The latest of Marib .. Why accelerated the pace of UAE withdrawals from Yemen?

Al Jazeera Net - Private

A few days after the United Arab Emirates withdrew large parts of its troops and military equipment from the southern city of Aden and the western coast of the Red Sea, it also began withdrawing troops from the central city of Marib on Thursday.

These sudden developments occurred without any coordination with the legitimate government or the Yemeni army, according to a government source who spoke to Al Jazeera Net. This raised a number of questions about the reasons Abu Dhabi took these steps and their timing, motives and repercussions on the Yemeni scene in general.

To know the motives of this withdrawal from Marib as some call it, or as others see redeployment and positioning of the forces; Yemeni military expert Ali al-Zahab said that what is happening is a comprehensive withdrawal from Yemen at the moment, and what is being driven by several influences.

Among these influences - according to the gold talk to Al Jazeera Net - reaction to the demands of the components and forces belonging to the forces of the peaceful youth revolution in 2011, which put the UAE in balance with the Houthis.

He explained that the withdrawal of the UAE Patriot missile systems and other defense systems and forces; it is a lifting of the cover for those political forces that are intended to be vulnerable to blows Houthis.

According to Gold, there are other motives, some of which relate to the early re-sharing of the gains of the war and the distribution of spheres of influence in Yemen, especially after the gap appeared clear in the informal media discourse between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Among other reasons, the city of Marib was isolated and left alone in the face of the Houthis. There may be an order of coup or subversive action that would lead to a reality that would satisfy the UAE and its allies in their Congress and Transition Council.

big space
To identify the forces that could take the place of the retreating UAE forces, al-Jazeera Net continued with Colonel Khalid al-Farah, the deputy spokesman for the National Army, who confirmed that there were Saudi forces ready to replace the UAE forces, in addition to Yemeni army forces.

In another statement to Al Jazeera Net, a military commander in the National Army in Marib said that the repercussions of the withdrawal will certainly be reflected negatively in reality, and will cause a large vacuum, especially if the Patriot defense system is not replaced.

The UAE recently withdrew these missiles after it was brought in in September 2015 when dozens of soldiers of the Saudi-UAE alliance were killed after a rocket attack on their deployment site in the city.

The military official (who preferred not to be named) said that this rift in the course of the battle of the war and the restoration of the Yemeni state is due to many reasons; including the attempts of the UAE in recent periods, "demonization" of some Yemeni parties, and work in a separate track from the directions of Saudi Arabia, That there is a hidden conflict between them because of the sharing of interests and influence in the country.

Get rid of war
While the US Wall Street Journal confirmed that the UAE was seeking these withdrawals to escape the quagmire of the Yemen war, Yemeni Brigadier General Mohammed Jawas ruled out that there would be - in the military sense - military withdrawals of the UAE armed forces as a result of the failure of the war.

In an interview with Al Jazeera Net, Jawas said that what is happening is the transfer of anti-aircraft missiles from Marib to Aden and its environs, in anticipation of the targeting of Houthi by the booby-trapped aircraft of the military zone in Aden and government installations.

He questioned what Wall Street said, because the force in the UAE was sufficient to repel any attacks on it, and what was present in Yemen was originally an excess force. The same is true of Saudi Arabia, which has more troops on its border with Iraq than the forces on the border Yemen.

Timing of withdrawal
Asked about the timing of the withdrawal, Joas said it was linked to the duration of the war, and that the entry of the conflict and the fifth Sunni war would have consequences beyond the results on the ground.

For his part, political analyst Abdel Nasser al-Mudhid says it is difficult to talk about a withdrawal, and that the issue seems more like reducing the presence of troops in some areas and redeploying in other areas.

He adds to Al Jazeera Net that the motives of these steps may be due to the desire of the UAE to focus on certain areas that it believes to be more important, such as the south, specifically coastal areas and the island of Socotra.

The applicant points out that the UAE's steps confirm the difficulty of passing its agenda and its cost in Yemen, which could lead to full withdrawal in the future if the political and economic costs of its survival increase, which is expected due to the growing chaos in Yemen.