Initially having invaded Yemen to reinstall former President Hadi, the Saudi-led coalition appears to have soured on Hadi, and vice-versa, with the growing tensions between the two sides leading to blockades not just against Hadi’s enemies, but against his government as well.
Today, the issue is the economy of southern Yemen, as the Saudi coalition is blockading flights into Hadi’s temporary capital of Aden which are carrying cash bound for the nation’s central bank, with the bank complaining the move is strangling Yemen’s already disastrous war-torn economy.
The coalition hasn’t officially revealed the reason for the move, though privately officials are saying it’s at the behest of the United Arab Emirates, who controls the airport and has very publicly soured on Hadi’s government.
At issue is that Hadi’s cabinet, backed by what few political allies he ever had, includes a number of Muslim Brotherhood linked figures, and the UAE is unhappy with that fact. Ditching them would be politically impossible for Hadi, whose ambitions for controlling Yemen as any sort of credible government rests on a very piecemeal set of political allies. Being anything short of violently opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, however, could quickly make Hadi persona non-grata among the coalition nations, exactly as it has with Qatar.