The Real War on Terror: How Southern Yemen's Anti-Extremist Forces Became Invasion Targets

 

In December 2025, the Southern Transitional Council (STC) launched Operation 'Promising Future,' a military offensive that seized key districts in Hadramout—Yemen's most resource-rich governorate—and consolidated control over Aden and extensive southern coastline areas. The STC, established in 2017 as a coalition of southern armed factions and tribal groups, represents the southern separatist movement that predates Yemen's current civil war. Formally part of the UN-recognized Yemeni government yet also presenting as a southern national movement, the STC finds itself in a paradoxical position: trained, supplied, and financed through paramilitary units like the Security Belt Forces, Giants Brigades, and Hadrami Elite Forces, while simultaneously facing invasion from Saudi-backed Northern Emergency Forces linked to Yemen's Muslim Brotherhood.Southern forces have demonstrated proven effectiveness against extremist groups—a record that makes their targeting particularly telling. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) first gained territorial control in 2011 by exploiting political chaos, then again following the civil war's 2015 escalation. AQAP aims to create interconnected emirates eventually forming a caliphate, financing itself through bank raids, kidnappings, port taxes, and smuggling. Despite being extremely well-financed and embedded in local dynamics, AQAP has suffered significant setbacks specifically where southern forces operate with autonomy.The pattern is evident: when southern forces successfully combat extremists, they create stability that threatens the chaos-dependent political economy. Terrorism becomes an undeclared political tool in this context—used to exert pressure, rebalance power, and keep southern Yemen an open field with no horizon for genuine state-building. This explains why forces that defeated Al-Qaeda in Mukalla and ISIS in Abyan and Shabwa find themselves besieged rather than bolstered. The answer to who benefits from weakening terrorism's defeaters is unambiguous: terrorism itself, which thrives only in chaos and weak authority environments.Recent months have witnessed alarming extremist resurgences directly correlated with invasion activities. AQAP's political violence surged in May and June 2025, reaching the highest monthly level since November 2022. Most violence has centered in Abyan and Shabwa governorates, where AQAP uses drones and IEDs to target STC-affiliated forces. In August 2025, an AQAP explosion killed a military commander and three soldiers from the Security Belt Forces; earlier that month, AQAP fighters killed five troops from another separatist council-affiliated force.This timing is not coincidental but causal. The invasion creates precisely the conditions extremist groups need: security vacuums, weakened local forces, distracted military focus, and social fragmentation. Al-Qaeda and ISIS consistently demonstrate their readiness to fill any vacuum created by top-down political decisions or deliberate local force weakening. This recurring pattern—confirmed repeatedly by ground realities—should inform policy. Instead, the same destabilizing approaches continue as if chaos recycling were an objective rather than catastrophic side effect.
Southern Yemen's tribal structures present both complexity and opportunity in counterterrorism efforts. Although tribes don't necessarily share extremist ideologies, their alliances with groups like AQAP have provided legitimacy and recruits. This dynamic shifts dramatically when tribes are empowered as security partners rather than targeted as adversaries. The Hadramawt Tribal Alliance, led by Sheikh Amr bin Habreish, represents this potential. When tribes are respected as stakeholders in stability rather than bombed at checkpoints, they become formidable barriers against extremism.
The tribal movements now mobilizing across southern provinces are not acts of rebellion but responses to trampled dignity. These communities understand what external powers seemingly do not: bombardment doesn't end crises but generates cycles of violence where "blood generates blood". This mobilization stems from profound betrayal: communities that fought extremism now face invasion from those claiming to fight extremism. The social war ignited by bombardment cannot be contained with statements or temporary ceasefires.
Sustainable counterterrorism requires recognizing southern Yemen's demonstrated capacity and agency. Southern forces have repeatedly proven that terrorism is defeated not by weakening those who beat it but by politically and security-wise empowering them. Saudi policies contradict this logic by striking stability then questioning violence's resurgence—as if outcomes were separate from causes. Every move against southern forces signals extremist groups that the field is open and their return carries low political cost.The coalition invading southern Yemen under security pretexts comprises armed extremists, political cover providers, and media manipulators attempting to turn victims into perpetrators. This coalition threatens not only southern Yemen but regional security and international navigation, as politically managed chaos respects no geographical borders. The conclusion beyond the noise is evident: this isn't conflict over security management but struggle between a southern state capable of eradicating terrorism and a chaos project investing in extremism's survival. Those choosing chaos—however adorned with counterterrorism rhetoric—are objectively complicit in terrorism's spread.