After a Wednesday offensive in which Saudi-backed forces captured the city of Aden from UAE-backed separatists, the separatists and their allies have surged back with force, and by late Thursday have reclaimed the city.
While the separatists of the Southern Transitional Council lost a lot of towns in recent days, Aden is by far the most important, as it is the historic capital of South Yemen, which they intend to reform.
Aden is also being used by the Saudi-backed government as an interim capital for all of Yemen, since they don’t control the capital of Sanaa. The fight over Aden is likely to be a major ongoing issue between two factions that were once allied in the Yemen War, and now are at each others’ throats in a new war.
While the Saudis and UAE are both arguing that dialogue is needed, the Yemeni forces whose loyalty they command aren’t necessarily on board, with the government demanding separatists surrender, and the separatists insisting they’re going to keep what they took.
Aden is not the traditional capital of anything, for good reasons of geography. This also explains current events.
Aden is a beautiful big, deep water harbor. It has no connections to any significant interior. Hence, it was just a sleepy fishing village on a big bay.
Then the Suez Canal opened, and Aden was seen as a useful way station for short-range coal fired ships on the way East. It was also cheap and easy to protect, because it was so isolated from any back country that is was effectively an island. The British reinforced that by paying the back country tribes to fight with each other.
As Aden grew under British use, it became a thing apart, based on the stop over of shipping. Today the UAE is very interested in shipping and stop-overs and bases for local patrols, so it suits the UAE. Therefore, the UAE miltias have been fighting for it, along with other places along the coast. The Saudi militias fight more in the interior, nearer the Saudi border.
As the UAE moves to pull out of the war, it seeks to make deals to keep influence on the coast. The Saudis spite them. The coast itself actually needs the shipping connections, because it does not have much else.