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The new coalition government has had a torrid opening month marked by internal rifts and deadly attacks by opponents. The US designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organisation risks further suffering in the Yazidi movement’s area of control.

With President Joe Biden’s administration formally taking office on 20 January, the US is set to transition to a more traditional foreign policy, based more on national rather than on the personal interest that marked the Donald Trump years. With limited co-operation from the outgoing administration during a uniquely chaotic transition period, Biden has been putting together a team which features a large number of people he worked with while vice president to Barack Obama.

Two pretenders are staking their claims to the Sultanate of Mahra and Socotra, months after Sheikh Abdullah Bin Essa Al-Afrar was dropped as sultan-presumptive having lost the General Council of the People of Al-Mahra and Socotra’s confidence. Abdullah is attempting to reassert his authority, while the General Council – which favours home-rule – appointed a cousin from the Bin Afrar family’s Itab branch, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdullah Al-Afrar, but has since split.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced a new coalition government on 18 December. The new team took its oath of office on 26 December, led by prime minister Maeen Abd Al-Malik Saeed and featuring 24 other members.

It has been a year when war compounded misery across the wider region, from Yemen – where Saudi Arabia remains mired in conflict with the Houthis – to Libya, where the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) was effectively saved from UAE-backed forces bearing down on Tripoli by the intervention of Turkey. The Saudi/UAE-led boycott of Qatar continued, although regional leaders and the administration of US President Donald Trump worked to mend the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)’s deepest rift.

GSN’s year-end Perspective/Agenda feature provides a look back – and forwards – at key events across the region in 2020-21. It gives an opportunity to update the Risk Grades included with each of our regular Risk management reports. After another year of tragedy, Yemen is effectively a failed state (rated F6, the bottom political and financial grades). Qatar has shown itself to be robust in the face of its neighbours’ boycott, its finances warranting an upgrade to 1, putting it on a par with the UAE. Iraq’s political standoffs and financial woes remain deeply troubling, but the situation is improving rather than deteriorating and the prospect of higher oil prices next year should help further; it has been upgraded from E5↑ to D4↓. Oman’s fiscal challenges continue to mount, prompting a downgrade of its economic rating to 3. 

A team from Delaware-registered private security company Spear Operations Group has been active in southern Yemen, BuzzFeed News said in a detailed report published on 16 October. Those interviewed included former United States special forces personnel and other nationals with similar military backgrounds, some of whom were enlisted prior to their deployment to Yemen into the Presidential Guard, an arm of the UAE Armed Forces.

Saudi Arabia is preparing for the transition from President Donald Trump to his successor by laying the groundwork for a withdrawal from Yemen and dealing with outstanding human rights issues, while Netanyahu’s visit suggests Riyadh is keeping its options open on a future deal with Israel.

The current Turkish deployment to Qatar is not the first. In 1872, 100 Turkish troops and field guns were landed in Doha, launching a military presence that was to remain for 44 years. Some years ago, GSN is told, a number of soldiers’ bodies were discovered on wasteland behind Doha Fort, a former Ottoman garrison. Local historians say the death rate from disease among Ottoman soldiers was appallingly high, at around 40%; scurvy was rife among troops who didn’t even have a vegetable garden to tend until 1910.

Transport slump: Delegates at the Arab Air Carriers’ Organisation (AACO) virtual annual general meeting on 3 November were told it could take between four and seven years for air travel in the region to return to 2019 levels. Passenger traffic is forecast to decline more than 70% this year.

Risk Management Report – GSN Risk Grade – E↓5↓ POLITICS: Confronted by conflict, which has exacerbated multiple humanitarian crises, Yemen has long teetered on the verge of collapse and ‘failed state’ status (GSN’s political risk category F).

Shabwa province governor Mohammed Saleh Bin Adyo, who is aligned to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government, has demanded that UAE troops withdraw from their occupation of, and allow operations to resume at, the liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal at Balhaf. Although most of Shabwa province and Marib, from where the gas is piped, are dominated by Hadi government-aligned forces, UAE and Southern Transition Council forces retain control of Balhaf LNG itself.

Media outlets reported a Greek-owned, Malta-flagged Aframax tanker was damaged off the coast of Hisn Al-Nushaymah (Ras Al-Nushayma) Terminal in Shebwa on 3 October. Satellite images of the area near Ain Ba Mabad from 4-6 October showed a significant oil trail following the leak as the vessel traveled past Bir Ali. Sources familiar with the incident told GSN that two cannister-type devices had hit the vessel while it was loading crude oil offshore.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government is facing challenges on two main fronts, trying to avert a siege by Houthi forces on Marib while trying to form a new government in the face of a stalemate with the Southern Transition Council (STC).

Developments in recent weeks suggest that local resistance to outside interference has stiffened in Yemen’s Mahra governorate, which borders Oman. It has not reached the point where Mahris wish to secede from Yemen, but there is an insistence that they enjoy a high degree of autonomy in any post-war settlement.