North Yemen to the Houthis and the south in the hands of separatists .. Is Saudi Arabia enough of the booty return?

Saudi Arabia formed a military alliance that waged an open war on Yemen to break the Houthi group and regain the territory they controlled.More than four years later, the north was not returned, but the south was also lost after UAE-backed separatists seized Aden, the second capital of the legitimate government, amid suspicious Saudi silence.

The loss of the south is likely to be one of the worst nightmares of Yemen's war for the Saudi authorities, which have so much plunged into the sands of Yemen's quicksand, and for dreamers of restoring a "united, happy Yemen." It is certainly another nail in the coffin of the military alliance, whose hammers have been turned since it was formed more than four years ago.

What happened?
In a major shift in the conflict in southern Yemen, UAE-backed southern separatists effectively seized Aden when they seized government army bases on Saturday, after four days of fierce fighting between the two sides amid almost complete silence from the Saudi-UAE alliance.

Saudi Arabia only watched the scene of the fighting in Aden during those four crucial days, and after the Transitional Council forces completed control of the most vital facilities in the Yemeni interim capital, including the Maasheq presidential palace in Aden, it intervened to call on the parties to the dialogue to declare a ceasefire and threaten the violators.

Some of Saudi Arabia's allies in Yemen, such as Deputy Speaker Abdul Aziz Jabbari, accused the United Arab Emirates of "slaughtering legitimacy from vein to vein" and asserting that Houthi "did not do as legitimate as you did.

He was joined by Interior Minister Ahmed al-Maisari, who accused the presidency and Saudi Arabia of silence over the coup.

Faced with these developments, the coalition, which represents another expression of the Saudi position, entered the crisis line to declare that it attacked one of the targets after threatening to move unless southern forces stopped firing.

What does that mean for the coalition?
The southern secessionists 'control of Aden makes it harder for Riyadh's mission to weaken the Houthis' grip on Yemen as they now control the capital Sanaa and most urban centers.

The Saudi-UAE alliance intervened in Yemen against the Houthis in 2015, and suffered numerous cracks after the withdrawal of Qatar and Morocco, and has been widely accused by Western organizations of responsibility for massacres and major human rights violations in Yemen.

The Houthis have no spheres of influence in the south, where the UAE has armed and trained about 90,000 Yemeni troops, originally from southern separatists and fighters from the coastal plains.

But the Southern Transitional Council, which leads the separatists, may not have much support outside Aden, and its move threatens to fuel fighting in the south and strengthen armed groups such as al Qaeda.

Playing with fire
There is no missing friendliness between the Hadi government and the separatists who accuse it of mismanagement and corruption.

The war has revived long-standing tensions between the north and the south, with each half forming a separate state and uniting only in 1990.

In recent years, separatist tone has risen in the ranks of UAE-backed armed militias, some of which took control of Aden in January 2018, and Riyadh and Abu Dhabi helped end the crisis.

The United Arab Emirates has asked UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths to put pressure on both sides, and Riyadh said it would host an emergency summit of both sides to restore order.

But Elizabeth Kendall of the University of Oxford said: "The use of separatist armed groups from across the south has always been a game of fire, and it is surprising that the UAE says it is the UN special envoy who should solve the problem."

Did the coalition break up?
The Saudi-UAE alliance has not been completely and publicly disintegrated, but it is certainly a crack. Analysts say the UAE is unlikely to commit itself again to send troops, but will support Riyadh, with which it is working openly to contain Iran, while multiple reports confirm it is courting and intensifying its contacts with Iran in secret.

The UAE said it had reduced its presence in Yemen as the truce held in the main port of Hodeidah, which became the focus of war last year when the coalition sought to control it.

Diplomats said the UAE's reduction in participation was due to its acceptance of the idea of ​​a military solution there after international criticism of coalition airstrikes that killed civilians and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

The UAE decision gave the West an additional incentive to press the West to end a war that has killed tens of thousands and escalated tensions between the United States and Iran to the point of war in the Gulf.

It is widely believed that the UAE is the biggest winner economically and strategically not only from the recent developments in Aden, but also from the Yemeni war, where it established its presence in the south and "seized" the ports, beaches, islands and important sites. "In addition, it bears a large part of its moral, political, security and economic costs, at a time when Yemenis are exhausted by their humanitarian burden in a country that was happy not long ago.