi networks to a state apparatus: how the Houthis hardened

The Houthis' current position is the product of a long hardening process. The movement grew out of Zaydi social networks in the north in the 1990s and was turned from a local opposition into a battle-tested force by six wars with the government between 2004 and 2010. After the 2011 Arab Spring the picture flipped; former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had fought the Houthis for years, allied with them and together they took Sanaa in 2014. The alliance did not last and the Houthis killed Saleh in 2017 after absorbing much of the administrative machinery he had built. Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened militarily in 2015, yet a decade later the Houthis remain because they built more than a militia, a state within a state that taxes and governs.

Several factors sustain that durability. While Yemeni tribes rarely offer permanent loyalty, the Houthis combine institutions, weapons and geography. Iranian support strengthens them but the video stresses Yemeni roots, and more recently their stance against Israel's war in Gaza has produced weekly mobilizations said to bring millions onto the streets, adding political momentum to military capacity. That momentum, paired with entrenched control near the Bab al-Mandab, makes the threat of disruption more credible. The point is not sectarian or external support alone but an accumulated practice of governing under war.

A coalition on paper: why the front stayed fragmented

The story on the other side is more fragile. The internationally recognized government was recast in 2022 when former president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi transferred powers to an eight-member Presidential Leadership Council headed by Rashad al-Alimi, created to unify anti-Houthi forces. It gathered northern politicians, southern military leaders and different ideological strands, yet unity remained thin. The United Arab Emirates built its own channel in 2017 with the Southern Transitional Council, seeing Islah-aligned currents as an ideological risk and backing the council both to curb that influence and to secure maritime and logistics leverage along the southern coast and near the Bab al-Mandab. Riyadh, by contrast, prioritized a united Yemen, border security and keeping a negotiated track with the Houthis open.

That divergence exploded on the ground in late 2025. On December 2 the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council launched a broad offensive into Hadramawt, the largest governorate holding about eighty percent of Yemen's oil reserves, and into al-Mahra on the Omani border. Its forces took Seiyun and the coastal city of Mukalla and soon claimed control across the eight governorates of former South Yemen, with estimates putting more than ninety percent of populated areas in that zone under its sway. The halt in production at PetroMasila, Yemen's largest oil company, showed how central Hadramawt is economically. The council framed the move as securing the area against smuggling to the Houthis, but for Riyadh a separatist advance so close to the Saudi border amounted to a national security red line.

The red line and the unraveling: after the air strikes

Riyadh sought to reverse the red line first diplomatically and then militarily. On December 25 Saudi authorities called on the council to withdraw, on December 26 air strikes hit the Wadi Nahb area in Hadramawt, and on December 29 a strike on the port of Mukalla was presented as targeting a weapons shipment said to have come from the UAE. The Yemeni Presidential Council gave the UAE 24 hours to pull out, dissolved the joint defense pact and declared a ninety-day state of emergency. The UAE, which had drawn down most forces in 2019, said it was withdrawing remaining counterterrorism teams of its own volition. On January 2 2026 Saudi-backed Homeland Shield Forces launched a counteroffensive with Saudi air support, retaking Seiyun and Mukalla on January 3 to 4 and entering Aden on January 7. That day council leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi was removed from the Presidential Leadership Council, charged with high treason and reported to have fled via Berbera in Somaliland to the UAE. On January 9 a dissolution announcement came from Riyadh but was rejected by spokesmen in Aden who said the delegation had been coerced.

A January 14 2026 Al Jazeera map based on Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies data shows a three-way control pattern: the Houthis in the northwest and capital, the government claiming most of the rest of the country while southern pockets linked to the council persist. The government has pledged to integrate all anti-Houthi forces including the National Resistance Forces into the national army but that process has not begun. Saudi Arabia has announced plans for a broad dialogue conference in Riyadh on the future of the south, yet trust has not been restored. Strategically the picture is more sensitive; Houthi advances and activity around islands near the Bab al-Mandab, combined with Iranian pressure around the Strait of Hormuz, raise talk of a double squeeze on global oil and shipping. Houthi attacks since November 2023 on vessels in the Red Sea linked to Israel and the legitimacy the group draws from opposition to the war in Gaza further widen the stakes. The video closes on a single idea: the deeper failure was never just about fighting the Houthis but about the inability to hold together the front built against them.