UAE ends military presence in Yemen

The United Arab Emirates has said it will withdraw its remaining forces from Yemen after a Saudi-led airstrike targeted a shipment at a southern Yemeni port. Riyadh said the shipment included weapons intended for a separatist group, a claim the UAE denied.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Emirati Ministry of Defense said, citing concerns for the safety of personnel, that it was voluntarily terminating its counterterrorism units in Yemen. These are the UAE’s only forces remaining there since it completed a wider military withdrawal in 2019. Abu Dhabi was part of the Saudi-led coalition formed four years earlier to fight Houthi rebels at the request of Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

The announcement followed an airstrike earlier in the day by the coalition on Yemen’s key southern port of Mukalla. The coalition said the strike targeted weapons and combat vehicles unloaded from ships arriving from the UAE, allegedly bound for the Southern Transitional Council (STC). The STC is a separatist group in southern Yemen that initially fought within the coalition but later pivoted toward seeking self-rule in the south. The UAE has rejected claims that the shipment contained weapons.

Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council head Rashad al-Alimi later declared a 90-day state of emergency, canceled a security pact with the UAE, and demanded that Emirati forces leave the country within 24 hours, a demand that Saudi Arabia has backed.

The UAE’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has “categorically” rejected what it described as attempts to “implicate the country in tensions among Yemeni parties,” stating that it strongly denounces allegations that it directed Yemeni forces to carry out operations threatening Saudi security or its borders. It also said that the targeted shipment included only vehicles intended for use by UAE forces on the ground.

Yemen has been ravaged by civil war since 2014, when Houthi forces seized the capital, Sanaa, driving the Saudi-backed government south. The Houthis now hold most of northern Yemen, while the STC has since 2022 controlled much of the south under a power-sharing arrangement and seized large swathes of territory, including in the strategically important Hadramout and Al-Mahra provinces, both of which border Saudi Arabia. Last week, the Saudi air force reportedly bombed separatist positions in Hadramout.