Yemen’s Ambassador to UNESCO Ahmad al-Sayyad has given an interview to Al-Jazeera in which he accused Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of having a “hidden inclination to divide Yemen” in the future.
The comments come amid growing concerns from the Hadi government, which is theoretically backed by Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent by the UAE. Officials have expressed growing concern about the UAE for seizing airports and seaports, as well as briefly taking over the island of Socotra.
The UAE has downplayed these incidents, but has been openly backing secessionist groups in southern Yemen. They are also known to have ambitions to be a regional power, particularly in the Gulf of Aden, which would be helped by them securing some permanent bases in southern Yemen.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, seems primarily interested in the defeat of the Shi’ite Houthi movement in northern Yemen, and of ensuring that there is no Shi’ite presence along their disputed border with Yemen. Though the Saudis nominally support the Hadi government, it is mostly as a way of justifying intervention in Yemen, and they’ve also felt totally comfortable keeping Hadi under a state of house arrest for months on end.
What exactly Saudis plan to do with Shia? North Yemen is a Shia country and it has been so for over one millenia. It sounds like they want to steal Yemeni land along oil rich stretch of desert. So now it is disputed? Saudis have learned a lot from Israel.
Yemen was divided for almost all of its history. The current failed union is very new, and did not last long.
However, the Saudi problem is that they fear the fragment that is closest to them, and want the rest of Yemen to control it. So while it would not hurt Yemen to go back to its natural state, the Saudis would not want that.