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UAE drawdown: UAE officials have confirmed the Emirates are reducing their military commitment, in the process starting a new phase in the war. The extent of the UAE drawdown remains unclear. Most of the focus has been on a scaling back of commitments in Aden, Hodeida and Marib. However, Abu Dhabi seems likely to maintain some sort of presence in a few key areas. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia is being forced to deploy forces into areas vacated by the UAE.

As the war continues, internal strains are surfacing among the Houthis in Sanaa, although at this stage it is unclear whether these pressures are being caused by shifts in the leadership structure or, more simply, misperceptions over recent events in Hodeida. Public signs of infighting among Houthis are rare, but a number of recent incidents hint at tensions among those known as ‘supervisors’ (mushrefeen), who are charged with supervising government institutions and overseeing cities and provinces under the Supreme Revolutionary Committee (SRC) led by Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi.

The UAE has been scaling back its military commitment to Yemen, in an unannounced move which appears to have been at least partly prompted by the Hodeidah peace agreement between the Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government of President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi signed in Stockholm in December.

With peace efforts in Yemen going nowhere, there have been hints that the Houthis are trying to encourage a fresh effort at third-party mediation with Saudi Arabia. On 15 June, Sanaa-based information minister Dhaifallah Al-Shami claimed on Twitter that mediation efforts with the Saudi-led coalition were being spearheaded by UK officials. That followed comments by Houthi Supreme Political Council president Mahdi Al-Mashat who said on 3 June that Sanaa was open to a new round of peace talks.

Over a month since the unilateral redeployment of Houthi forces from Hodeidah port began, hopes for de-escalation have all but vanished. Instead, the conflict has moved in a new direction. Following the Houthi drone strike on the oil pipeline west of Riyadh last month, the Ministry of Defence in Sanaa on 2 June threatened “painful and devastating strikes inside Saudi Arabia and the UAE; it described the strikes on oil facilities as the first phase of a new offensive.

Following recent setbacks for the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the central Al-Dhale province and on Socotra, where control has been seized from the national government by forces loyal to the separatist Southern Transition Council (STC), Hadi has been trying to push back and regain some momentum. On 22 May, the Riyadh-based president wrote to United Nations secretary-general António Guterres with a series of complaints about UN special envoy Martin Griffiths, including “his insistence on dealing with the Houthis as a de facto government”.

While most international attention has been focused on the situation in and around Hodeidah – where Houthi forces finally redeployed from the port city in mid-May, in line with the Stockholm agreement signed in late 2018 – the events further south, where the Southern Transitional Council (STC) claimed an absolute victory over Houthi forces in central Al-Dhale province on 17 May, are just as important.

The UAE’s attempts to strengthen its control over the Yemeni island of Socotra, some 380km from the mainland, continue to prompt serious concerns in Muscat, where officials see a worrying pattern emerging of Abu Dhabi’s regional territorial ambitions, as it extends its hinterland to the Red Sea littoral and beyond.The latest cause of concern was a report in early May that the UAE had deployed 100 affiliated troops to the island.

Among non-GCC economies, Iran is expected to sink further into recession in 2019 by the International Monetary Fund, which predicts a 6% contraction for this year as US sanctions continue to bite. Previously, the IMF had predicted the Islamic Republic’s economy would shrink by 3.6%. The forecast for Iraq’s GDP growth rate has been cut from 6.5% to 2.8%, which – alongside the UAE –would still make it the best-performing this year of the economies in the GSN region.

Clashes are escalating in Taiz, as rival pro-government factions vie to expand their control throughout the central Yemeni city and surrounding rural areas. Meanwhile, Houthi forces in the north and east of the city continue their four year-long siege. The violence further highlights the lack of progress, five months on, of the Stockholm peace plan, which called for the opening of Taiz to merchants and international aid organisations. Progress is similarly slow in Hodeidah’s negotiations. There are concerns that President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s latest political manoeuvring may exacerbate the conflict in Taiz, rather than deliver a solution.

Among non-GCC economies, the International Monetary Fund expects Iran to sink further into recession in 2019; the IMF predicts a 6% contraction this year, as US sanctions bite. Previously, the IMF had predicted the Islamic Republic’s economy would shrink by 3.6%. The forecast for Iraq’s GDP growth rate has been cut from 6.5% to 2.8%, which – alongside the UAE – would still make it the best-performing this year of the economies in the GSN region.

A source familiar with United Nations Special Representative to Yemen Martin Griffiths’ thinking has updated GSN on the painfully slow pace of the Stockholm-negotiated ceasefire in Hodeidah. Implementation arrangements are still being negotiated, under the chairmanship of Danish Lieutenant General Michael Lollesgaard, who we are told has won respect from both sides for his patience and tact. But the principal obstacle to achieving full implementation remains the Houthis’ fear that if they withdraw from the ports area, and are replaced by what the Stockholm agreement stipulates as being local forces, former members of local militias that the Emiratis have used to conduct much of the fighting in the area will fill the gap.

The Abu Al-Abbas Battalion commander in Taiz, Adil Abduh Fari Uthman Al-Dhubhani (aka Abu Al-Abbas), was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and Saudi Arabia on 25 October 2017 for his relations with Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State (ISIS-Y). The former school teacher, who hails from Dhubhan in Al-Turba area, studied at the Salafi Institute in Dammaj, Sadah, founded by Sheikh Moqbil Al-Wadi, who died in 2002. He has been involved in anti-Houthi since the war began in 2015.

Civilian casualties: 26 March marked the fourth anniversary of the entry of the Saudi Arabia / UAE-led coalition into the Yemen conflict. The independent Yemen Data Project (YDP) has tracked 19,553 air raids by coalition forces in that time. It says the air raids have caused at least 17,729 civilian causalities, including 8,345 deaths and 9,399 injuries. These numbers are almost certainly under-estimates as the YDP only uses the most conservative figures in its reporting.

In United Nations-backed talks in Hodeidah in mid-February, a detailed programme of action was agreed to implement a Houthi withdrawal from the port city – the first of the three areas of agreement at the Stockholm peace conference in December. The plan should allow a resumption of humanitarian operations at the port under UN supervision – a critical step if the famine sweeping Yemen is to be tackled – but progress remains painfully slow and Hodeidah remains just one part of a complex arena.