The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates had spirited a separatist leader out of the country by boat in a dramatic twist to a rift between the Gulf powers, as Saudi-backed forces advanced to the port of Aden after losing ground there.
The escape of Aidarous al-Zubaidi, head of a UAE-backed southern separatist group, could exacerbate tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, global oil heavyweights and both close allies of the United States.
The Saudi assertion that the UAE helped him escape raises the stakes in a crisis that erupted last month when the separatists swept through southern Yemen, including Aden, advancing within reach of the border with Saudi Arabia. Riyadh declared the move a threat to its national security.
The Saudi-led coalition said Zubaidi had left Yemen for Somaliland, before boarding an aircraft to Mogadishu that was later tracked to a military airport in Abu Dhabi.
Somalia said it had launched an investigation to determine whether its airports were used to transport a “political fugitive”, referring to Zubaidi. The country’s Immigration and Citizenship Agency said that if this proved to be true, it would constitute a “serious violation” of national sovereignty.
Zubaidi had failed to show up in Riyadh for crisis talks over turmoil in southern Yemen on Wednesday. Zubaidi’s Southern Transitional Council (STC) said he had been asked to go to Saudi Arabia under threat.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE previously worked together in a coalition battling the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen’s civil war, which caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
But the two most powerful countries in the Gulf have sharp differences over a wide range of volatile issues across the Middle East – from geopolitics to oil output – and those burst into the open with the STC advance.
Brazen Escape
After Zubaidi’s unexplained absence from the Riyadh talks, his group said he was overseeing military and security operations in Aden to prevent a security vacuum there.
Aden had been the main seat of power in Yemen outside Houthi-controlled areas since 2015, but leaders of the Saudi-backed government left the city for Saudi Arabia when the STC took control last month.
Lately, it was reported that, the situation in Aden appeared stable with Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces patrolling the streets, and no sign of STC forces. Authorities have imposed a nighttime curfew.
Reuters/Jide Johnson