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Saudi-Backed Forces Said to Wrest Aden, Yemen, From Houthis Saudi-Backed Forces Said to Wrest Aden, Yemen, From Houthis
(about 11 hours later)
CAIRO — The exiled prime minister of Yemen said early Friday that Saudi-backed forces in Aden had “completely liberated” the southern city from the Houthi rebels who have been fighting to control it for nearly four months. AL MUKALLA, Yemen — The exiled Yemeni government said Friday that Saudi-backed fighters had “completely liberated” the southern city of Aden from the Houthi rebels who had tried for months to bring it under their control.
The prime minister, Khaled Bahah, writing on Facebook, called it a “historic moment” and said his government would turn its attention to repairing the devastation in Aden and driving the Houthis from other areas of Yemen. Witnesses in the city said that at least one neighborhood was still contested and that Houthi snipers remained active in several others. But rapid gains by the anti-Houthi fighters over the past few days appeared hard to reverse and potentially gave Saudi Arabia, which has been bombing the Houthis since late March and backing their opponents, its first battlefield victory.
Security officials and witnesses in Aden said that clashes were continuing in several areas on Friday, and that the Houthis retained at least partial control of at least one district. The rapid advances by the Saudi-backed forces in the city over the past few days appeared hard to reverse, however, signaling the first significant defeat for the Houthis and their allies. The Yemeni prime minister, Khaled Bahah, called the gains a “historic moment” and said his government would quickly turn to repairing the devastation in Aden. The steady destruction of the city, Yemen’s second largest, has come to symbolize the hardships and horrors visited on civilians, including shelling, airstrikes and chronic shortages of water and electricity.
Mr. Bahah’s government, led by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, fled to Saudi Arabia in March as the Houthis advanced on Aden. The Saudis and a coalition of Arab states opened a military offensive to reinstate Mr. Hadi’s government, carrying out thousands of airstrikes to drive back the Houthis and their allies, military and security units loyal to Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Of the more than 3,000 people who have been killed across Yemen since March, mostly civilians, hundreds died in Aden alone, caught in close-quarters fighting between the Iranian-supported Houthis and their allies on one side and an assortment of militiamen, mostly local fighters, on the other.
A Saudi air and maritime blockade and ground fighting have led to crippling shortages of most basic goods, setting off a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the region’s most impoverished country. Airstrikes and shelling have killed more than 3,000 people since the start of the war, most of them civilians, according to the United Nations. With the Houthis still in control of broad parts of northern Yemen, including Sana, the capital, it remained to be seen whether the capture of Aden by the Saudi-backed forces would bring about a broader shift of momentum in the conflict. The fight has aggravated the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and emboldened extremist groups operating in Yemen, including a new branch of the Islamic State.
The battle for Aden shifted on Tuesday, when the Saudi-backed forces — many of them local militiamen — took control of the city’s international airport and an important coastal neighborhood. In dueling, combative statements on Thursday, Yemen’s exiled president, and his opponent, the Houthi leader, vowed to continue fighting. Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, the rebel leader, urged Yemenis to “intensify efforts” to “defeat the aggressors and preserve the country from the desecration of the occupiers.”
The advance appeared to be the fruit of a vigorous push by the Saudis and their allies to establish a beachhead for Mr. Hadi’s government. Witnesses in Aden said that Saudi-trained troops had joined the battle on the side of anti-Houthi militia groups, which were equipped with armored vehicles supplied by the United Arab Emirates, a Saudi ally. The president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, hailed the victory of the “resistance” in Aden and vowed to reverse what he called a coup.
Saudi Arabia launched its military offensive to restore Mr. Hadi after he was ousted and fled into exile as the Houthis advanced across Yemen. The Saudis were driven largely by their view of the Shiite-led Houthis as clients of Iran, their regional nemesis — a view that many, including the Obama administration, said exaggerated Iran’s influence.
The Saudi-led coalition has staged thousands of airstrikes in the country, undeterred by a growing humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the region’s poorest country, and the rising civilian toll, including hundreds of deaths from the airstrikes. Criticism of the Saudi strategy intensified as the Houthis mounted incursions into Saudi territory and fired ballistic missiles across the border, undermining Saudi claims to have destroyed the Houthis’ heavy weapons.
The Houthis, who easily took Sana in part by seizing on popular antipathy against Mr. Hadi’s government, have also carried out an unrelenting military campaign aided by military and security units loyal to a former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Together, they laid siege to Aden and Taiz, a central Yemeni city, while asserting that those who opposed them were extremists in Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate.
The battle for Aden shifted on Tuesday, when the Saudi-backed forces took control of the city’s international airport and a major coastal neighborhood. The advance appeared to be the fruits of a push by the Saudis and their allies to establish a beachhead for Mr. Hadi’s government. It remained to be seen whether Mr. Hadi, who has little support within Yemen, would return to the country as leader or instead delegate power to Mr. Bahah, his far more popular deputy.
Witnesses in Aden said Saudi-trained troops joined the battle on the side of anti-Houthi militias, which had armored vehicles supplied by the United Arab Emirates, a Saudi ally. On Friday, the Houthis controlled only Aden’s Tawahi neighborhood, witnesses said.
Analysts said the Houthi withdrawal from Aden potentially opened up new possibilities for a negotiated cease-fire by upsetting the balance in the stalemated fight. But it was just as likely to set off new conflicts in Yemen, including struggles among political forces that had united against the Houthis but that had often clashing long-term agendas.
The battle in Aden had brought together, among others, separatists who have long advocated an independent state in southern Yemen and Islamists with allegiances to northern political elites who favor a unified country.
“The war might end soon, but that does not mean peace in Yemen will come soon,” said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. “There has never been a moment when Yemeni social cohesion was torn so quickly and so badly.” The honeymoon between southerners and the Islamists is “already over,” he added, mentioning local conflicts between the groups.
The absence of a broader political solution could lead to a power struggle between Mr. Hadi’s government and the forces it was relying on to fight the Houthis, Mr. Muslimi said.
With the battle barely ending in Aden, members of the so-called Southern Movement had already raised their flag, not the Yemeni flag, over public buildings. “Most of the southerners reject unification,” said Nasser al-Fadli, an activist with the Southern Movement. “We sacrificed many martyrs to establish our southern state.”