CAIRO — After five years of war, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appeared to be inching away from his ruinous campaign in Yemen in recent weeks, seizing on the coronavirus pandemic to declare a unilateral cease-fire that, although ineffective, at least signaled that the prince finally agreed with critics who insisted the fight was unwinnable.
His fractious Yemeni allies, however, have other ideas.
A declaration of self-rule over the weekend by Yemen’s leading separatist group, which seized control of the southern port city of Aden and its central bank, threatens fresh chaos in the war-torn country.
It comes as the war’s main sponsors, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, distracted by their own woes, turn away from the fight. That has left their Yemeni allies, previously united against the Iranian-supported Houthis who control the country’s north, to battle for supremacy.
It could hardly come at a worse time.
International funding for humanitarian aid to the famine-threatened country has plunged this year, and regional players are distracted by the pandemic. Aid workers are scrambling to bolster Yemen’s shattered health system against a potentially devastating outbreak of COVID-19.
The self-rule declaration by the separatist group, the Southern Transitional Council, raises the specter of renewed clashes inside the coalition assembled by Crown Prince Mohammed in 2015 in an effort to oust the Houthi rebels from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.
The council, based in Aden, is at odds with its nominal ally, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who leads Yemen’s weak, internationally recognized government.
The factions have clashed sporadically for over two years. The feud descended into open warfare in August after the United Arab Emirates withdrew most of its forces from southern Yemen.
After clashes that killed 40 people, Saudi Arabia deployed troops to Aden and, in November, brokered a peace deal between the southern separatists and Hadi.
That deal collapsed Saturday when separatist fighters surged through the streets of Aden, seizing control of government offices.
On Monday the Saudi-led coalition pleaded with the separatists to reverse the self-rule declaration, which it called an “an escalatory action,” in a call that was backed by the United Arab Emirates, which has traditionally funded and armed the separatists.
The southern schism plays into the hands of the Iran-supported Houthis, whose forces have pushed into the oil-rich Marib province in recent weeks.
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