Mohammad EslamiOver the past week, Saudi fighter jets have carried out multiple air strikes in Yemen’s Hadramaut province, targeting positions linked to the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a UAE-backed separatist force.
Saudi Arabia has also openly accused the United Arab Emirates, a fellow Gulf state and former ally in the Yemen civil war, of actions that threaten its national security.
The strikes and accusations go beyond a simple battlefield episode. They represent a public rift in what was once portrayed as a united Gulf intervention in Yemen, and serve as a warning of a wider regional strategy that is starting to fall apart.
The UAE has increasingly relied on proxy militias, local armed partners, and parallel security structures to project power beyond its borders.
This approach has delivered short-term tactical gains, expanding Emirati influence along strategic coastlines, ports, and trade corridors.
But it is also accelerating a more dangerous trend: the normalisation of state-backed fragmentation in some of the Middle East’s most fragile countries.
What is unfolding now is not simply a dispute between allies. It is a contest over how power is exercised in a region already hollowed out by war.
The UAE’s growing use of proxy forces marks a significant shift in the regional balance of power. Unlike traditional interventions aimed at shoring up central governments, Abu Dhabi has invested in cultivating armed actors that operate alongside, or openly against, state institutions.
In Yemen, Emirati support for the STC has effectively created a rival authority to the internationally-recognised government backed by Saudi Arabia.
Across the Red Sea basin, this model prioritises control over territory, ports, and security nodes over the reconstruction of sovereign governance.
The danger is not just instability in individual countries. It is the precedent being set.
When regional powers openly sponsor militias to secure influence, fragmentation becomes policy, not pathology.
States no longer serve as the fundamental units of order; instead, armed networks and local strongmen become the currency of power.
Over time, this risk is reshaping Middle East politics into a landscape where borders matter less than loyalties, and where external actors manage instability rather than resolve it.
Expanding the competition theatre
Nowhere is this shift more visible than in Yemen.
The Saudi-led coalition was originally formed with a clear strategic purpose: to counter the Houthis and, by extension, to limit Iran’s expanding influence along the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints.
Yemen is not only a domestic conflict but also a frontline in a wider regional balance-of-power struggle.
For several years, Saudi Arabia and the UAE appeared aligned around that objective.
But over time, and particularly in the past year, the focus of the conflict has subtly but decisively shifted.
As US-Israeli military pressure on the Houthis intensified and Iran absorbed direct and indirect blows across the region, the immediate threat perception that once unified the coalition began to recede.
In its place, a new fault line emerged; this time within the coalition itself.
The recent Saudi air strikes in Hadramaut underscore how far this divergence has gone.
Riyadh now views the growing military and political dominance of STC in eastern and southern Yemen as a direct challenge to its security interests and to the principle of a unified Yemeni state.
Abu Dhabi, by contrast, appears increasingly willing to tolerate, or even facilitate a fragmented Yemen if doing so secures dependable partners along the coast and sustained influence over key ports and maritime routes.
What began as a coordinated campaign against the Houthis has thus evolved into a far more complex contest.
Yemen has become not only a site of prolonged civil war, but also an arena of intra-Gulf rivalry, where former allies now pursue diverging endgames.
The consequence has been diplomatic paralysis and growing volatility on the ground, even as millions of Yemenis remain trapped in one of the world’s gravest humanitarian catastrophes.
Saudi Arabia sees stability along the Red Sea as a core national interest.
Egypt is acutely sensitive to any developments that could affect Nile security and regional military balances. Iran, meanwhile, has shown increasing interest in exploiting power vacuums along maritime routes.
In this crowded strategic environment, the UAE’s assertive posture risks intensifying rivalries rather than managing them.
What begins as competition for influence can quickly slide into proxy escalation, particularly in states where institutions have already collapsed.
Short-term gains, long-term costs
There is no denying that the UAE’s approach has delivered results. Proxy forces are cheaper than direct military deployments, politically deniable, and often more adaptable to local conditions.
They can secure ports, suppress adversaries, and shape political outcomes without the burdens of occupation.
But these gains come at a cost. Militias, once empowered, rarely remain obedient. Their interests evolve, their ambitions grow, and their accountability fades.
History across the region, from Lebanon to Libya, offers ample warning of what happens when armed groups outgrow their patrons.
If the forces the UAE backs in Yemen become uncontrollable, the blowback will not remain local.
It will reverberate through trade routes, energy markets, and regional security architectures. Fragmented states do not absorb instability; they export it.
The Saudi air strikes in Hadramaut may mark a turning point. They suggest that Riyadh is no longer willing to quietly accommodate Abu Dhabi’s proxy strategy when it clashes with Saudi core interests.
More broadly, they raise uncomfortable questions for the region’s power brokers.
Is the Middle East moving toward a future where influence is exercised through militias rather than institutions?
Can fragile states survive when external actors prioritise leverage over legitimacy?
And how many overlapping proxy wars can the region absorb before local conflicts fuse into something far larger?
The UAE is not alone in playing this game. But it has become one of its most skilled practitioners, and that makes its choices especially consequential.
Short-term security gains achieved through fragmentation may prove seductive. Yet in a region already scarred by state collapse, the long-term consequences could be devastating.
Yemen is not an isolated case. They are warning signs of what happens when power is pursued without a viable endgame.
The question now is whether regional leaders recognise that danger, or whether they continue down a path where today’s proxies become tomorrow’s uncontrollable fires.
