Saudi Arabia took its first steps towards severing its alliance with the Islah party in Hadhramaut, stripping the party of all its military and political powers.
Saudi Arabia is moving to deploy about 10,000 recruits from the so-called “Dera Al-Watan” factions into the valley districts in the coming days. Today they finished celebrating the graduation of a new batch of these factions in Hadhramaut.
This was confirmed by Ahmed Saeed bin Breik, vice president of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), who spoke in a television interview on Friday that there is an agreement to deploy the “Dera Al-Watan” factions from the people of Hadhramaut in the valley districts instead of the “First Military Region” forces loyal to Islah.
Since October of last year, Saudi Arabia worked to re-embrace Islah militants as part of its battle against the UAE. Riyadh had begun to dominate Yemeni areas under the control of the coalition. Recently, the balance of power changed in favor of Abu Dhabi again on the fourth of May.
It should be noted that the Islah party was excluded from the scene in southern and eastern Yemen by its coalition partners. Riyadh seems to have excluded the party once again, which has become the weakest link among the coalition partners in Yemen.
