Yemen's frozen war

Thursday 26 February 2026

Yemen’s war is sometimes described as “frozen”. That is only half true. Along many front lines the guns are quieter than they were in 2018 or 2019, yet Yemen remains divided into armed jurisdictions that answer to different patrons, different revenue streams and different stories about legitimacy. The country’s people live inside that fragmentation—where a relative calm can still mean arbitrary detention, interrupted salaries, closed roads, disrupted fuel supplies and aid that arrives late or not at all. 

Where matters stand now

The broad military picture is a stalemate with moving parts.

In the north and west, Ansar Allah—the Houthi movement—holds the capital, Sana’a, and most of the highland population belt. It runs a state-like apparatus: taxation, courts, security services and a war economy that rewards loyalty. Its leverage is not only internal. Since late 2023 Houthi attacks and threats against shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have turned Yemen’s conflict into a pressure point for global trade—and an instrument of regional signalling linked to Gaza. Even as some commercial shipping has cautiously returned to the route, the underlying pattern remains: a de facto authority in Sana’a that can switch maritime risk on and off, and therefore command attention well beyond Yemen’s borders. 

In the south and east the internationally recognised government has survived—but not as a single coherent state. It is an umbrella of factions, militias and local power brokers coordinated through the Presidential Leadership Council and dependent upon external support, chiefly Saudi Arabia. Governance in these areas is often a contest over ports, pipelines, customs points, fuel import licences and the salaries of security forces. A fresh cabinet was formed in early February 2026 under a newly appointed prime minister, Shaya Mohsen al-Zindani—an attempt to restore administrative momentum and patch together a governing coalition in the areas outside Houthi control. 

Then there is the south’s separatist question, embodied by the Southern Transitional Council (STC). The STC has been the UAE’s preferred partner in Yemen, rooted in the old grievance that the unification of 1990 produced a southern periphery rather than an equal partner. In late 2025 and early 2026, the STC’s position has been in flux—reports of internal fractures and clashes in southern governorates underline a deeper truth: Yemen’s “anti-Houthi” space is not a single bloc, and Saudi and Emirati priorities do not always align. 

Finally, the humanitarian emergency remains structural, not episodic. United Nations briefings continue to describe a population where food insecurity is widespread and child malnutrition stubbornly high. At the same time, the aid system is increasingly constrained by insecurity, detentions and funding shortfalls. When major agencies suspend or scale down operations in Houthi-held areas, it is not merely a budget line—it changes the daily arithmetic of survival for millions. 

How Yemen reached this point

The story begins with a state that was never quite a state.

Ali Abdullah Saleh ruled North Yemen, then unified Yemen, through a system of patronage—tribal alliances, military commands, selective repression and money. The 2011 Arab Spring protests toppled the façade of permanence. Saleh stepped aside in a Gulf-brokered transition, and Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi inherited a country with collapsing institutions, armed entrepreneurs and a population that expected change faster than the political class could deliver it.

The Houthis—an insurgency rooted in the northern highlands and long at odds with Sana’a—expanded during the transition years, exploiting both grievances and the weakness of the centre. In 2014 they seized Sana’a with the help of allies—including, crucially, elements loyal to Saleh himself, who sought a route back to power. The takeover triggered the flight of the government and, in 2015, a Saudi-led military intervention aimed at restoring the recognised government and preventing an Iran-aligned movement from consolidating control on the Kingdom’s southern border.

What followed was a grinding war—air strikes, shifting coalitions, siege dynamics around ports and cities, and an economy that fractured into rival central banks, rival customs regimes and rival sources of foreign currency. International diplomacy produced partial agreements and temporary de-escalations—never a settlement. The result today is a country where the lines of control are also lines of administration, and where each actor’s survival depends upon keeping its own coalition together.

The major actors and their backers

The Houthis (Ansar Allah)

The Houthis present themselves as an anti-corruption revolution and a defender of sovereignty. In practice, it is both an armed movement and a governing authority. Its bargaining strategy rests on three forms of leverage—territory and population control, coercive security power at home, and regional escalation capacity through missiles and drones.

Iran’s relationship with the Houthis is often debated in its exact command-and-control details, but the political alignment is visible. The Houthis’ maritime campaign and their willingness to absorb international strikes have increased their status inside the wider “resistance” narrative, giving Tehran a low-cost pressure point on Red Sea trade. 

The internationally recognised government and the Presidential Leadership Council

This “government”, now located in Aden on the south coast, is best understood as a coalition management exercise—balancing party figures, local commanders and regional interests, whilst depending heavily on Saudi financial and military support. The appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet is meant to signal capacity and unity, yet the harder task is structural: paying salaries reliably, controlling armed units through institutions rather than personal loyalty and producing a credible negotiating position that speaks for more than one city at a time. 

The Southern Transitional Council and southern armed formations

The STC’s aim is either full southern independence or, at minimum, dominance within any future federal arrangement. The UAE has cultivated southern forces as counterweights to Islamist factions and as a means of protecting maritime and port interests along the Gulf of Aden. Saudi Arabia’s priority is different—border security and a tolerable settlement that prevents Yemen becoming a permanent missile platform. When these priorities clash southern politics turns combustible, and the anti-Houthi camp weakens itself from within. 

The external powers

Saudi Arabia wants out of an expensive, reputationally damaging war—yet cannot accept a hostile authority on her border with unconstrained strike capability. The UAE wants influence over southern ports and security partners, and has been willing to back separatist-leaning forces that complicate Saudi plans. Oman, quieter but important, has served as a channel for talks and de-escalation.

The United States and the United Kingdom have been pulled in by the maritime theatre—protecting shipping and deterring attacks—whilst also trying to keep space for UN diplomacy. European states, meanwhile, feel the conflict through refugee pressures, energy and shipping costs and the moral burden of a protracted humanitarian disaster. 

Why a “breakthrough” is hard

A peace process usually needs two things at once—an internal bargain and an external guarantee. Yemen lacks both.

Internally the country’s key disputes are not only about who sits in Sana’a, but about who controls revenue—ports, customs, oil and gas fields, telecommunications and the central bank functions. Any ceasefire that does not answer the salary question—who pays teachers, nurses and police across rival zones—simply postpones the next crisis.

Externally patron states want different end states, and Yemen’s factions have learned how to play those differences. A deal that satisfies Saudi Arabia may alarm the UAE. A settlement that grants the Houthis de facto recognition may enrage southern constituencies and produce a second civil conflict in the south. 

Where a breakthrough could still emerge

Even in Yemen, opportunities exist—if defined modestly.

A Saudi–Houthi understanding, widened into an intra-Yemeni process

The most plausible first step is not a grand national settlement but a Saudi–Houthi package—border security guarantees, limits on cross-border strikes, and economic measures such as phased salary payments and eased restrictions on ports and airports. The danger is that such a package becomes a bilateral exit ramp that leaves other Yemenis outside the room. The UN’s effort is to widen any such understandings into a political process rather than a transactional truce. 

Humanitarian access as confidence-building

The resumption of UN flights into Sana’a for aid operations is the kind of practical step that can build a little trust—because it creates predictable routines and reduces the sense of siege. Yet the parallel trend—detentions and restrictions that force agencies to suspend work—pulls in the opposite direction. A breakthrough may begin with something as unglamorous as agreed rules for aid operations and the protection of humanitarian staff. 

A southern settlement before a national one

If the south continues to fracture, any national negotiation will be built on sand. Riyadh’s growing willingness to “take the helm” in southern coalition management reflects a recognition that the anti-Houthi camp must first decide what it is. A durable southern bargain—on autonomy, security sector command and revenue-sharing—could remove one of the principal obstacles to a national talks track. 

De-linking Yemen from regional escalation

So long as Yemen remains a theatre in wider confrontations—US–Iran tensions, Gaza spillover, Red Sea trade security—local compromises will be held hostage to external events. A reduction in maritime attacks has already prompted some shipping to return, suggesting that de-escalation is possible when regional incentives change. A sustained calm at sea would not end Yemen’s war, but it would remove a major accelerant that encourages maximalist positions on land. 

The uncomfortable conclusion

Yemen is not one war; she is several wars stacked together—centre versus periphery, north versus south, militia versus institution, patron versus proxy. The current status is best described as a managed stalemate—politically unstable, economically predatory, periodically explosive.

A breakthrough remains possible, but it is unlikely to arrive as a single signing ceremony. More likely it will come in increments—salary mechanisms, humanitarian access, de-confliction in the south, and a regional understanding that stops treating Yemen as a valve on global trade. The tragedy is that Yemen’s people have lived long enough inside “increments” that they no longer feel like progress. The task of diplomacy is to make the increments accumulate before the next round of escalation resets the ledger.