Yemen's factions battling Houthis share a common enemy but not common goals
Yemeni factions fighting the Iran-backed Houthis are united mainly in one thing — their opposition to the rebels who control the country's north and have recently advanced along its Red Sea coastline.
But beyond that, the groups fighting under the banner of Yemen's internationally recognized government are divided by geography, foreign patronage and competing visions for what their country should look like if the Houthis are pushed back.
In a month of intense fighting that saw the Houthis' biggest land grab in years, factions of the anti-Houthi coalition lost their hold of Mokha, a strategic city on the Red Sea, and islands in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait further south. The advance ended a truce that had been in place since 2022 and had calmed a devastating civil war.
Neighboring Saudi Arabia is trying to weld the factions — amounting to thousands of fighters — into a more unified force, but their divisions have raised questions about their ability to halt the Houthi offensive that now has the rebels perched on one of the world's busiest waterways.
The Houthis' unified command and goals have helped their swift expansion, rather than any single military advantage, said Adam Baron, a fellow at New America, a Washington-based think tank.
"For the Houthis, that makes it so much easier to fight this battle: one coherent movement on one side, and a loosely linked umbrella group on the other," he said.
Here is what we know about the anti-Houthi factions:
The factions have been shaped by Saudi-Emirati rivalry
Saudi Arabia formed a coalition to fight the Houthis in 2015, a year after the rebels overran the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north, driving the government into the south.
In the south, an array of militias and armed groups arose over the years, ostensibly to back the government against the rebels.
Over the years, rivalries grew between Saudi-backed factions and others backed by the United Arab Emirates, as the two regional powerhouses competed for control over the coalition as well as Yemen's coastal regions overlooking strategic shipping lanes.
The factions repeatedly clashed on the ground. After Emirati-backed southern separatist factions intensified clashes last year, Saudi Arabia carried out airstrikes against a suspected Emirati weapons shipment to southern Yemen. In January, the UAE said it pulled out of Yemen's war, ending its support for factions on the ground.
Bringing fighters under one umbrella is proving difficult
Now as a single patron, Saudi Arabia is trying to absorb under its command and funding structure the factions that spent years operating with other loyalties. Some commanders have been reluctant to give up autonomy and their own revenue sources.
A main faction is the National Resistance Forces, established in 2017 and long backed by the UAE. With an estimated 30,000 fighters, it has been considered one of the best-armed factions, according to the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
It was the main group holding Yemen's Red Sea coast but not the only one.
The Giants Brigades was also part of the command overseeing the coast. Also once funded by the UAE, it broke with other Emirati allies last year and is now backed by the Saudis.
Mistrust between the two runs deep. The National Resistance Forces is made up largely of Yemenis from the north, led by a commander related to the country's former autocrat, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who died at the hands of the Houthis in 2017. The Giants Brigades is dominated by tribesmen from the south who are mostly Salafis — an ultraconservative movement within Sunni Islam — and who hold bitter memories of Saleh's rule.
Officials say leadership disputes and lack of coordination between the factions were a major factor in their defeat by the Houthis as they moved along the coast.
The Saudis are trying to build a new Yemen command
Saudi Arabia also has been trying to build an umbrella group to unify Yemeni factions, called the National Shield. Established in January 2023, it reports to Rashad al-Alimi, the Saudi-based chairman of the Presidential Council, the leadership body of Yemen's internationally recognized government.
The National Shield is dominated by Salafi fighters with close ties to Saudi Arabia. It also includes tribal fighters, with some absorbed from the previously UAE-backed separatists.
Composed of three divisions with tens of thousands of fighters, it operates in the sprawling central province of Hadramawt and areas in southern and eastern Yemen. The group also controls Yemen's main land borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman.
The National Shield is not yet trying to bring the National Resistance and Giants into its forces.
There is also an official Yemeni government military. But it was weakened for years by the UAE, which saw it as too close to Yemen's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islah party. Instead, the UAE built a network of other groups as proxies.
Now, army forces as well as Islah-connected armed groups are stationed in the oil-rich region of Marib, one of the current front lines with the Houthis.
Southern separatists have threatened government forces
For years, one of the strongest forces against the Houthis was the Southern Transitional Council, an umbrella group of armed factions that sought to restore southern Yemen as an independent country, as it was from 1967-1990.
The UAE funded and armed the council, which fought the Houthis but also frequently clashed with the government, based in the southern port city of Aden.
The council's leadership was dismantled in January when the UAE quit Yemen. But its cause still has supporters, and earlier this month, a group of them attacked a convoy of the Yemeni defense minister, Lt. Gen. Taher al-Aqili, in the southern province of Dhale. The minister was unhurt.
Overall, the renewed fighting risks a full-scale return to the civil war that killed more than 150,000 people and forced millions from their homes. Already, nearly 130,000 people have been newly displaced and hundreds killed.
Source: Associated Press
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