Abu Dhabi attacks highlight risks of Yemen escalation

The attacks on a UAE oil facility yesterday opened up a new front in the more than six-year war in Yemen and acted as a stark reminder about how quickly the region's conflicts can escalate.

The Iran-aligned Houthi group, which has been fighting a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen since 2015, claimed responsibility for the attack in which three people died, saying they fired five missiles and a "large number of drones". The Houthis have previously favoured sending projectiles into Saudi Arabia, and have targeted shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb strait between Yemen and Djibouti.

The UAE said in October 2019 that it would draw down its forces in Yemen, and since then has maintained it is not involved in combat operations there. But analysts say many Yemenis, including the Houthis, see Abu Dhabi's hand in a recent military push back against Houthi incursion into Yemen's two key oil producing provinces Marib and Shabwa. This has been checked by the Giants Brigades, a 15,000 strong militia from the south of Yemen.

"What happened is that the untapped military potential of the Giants Brigades finally swung into action, shifting from west coast Yemen to Shabwa and Marib, and this blunted Houthi momentum and could even reverse Houthi gains in Marib," said Washington Institute for Near East Policy analyst Michael Knights. "The Houthis are very upset about that and presume an Emirati hand in it."

He describes the Giants Brigades as "tough, experienced Salafist fighters", many from the southern port cities of Mukalla or Aden. Previously based on the Red Sea coast, their deployment in Shabwa quickly pushed the Houthis out and they then began engaging the group's advances in Marib.

The Houthis have been fighting for control of Marib for more than a year, encircling from the west Marib city and nearby oil facilities, including a central processing unit that connects oil and gas fields in block 18, once Yemen's most prolific oil-producing block, producing 2.4bn ft³/d (24.7bn m³/yr) of natural gas, 40,000 b/d of crude and 28,000 b/d (880,000 t/yr) of LPG before the war. Marib also hosts a 10,000 b/d refinery, a power plant and one of the country's few LPG bottling plants.

At the end of 2021, the militants had seized three districts in northern Shabwa, a province which includes some of Yemen's most productive oil and gas sites, as well as the 6.7mn t/yr Yemen LNG liquefaction terminal at the southern port of Balhaf, which has been closed since 2015. Control of either province is critical to Houthi ambitions of creating an economically viable independent state. Taking Shabwa would also split the south, cutting off Aden from Hadramawt and dooming any potential independent southern state.

The action in southern Yemen and the Houthi attack on the UAE is a reminder that more than six years into this conflict the war in Yemen is far from over, years of apparent stalemate can quickly change and seemingly no one — not the UN, the US, nor regional powers — has a workable plan to end it.

International Crisis Group (ICG) analyst Peter Salisbury said yesterday's attack is a signal from the Houthis that the cost of UAE involvement will be high. The question now is whether this draws Abu Dhabi back into the fray, as it has suggested it will, or if it will be satisfied with air strikes on Houthi-held territory and raising its support for the Giants Brigades.

By Adal Mirza