Yemen: From the Dismantling of the Anti-Houthi Faction to the Redefinition of Power
The balance of power in Yemen is no longer measured solely by each party’s military strength, weapons, and the geographical areas it controls; rather, it has become more closely tied to its ability to prevent its opponent from using force, by dictating the timing of confrontation, controlling the level of escalation, and shifting the cost of war deep into its opponent’s territory.
From this perspective, the transformations witnessed in southern Yemen since late 2025 appear to have significance beyond the local conflict between the southern powers and the Yemeni government. The confrontation between Saudi-backed forces and the southern armed forces led to a deep rift within the anti-Houthi camp at a time when these forces were supposed to be unifying their capabilities and rebuilding their military readiness.
This rift reached its peak in January 2026, when Saudi-backed forces—Salafist-jihadist groups—swept the city of Mukalla and large areas of Hadhramaut of Southern Transitional Council forces under Saudi cover in a development described by Reuters as revealing a growing division within the anti-Houthi coalition.
The strategic irony here is that the force Riyadh was treating as an adversary to be contained within the south was at the same time part of the military structure formed to confront al-Qaeda and the Houthis.
Thus, the most important question is not merely why Saudi Arabia disagreed with the Transitional Council. Rather, what did the Houthis gain by shifting the center of gravity within their opponents’ camp to managing the conflict among their allies?
When the conflict within the anti-Houthi camp became a priority
Since the Arab coalition’s intervention in Yemen in 2015, the anti-Houthi side has not been a homogeneous bloc. It consists of political and military forces with various agendas, as well as local, tribal, and partisan forces.
This pluralism has been manageable as long as the common goal—confronting the Houthis—remained the priority.
But with the decline of large-scale military operations following the 2022 truce, contradictions among these forces began to surface more prominently, and the question of who controls the south, who holds decision-making authority over security and military matters, and who controls the ports, resources, and strategic sites has become a central part of the conflict.
These contradictions erupted abruptly in late 2025, when forces of the Southern Transitional Council advanced into Zharamout before Saudi Arabia intervened with an airstrike that allowed Saudi-backed Salafist forces to advance and overrun large areas in early January 2026.
And so the focus shifted from “how do we defeat the Houthis?” to “how do we redistribute power within the anti-Houthi areas?” It was precisely this shift that provided the Houthis with a more favorable strategic environment.
Riyadh’s Perspective: Cohesion of the Weakest Front
From a Saudi perspective, Riyadh framed the move against the Transitional Council as an attempt to prevent a shift in the balance of power in the south that would undermine Saudi national security.
The southern armed forces, which arrived in late 2025 in strategic areas of Hadramaut to protect them from terrorist groups and cut off the arms and drug smuggling route that supplies terrorist groups and the Houthis, despite the presence in the region of armed forces loyal to the Islah group (the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), including areas near the Saudi border.
Riyadh suddenly viewed this move as a threat to its security and supported a counterattack that led to the expulsion of the southern forces from large areas. Saudi Arabia also announced that the Transitional Council’s advance was a threat to its national security.
But the problem became the cost of implementing that decision—namely, the weakening of a local military faction with extensive combat experience in fighting the Houthis, al-Qaeda, and terrorist organizations; the redeployment of forces; the removal of units from their positions; and the restructuring of security control in Hadramaut. All of this occurred while the original problem—the Houthi threat—remained unresolved.
A clear contradiction emerged here. The strength of one of the parties on the anti-Houthi side was reduced to restore its internal balance, while the Houthis retained their strength, military structure, and ability to launch long-range attacks—clearly demonstrating that Saudi Arabia seeks to manage conflicts in Yemen without allowing them to be resolved and without allowing any party to win, in order to keep Yemen under Saudi control.
The Problem with Internal Victory
A regional power may achieve a tactical victory when it recaptures a city or position from a former ally, but the question that matters in protracted wars is whether this victory increased its capacity to confront the main opponent.
In the Yemeni case, the relationship does not seem so straightforward. The invasion of Mukalla and Hadramaut from the Muttar positions and the bombing of southern forces by the Saudi Air Force were not operations against the Houthis, but rather operations within the anti-Houthi camp itself. Consequently, some of the political, military, and intelligence resources that could have been directed toward confronting the Houthis were instead diverted to restructuring the camp itself. This is the irony that must be addressed. The more focus is placed on redistributing power within the anti-Houthi camp, the greater the Houthis’ ability to reshape the balance of power in their favor—reflecting how the handling of the Yemeni crisis has become a cumulative Saudi failure.
The weakening of the Southern forces was not merely a change in deployment
The forces of the Southern Transitional Council should not be viewed as just another military formation. In previous years, a significant portion of security operations in the south were linked to the fight against al-Qaeda, particularly in Abyan, Shabwa, and Hadramaut.
Reuters reported that units linked to the Southern Transitional Council played a role in al-Qaeda’s withdrawal from Mukalla in 2016 and that the dismantling of some of these units following the transfer of control in Hadhramaut raised concerns about the security situation there.
Therefore, restructuring this framework does not merely entail changing the names or locations of units, but also entails the loss of local expertise, intelligence networks based on geographical knowledge, tribal relations, experience in guerrilla warfare, and the ability to track down armed cells—capabilities that are difficult to replicate through a hasty administrative decision.
From Proactive Strike to “Deterrence by Deprivation”
For this reason, the traditional preemptive strike aims to destroy a military target before it is used, but the use of Houthi missiles and launchers can serve a broader function: preventing the adversary from building the capacity it originally needs to wage war.
This is what can be described as deterrence through deprivation—that is, the Houthis do not necessarily say, “If you attack us, we will strike back,” but the more complex message is that you will not be able to build the necessary force to attack us without having it destroyed before you can use it. Here, the attack shifts from being a tactical operation to being a tool for managing the balance of power.