One minute you’re snapping selfies on Socotra: turquoise waters, or the rare ‘dragon blood’ trees long prized as a medicinal option by ancient Greeks and Romans. Maybe slap that “never leaving” caption before hitting ‘share’, then watch as some wise-ass at International Intrigue notes you might actually never be leaving.
Reality sets in as your flight delay becomes a cancellation, and the airline’s ‘tomorrow’ becomes ‘next week’, before giving way to a more realistic ‘we don’t know’.
That’s the situation for 600 tourists now stranded on remote Socotra off Yemen’s coast (nearer to Somalia), with Western consular officials muttering colourful language you absolutely would not believe (translation: why are you visiting a warzone?). That’s because Yemen’s simmering civil war has spun off another subplot this week.
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But first, a quick rewind.
Yemen effectively split years ago into a Houthi-controlled north and a messy, factionalised south. Then in December, a UAE-backed southern faction (the STC) stunned everyone by seizing the whole south, humiliating Yemen’s Saudi-backed administration.
The emboldened STC started talking about declaring independence and recognising Israel, and many thought that was that. But that was not that, dear Intriguer, because the Saudis have now reversed almost all of those Emirati gains in a week, culminating in Saudi-backed troops entering the STC stronghold port of Aden just on Thursday!
And now, the STC leader has pulled a midnight disappearing act in the face of Saudi-backed treason charges. The Saudis allege the Emiratis helped him flee by boat to Somaliland, where he boarded a jet that routed through Somalia’s Mogadishu en route to a military airport in the UAE’s Abu Dhabi, switching off its transponder along the way!
So not only are the Saudis now angry that the Emiratis helped him get away, but the Somalians are peeved the escape route went via Somalia’s breakaway Somaliland turf! As for the Emiratis? They’ll neither confirm nor deny any of this.
Sorry, I’m really tied up with Venezuela and Iran right now. Do I care?
One reason this is all such a big deal is the way it confirms what everyone’s been whispering for years: the Saudi-Emirati rivalry for regional influence has metastasised from the soft power of “haha we just made Ronaldo a billionaire”, to the hard power of “okay now we are fighting actual proxy wars”. We say wars (plural) because the Saudis and Emiratis are also on opposing sides in Sudan, for example.
And this is all unfolding along one of the world’s most critical sea-lanes, putting us just one miscalculation away from ruining more than just a few selfies on Socotra.
Intrigue’s Take
This is what a multipolar Middle East looks like: competing hubs (Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Tehran, Ankara) pulling conflicts sideways to get a foothold.
For the Emiratis, we’re seeing an ‘arc of secessionists’ strategy, backing non-state actors across Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia; meanwhile, the Saudis keep backing central governments. Why is that? It’s partly…
- a) different risk appetites: the Saudis have pulled back after getting burnt against the Houthis, and getting caught assassinating Khashoggi
- b) different priorities: the smaller UAE wants depth via proxy ports, whereas the larger Saudi kingdom wants stability for its borders and its Vision 2030 bets, and
- c) different fears: the Emiratis view political Islam as more of an existential threat, and their proxy secessionists and paramilitaries often align on that front.
Sound even smarter:
- Limited flights to/from Socotra have now resumed.
- The UAE-backed STC has controlled Socotra since a 2020 coup.