Over the past week, Saudi fighter jets have carried out multiple air strikes in Yemen’s Hadramaut province, targeting positions linked to the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a UAE-backed separatist force. 

Saudi Arabia has also openly accused the United Arab Emirates, a fellow Gulf state and former ally in the Yemen civil war, of actions that threaten its national security.

The strikes and accusations go beyond a simple battlefield episode. They represent a public rift in what was once portrayed as a united Gulf intervention in Yemen, and serve as a warning of a wider regional strategy that is starting to fall apart.

The UAE has increasingly relied on proxy militias, local armed partners, and parallel security structures to project power beyond its borders. 

This approach has delivered short-term tactical gains, expanding Emirati influence along strategic coastlines, ports, and trade corridors. 

But it is also accelerating a more dangerous trend: the normalisation of state-backed fragmentation in some of the Middle East’s most fragile countries. 

What is unfolding now is not simply a dispute between allies. It is a contest over how power is exercised in a region already hollowed out by war. 

The UAE’s growing use of proxy forces marks a significant shift in the regional balance of power. Unlike traditional interventions aimed at shoring up central governments, Abu Dhabi has invested in cultivating armed actors that operate alongside, or openly against, state institutions.

In Yemen,

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