The internationally recognised authorities of Yemen, generally known as the Presidential Management Council (PLC), says its forces have recaptured two strategic southern provinces, reversing a month-long takeover by the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC).
In early December 2025, the STC, a UAE-backed secessionist power, seized the 2 oil-rich provinces of Hadramout and al-Mahra, which border Saudi Arabia, in a marketing campaign that Riyadh described as a purple line for its nationwide safety.
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Saudi Arabia, which backs the PLC, responded with a sequence of air strikes on STC positions, together with an attack on the southern Mukalla port, concentrating on what it described as United Arab Emirates (UAE) weapons shipments to the STC.
The PLC and STC have lengthy been allies within the battle in opposition to the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who captured Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014. Latest clashes have intensified instability within the war-ravaged nation and heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
On this visible explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks the assorted teams preventing for management in Yemen, detailing who controls what on the bottom and what this implies for the humanitarian state of affairs of the nation’s 42 million folks.
Who’re the important thing gamers in Yemen?
There are three key gamers in Yemen: The Saudi-backed PLC, the Emirati-backed STC and the Iranian-backed Houthis.
Presidential Management Council (PLC)
The PLC is Yemen’s internationally recognised, Saudi-backed governing physique, primarily based in Aden.
The group has been led by Rashad al-Alimi since 2022, after former President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi formally transferred his powers to the brand new eight-member physique, which was established to unify the assorted factions preventing the Houthis.
The council consists of a mixture of northern and southern political and army leaders. Whereas it included the STC at its founding in 2022 to unite anti-Houthi forces, that alliance collapsed on January 7, 2026, when the PLC expelled the STC management following their try and seize the nation’s japanese oil provinces.
The PLC’s mandate is to handle Yemen’s political, safety and army affairs throughout a transitional interval and to steer negotiations in direction of a everlasting ceasefire.
Southern Transitional Council (STC)
The UAE-backed STC has undergone main modifications over the previous few weeks, leaving its future unsure.
The group, which initially supported Yemen’s internationally recognised authorities in opposition to the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen, is looking for an impartial state in southern Yemen, very similar to South Yemen earlier than the unification of the nation in 1990, underneath former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
On January 7, Yemen’s internationally recognised authorities introduced that the STC’s chief, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, had dedicated treason and was dismissed from the Presidential Management Council.
As an alternative of attending a gathering in Riyadh, al-Zubaidi dramatically fled the nation on January 8, reportedly heading to the UAE by way of Somaliland.
On January 9, a delegation of STC members in Riyadh introduced the group’s disbandment. Nonetheless, an STC official in Yemen rejected this announcement, telling Al Jazeera that the delegation members in Riyadh had been “coerced” into making the assertion.
Saudi Arabia is planning to host a convention of the principle political factions from the south to form the way forward for Yemen.
Houthis
Ansar Allah, generally known as the Houthis, is an armed group educated and backed by Iran, and holds a substantial space within the north and west of the nation, together with the capital, Sanaa.
The Houthis emerged within the Nineteen Nineties however rose to worldwide prominence in 2014, when the group rebelled in opposition to Yemen’s authorities, forcing it to step down.
The group then spent years, with Iran’s backing, preventing a army coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which has largely been frozen since a United Nations-brokered truce in April 2022.
The Houthis management a number of strategic places alongside the Pink Sea, together with the important thing port of Hodeidah, giving them leverage over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is important to international delivery.
In November 2023, the Houthis started concentrating on civilian and army vessels within the Pink Sea suspected of getting Israeli ties, a marketing campaign geared toward pressuring Israel to halt its genocidal conflict in Gaza, which started on October 7, 2023. Additionally they launched a number of missile and drone assaults in opposition to Israel, with a number of strikes reportedly hitting their meant targets.
Who controls what on the bottom?
The Houthis management the northwestern areas of Yemen, together with the capital Sanaa, whereas the Yemeni authorities controls a lot of the remainder of the nation. The map beneath highlights who controls what in Yemen primarily based on knowledge from the Sana’a Middle for Strategic Research, an impartial suppose tank centered on Yemen and its surrounding area.
The federal government claims to have management of Aden and different elements of southern Yemen, however STC forces stay in some areas. The federal government has additionally declared that each one anti-Houthi army forces, together with the Nationwide Resistance Forces, will now be built-in into the Yemeni army, however that course of has not but begun.
Yemen’s humanitarian state of affairs
Yemen nonetheless suffers one of many worst humanitarian emergencies on the planet, with acute malnutrition, meals shortages, and infrastructure collapse affecting tens of millions.
A decade of battle, financial disaster and lack of social companies and talent to work has pushed tens of millions of kids into acute malnutrition and scores of illnesses, in keeping with the UN Youngsters’s Fund (UNICEF).
Regardless of the delicate truce in 2022, which has diminished civilian deaths, entry to essentially the most weak has been restricted.
Based on the United Nations, no less than 17 million folks, about half of Yemen’s inhabitants of 42 million, face acute meals shortages.
In Could 2025, the UN reported that 4.95 million individuals are going through Part 3, crisis-level meals insecurity, which incorporates 1.5 million folks going through emergency-level meals insecurity, Part 4.
There are about 11 million kids in want of humanitarian help, and almost 20 million folks in determined want of assist, together with almost 4.8 million folks displaced from their properties since 2015.
