What is unfolding in Hadhramaut today cannot be understood in isolation from the long arc of political and social formation in southern Yemen, a history articulated by the American scholar John Willis, professor of history at the University of Colorado, in his book Unmaking North and South: Cartographies of the Yemeni Past, published by Hearst in 2012.
In this work, Willis shows that the South—contrary to the simplified and often misleading image sometimes presented—has never constituted a single, unified political entity, but has instead been a broad landscape of local networks, layered loyalties, and multiple centers of authority. This historical context renders any attempt to forcibly impose control over a province the size of Hadhramaut little more than a collision with a past that resists abrupt domination and coerced transformation.
The unilateral measures taken by the Southern Transitional Council in Hadhramaut days ago represent an effort to manufacture a new reality that overrides the local community and its fragile internal balances, while disregarding the distinctive character of the region, which has long maintained political distance from flashpoints of conflict. This helps explain the firmness of Saudi Arabia’s response, as reflected in its statement that clearly and unequivocally rejected the Southern Transitional Council’s takeover of Hadhramaut, describing it as a direct violation of the transitional process, an erosion of the legitimate government’s authority, and an action that demands a political—not military—response.
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Accordingly, Riyadh emphasized the need for Transitional Council forces to withdraw from the governorates of Hadhramaut and Al-Mahra, to restore conditions to their previous state, and to hand over sites and camps to the Homeland Shield Forces. This insistence is not merely a security measure, but an attempt to block the recurrence of lawless models that Yemen has endured over the past decade, and to prevent Hadhramaut from sliding into a chaos it is ill-equipped to absorb.
Saudi Arabia, as the principal neighboring state, approaches the Southern question with the seasoned perspective of an observer attentive to history, recognizing it as a legitimate cause that cannot be dismissed. Willis himself notes this reality in the same book, writing that “South Yemen was not historically built on a single leadership or authority, but rather on a multiplicity of voices and components.”
Reducing the Southern cause to one individual or faction, therefore, runs counter to the South’s historical experience and the aspirations of its people. Riyadh views the issue as one that belongs to all Southerners in their diversity, rejecting any attempt to instrumentalize it as a justification for domination or for forcibly reshaping realities on the ground. On this basis, the Transitional Council bears responsibility for the violations committed by its forces in recent days in Hadhramaut, including arrests, enforced disappearances, looting, and forced evictions from homes—deeply troubling actions that echo the practices of the Houthi militia, reinforcing Riyadh’s categorical refusal to allow such a model to be replicated in the south or east.
Many states around the world recognize that the Yemeni citizen, already facing an unprecedented economic collapse, cannot withstand the opening of new internal fronts. When Riyadh called on all Yemeni components to return to the framework of the Presidential Leadership Council, it was acting in line with its regional and international responsibilities, prioritizing economic recovery and development over contests for influence, and urging collective action to halt the prolonged decline gripping the country. What occurred in Hadhramaut is therefore not merely a struggle over control, but a genuine test of Yemenis’ ability to respect the vestiges of their history, to construct stability not rooted in coercion, to avoid repeating the errors of the past, and to return Yemen to a political trajectory that ensures equitable partnership, safeguards security, and redraws a future with no room for military adventurism or forced geopolitical reengineering.
Zaed Bin Kami (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)