After the war in Yemen has destroyed all forms of political life, and the civic society shattered despite its fragility, it is now reshaping geography with the power of the weapons of those who control the land, including the militias, forces and military formations planted by war sponsors and their financiers in the forgotten country.
After more than seven years of conflict, Yemen has become more like republics of bananas and cantons run by warlords and profiteers, working under evasive banners, able to lubricate the feelings of hungry followers, and inflame their regional, sectarian and regional instincts, to keep them on constant readiness to fight the battles of others, with solid illusions and cheap blood.
In the north, the militias have transformed the days of the Yemenis under their control into a series of religious resurrections that invoke a dead time, to revive it as sacred history, which must be rewritten as a covenant document, written with their blood in the mountains, deserts and plains of the impoverished country. Where the battles of power are taking place, which these forces are looking for as a heavenly right that no one can dispute over them; A collection authority, an insatiable greed, is growing at the expense of starvation and impoverishment of Yemenis.
And in the south, militias are still selling the illusions of restoring the (southern state), through crude village banners and terrible mortgages. Its leaders and beneficiaries enjoy large revenues from ports, outlets, and levies, at the expense of citizens killed by heat, hunger, and high prices. A militia that operates as a clutch under the auspices of outsiders sponsor, whose only concern is the narrow interests of disrupting ports, violating water and islands, and licensing wealth.
Over the past years, Shabwa governorate has remained a contact area between the militias of the south and Marib, feeding on the conflicts of the warlords, and this fluid overlap had to be resolved in favor of one of the parties.
Militias in the center and the east, hijacked cities and formed loyal organizations from the outcasts and those with precedents, who turned a city like (Taiz), into chaos and disorder city, and cultural and social regression. Similarly, they turned a city like (Ma’rib) into a partisan military fiefdom with great resources, from which only followers and loyalists can take advantage.
In addition, a family militia, which was planted in the historical smuggling strip, overlooking the most important shipping lanes in the region, to perform the function of a policeman in the area over which the family’s authority has been established since the mid-1970s.
On the other hand, the regional powers are fighting over influence: the UAE and Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Oman on the other, until it reached the battle of breaking the bone in Al-Mahra Governorate, which the two countries of the coalition want to swallow, as happened to the island of Socotra. The second considers it as an entitlement to it by virtue of the historical neighborhood and the social and economic overlap, and each of the three countries has its arms of hired militias, in the remote province and always far from the center of the sagging power.
Hadhramaut, with its geographical diversity and multiplicity of resources, has become a property of Saudi Arabia, due to economic factors and population loyalty, and due to the Hadrami migration density in the Saudi country, which facilitates its presence on the soil almost without hardship.
Over the past years, Shabwa governorate has remained a contact area between the militias of the south and Marib, feeding on the conflicts of the warlords, and this fluid interference had to be resolved in favor of one of the parties, and it was clear that the UAE wanted to neutralize the port of Balhaf, or hand it over to its allies, in an effort to share the national land with Saudi Arabia in Hadramout and the south, and with Iran in the western strip, north and central Yemen, where the population reserve and the largest collection mine.
This play was actually started with the fall of the districts of Baihan and Usaylan to the Houthis in September 2021, without a fight, to be liberated later easily, by the forces of the southern giants in early 2022. The giants' forces which have been stationed on the west coast, left a great void in large areas from Al-Duraihimi to Al-Khookha in Al Hodeida Governorate.
As a result, the Houthi group was able to expand in it, with understandings based on compromises to share control and influence, between the agents of the sponsoring, marching and financing forces of the war, which are further strengthened and sustained, due to the growth of these interests, at the expense of Yemenis’ blood, dreams and their one holy land.
