UAE forces to depart Yemen after Saudi demands, strikes

On December 30, the United Arab Emirates announced that its forces would leave Yemen after Saudi Arabia insisted that the UAE withdraw from the country the same day, echoing demands from leaders of Yemen’s internationally recognized government (IRG). Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been part of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen to fight the Houthis. However, they have divergent policies and preferred actors in the country.

The developments follow Saudi strikes overnight on December 29-30 on the port of Mukalla in southern Yemen, supposedly targeting Emirati efforts to supply southern Yemeni forces. In the preceding days, UAE-backed southern separatist forces rejected demands to withdraw from territory that they had recently seized in eastern Yemen.

In early December, forces aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a party to Yemen’s IRG, marched east and seized the governorates of Hadramawt and Al Mahrah, which extend from the southern coast to Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia and eastern border with Oman. The STC, backed by the UAE, advocates for the secession of southern Yemen and now controls the governorates that comprise the state of South Yemen. However, other members of the IRG, many aligned with Saudi Arabia, insist on the authority of the IRG’s official bodies over a unified Yemen. Saudi Arabia views the recently captured territory, particularly Hadramawt on its border, as crucial not only to Yemeni stability but to Saudi security.

On December 30, Yemeni President Rashid al Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), the IRG’s executive body, issued an official decree requiring the withdrawal of Emirati forces. “First: To cancel the Joint Defense Agreement with the United Arab Emirates. Second: All Emirati forces and their personnel must withdraw from all Yemeni territory within (24) hours. Third: The Homeland Shield Forces must move and take control of all camps in the governorates of Hadramawt and Al Mahra,” the decree stated. The Homeland Shield Forces, also translated as the National Shield Forces, is a Saudi-backed force formed by Alimi in 2023. Saudi Arabia quickly expressed its support for the president’s decree.

However, three southern members of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, as well as Tariq Saleh, a UAE-backed political and military leader on Yemen’s west coast who is aligned with the STC, issued a statement rejecting the PLC declaration. The dissenters said that the decree was made outside the legal framework for PLC decisions, which requires consensus or majority vote, and thus, “any decisions issued outside this collective framework lack constitutional and legal legitimacy.”

“We affirm unequivocally that no individual or entity within the Leadership Council, or outside it, has the authority to expel any state from the Arab Coalition states, or to claim the termination of its role or presence, as this is a matter governed by regional frameworks, alliances, and international agreements that are not subject to whims or individual decisions. The United Arab Emirates has been, and remains, a principal partner in confronting the Houthi project,” the dissenters to the decree said regarding the UAE’s withdrawal.

For its part, the UAE rejected Saudi Arabia’s statement in support of the PLC decision, saying that it “rejects any attempt to implicate [the UAE] in the tensions between Yemeni parties and condemns the allegations of pressuring or directing any Yemeni party to carry out military operations that threaten the security of the sisterly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or target its borders.” However, on December 30, the UAE also declared “the termination of the remaining [UAE] counterterrorism personnel in Yemen of its own volition.” The statement clarified that these forces had been “limited to specialized personnel as part of counterterrorism efforts, in coordination with relevant international partners.”

Yemen expert Mohammad al Basha highlighted that despite removing its forces, the UAE maintains influence through local partners numbering nearly 200,000 personnel.

The demands for the UAE force removal came after the STC rejected demands by the IRG and Saudi Arabia to withdraw from its recently seized territories on December 26. Furthermore, Saudi Major General and Spokesman for the Coalition Forces Turki al Maliki said that on December 27 and 28, “two ships coming from the port of Fujairah [UAE] entered the port of Mukalla [southern Yemen] without obtaining official permits from the Joint Forces Command of the Coalition. The crews of the two ships disabled the tracking systems of the two ships and unloaded a large quantity of weapons and combat vehicles to support the Southern Transitional Council forces in the eastern governorates of Yemen (Hadramawt, Al-Mahra) with the aim of fueling the conflict.” Maliki went on to say that “the Coalition Air Forces conducted a limited military operation this morning [December 30] targeting weapons and combat vehicles unloaded from the two ships at the port of Al Mukalla.”

The Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested this claim, saying that “the shipment in question did not contain any weapons, and that the vehicles that were unloaded were not intended for any Yemeni party, but rather were shipped for use by the UAE forces operating in Yemen.”

On December 26, Saudi airstrikes had also targeted STC forces in Hadramawt.

Bridget Toomey is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focusing on Iranian proxies, specifically Iraqi militias and the Houthis.

Tags: Houthis, Saudi Arabia, Southern Transitional Council, uae, Yemen, Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council