A separatist group in Yemen backed by the United Arab Emirates seized control of large parts of an oil-rich province on Wednesday, The New York Times reports. The group, known as the Southern Transitional Council, has been battling in Yemen’s south to entrench its control over the port of Aden and nearby towns, but their breakout into the province of Hadramout represents a new push to the east and north, and shatters what had been a stalemate between the various forces fighting for control of the country, including the STC, the Houthis in the north, and forces aligned with the internationally recognized government.
As Jonathan Fenton-Harvey wrote in WPR in July, Yemen’s previous calm has hidden the fact that the country “is increasingly fractured across political, economic and geographic lines. While often oversimplified as a Shiite-Sunni proxy conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s tensions have long been driven by internal grievances that date back to the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990.” A return to all-out war, Fenton-Harvey wrote, was a distinct possibility, and would likely be prompted by one of the country’s armed groups “exploiting an opportunity to seize territory from the other.”
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