[Salon] The New Spartan league - ArabDigest.org Guest Post

The New Spartan league Summary: with Israel's recognition of Somaliland and the UAE's backing for Yemeni separatists, regional powers are finally waking up to the implications of an upstart alliance. We thank Andrew Hammond for today’s newsletter. Andrew is Senior Lecturer of Islamic & Middle East Studies at the Australian National University. You can follow his writings on Substack. UAE-Saudi conflict over Yemen has been long simmering but the emerging alliance between Israel and the UAE and their policy of weakening larger traditional powers across the region has forced Saudi Arabia against its nature to take a tough stance. This new Spartan League joins Israel, as it grapples with a Palestinian population in historical Palestine of nearly 8 million — threatening to finally end the Zionist project — with the Gulf state memorably described over a decade ago by former US Centcom commander James Mattis as Little Sparta for punching above its weight. Shared obsessions with Iran, Islamist political parties and the United States as a protector brought these two regional disruptors together in the 2020 Abraham Accords overseen by the first Trump administration. Following Sheikh Zayed’s death in 2004, the UAE moved in a direction diametrically opposed to his pan-Arab, consensus-based approach, led by his son Mohammed bin Zayed, the eminence grise under Zayed’s successor Sheikh Khalifa and effective ruler from 2014 until formally assuming the presidency upon Khalifa’s death in 2022. The militarism Mattis referred to was not the iron fist thuggery of Israel but rather intervention through proxies bought by vast oil wealth without a care for public opinion, since the policy of making UAE nationals only 11 percent of their own 11.6 million population has rendered domestic opposition negligible. Yet the Arab Spring uprisings gave the ruling family a start as even among the enfeebled constituency of UAE nationals, voices rose asking for a role in governance. Islamist intellectuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, long present in the state’s administration since independence from Britain in the 1970s, were deemed to be the rabble-rousers responsible for giving the people ideas above their station. The UAE subsequently teamed up with Saudi Arabia to tackle the Islamist electoral forces across the region who were drawing various forms of backing from Turkey and Qatar – from Egypt, to Libya, to even Turkey itself, if Turkish government suspicions of a UAE hand in the failed coup attempt of 2016 are to be credited. For the UAE no less than Israel, the Gaza war has been an opportunity to end the influence of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. As Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, put it in October, Palestinians need to end “maximalist positions” — though since Hamas and the other key Palestinian factions already agree on a two-state solution, it’s not clear what concessions the UAE has in mind. The leader of the UAE-backed secessionist Southern Transitional Council Aidarous al-Zubaidi is now wanted on treason charges in Yemen after he led a lightning military offensive that escalated a bitter feud between the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Invitation to Intervene When it came to Yemen, it was Saudi Arabia that invited the UAE to take up a partnership role in its military intervention to remove the Huthis from power in Sanaa after it forced out the Gulf Cooperation Council-backed government in 2014. Shaken at the prospect of the Huthis acting as an Iran-backed Hezbollah-style antagonist on its border, Riyadh continued its support for Yemen’s Islamist Islah party. Riyadh had little choice but turn to the UAE, since Egypt, Pakistan and other countries were not willing to provide troops for a war they suspected would end in a quagmire. Abu Dhabi said yes, but Saudi naivete over UAE intentions was extreme. UAE interest quickly manifested as not so much challenging the Huthis as establishing the south as its sphere of influence, mainly through proxies. With UAE backing, the Giants Brigades were set up in 2015, the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in 2017, giving de facto control over key ports, and the National Resistance forces were formed in 2018, controlling the Mandab Straits. Both countries secured mercenaries from Mohamed Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), but it was also the UAE that dug deep on that relationship, to the extent that it now stands accused of backing the RSF against Sudan’s government today despite the atrocities the RSF has committed. But in Yemen, the UAE had no compunction in collaborating with Israel in setting up military and surveillance infrastructure on the strategic islands of Socotra, Mayyun, Abd al-Kuri and Zuqar — all well-documented, if little discussed outside Israel. Israel’s recent recognition of Somaliland comes as the natural consequence of its UAE ally building up the breakaway region of Somalia through road construction, a port at Berbera, upgrading Hargeisa’s airport, and a military base, all while maintaining a formal stance of support for Mogadishu. Turkey, the region’s major sponsor of Brotherhood-linked Islamist groups, has its own military and commercial presence in the Horn of Africa, heavily invested in Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia. Abu Dhabi carved out its south Yemen satrapy in a similar manner — within the framework of formal support for the Yemeni republic and its exiled government in Aden/Riyadh. UAE backing for at least three members of the Presidential Leadership Council, two of whom are STC separatists, has effectively paralysed the body. STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi knew the script well. To secure eventual independence, he would need the support of the UAE and Israel to overcome US scepticism about dividing a country already seen as too troublesome to deal with. Over the past year Al-Zubaidi was pushing the line that there are only two standing powers in Yemen: the Huthis in the north and STC in the south. Recognising the south, he argued, is the quickest path to bringing stability on Western terms and further isolating the Iran-backed Huthis, who the Americans fear are becoming part of a broader network supported by China and Russia On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September Al-Zubaidi was explicit that the STC wants its future South Arabia to join the Abraham Accords. With the PLC formally accusing Al-Zubaidi now of treason and his 7 January flight into exile (in Abu Dhabi, of course), the UAE appears to have overplayed its hand as Riyadh is finally forced to act. Saudi Arabia also ordered the UAE to leave Socotra. But the Spartan League can hardly be discounted not to strike back. Riyadh Drops the Ball How Saudi Arabia, the traditional power in Yemen and key political and financial sponsor of its STC-inclusive government, could let the situation slip so far from its control is perplexing to both its Yemeni clients and regional counterparts. The barely concealed secret about Yemen is that since 2022, when a UN-brokered truce was agreed, Riyadh has viewed peace with the Huthis as the best way secure its interests — not least with $1.25 trillion giga-projects coming online over the next decade as the kingdom shifts from ultraconservative isolation to mass tourism. The relative calm in Gaza since November allowed Riyadh to quietly restart talks on normalizing ties with the Huthis that were put on ice after the Oct. 7 attacks of 2023. Stymying those talks has been a key STC and UAE goal since what was supposed to follow a Saudi-Huthi peace was government-Huthi talks on a new Yemen that would divide oil and gas receipts from fields in southern governorates. Biding its time to take military control of inland Hadramawt and Mahra, the STC acted in December, fearing that Saudi Arabia and Oman were buoying Hadrami separatists who had acquired their own militia. This was bound to ruin the southern project. Saudi Arabia also filled Mahra with its Nation’s Shield over the past year. As for the UAE, the Yemen gambit — however it plays out — has exposed a broader goal of working with Israel to weaken the major powers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Iran and fragment the regional order, as the best means for two rogue political entities to survive in their current formats and resist pressure to change.