An armed separatist group backed by the United Arab Emirates led a rapid march into a resource-rich region of Yemen on Wednesday, taking over wide sections of the territory in a matter of hours.
The separatist group, called the Southern Transitional Council or the S.T.C., seized control of much of Hadramout, a province in eastern Yemen, and were battling to secure the region’s oil fields, local residents and the group’s officials said.
An S.T.C. statement on Wednesday evening described the operation as a battle to “liberate all the soil of our homeland, South Arabia, and build a modern federal state.”
The swift offensive shattered a precarious quiet in Yemen, where a decade-long civil war had settled into a stalemate. It was also a potential turning point that could eventually lead to the country’s division into two states.
“The scramble to define Yemen’s future map has begun,” said Mohammed al-Basha, a U.S.-based analyst focused on Yemen.
The S.T.C., made up of allied militias, is confronting multiple rivals, including a Yemeni government-aligned military unit and forces led by a tribal figure. All are enemies of the Houthis, the Iran-backed militia that controls northern Yemen.
The new fighting underscores simmering tensions between the United Arab Emirates — a tiny but influential country in the Persian Gulf — and Saudi Arabia, which borders Hadramout and has cultivated deep influence there.
The Emirates and Saudi Arabia are allies and once led a military coalition into Yemen to fight the Houthis. But they have diverged in their foreign policies in recent years, backing rival powers in Yemen and Sudan.
On Wednesday, a delegation of Saudi officials traveled to Hadramout to meet the governor. A Saudi military officer called for the forces that had arrived from outside Hadramout to withdraw, according to a statement published by official Yemeni news media.
The Emirati foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Yemen’s multifaceted war began in 2014, when the Houthis stormed the capital, Sanaa, and displaced the internationally recognized government. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates led a devastating bombing campaign to try to reinstate the government. Hundreds of thousands of people died from violence, hunger and disease.
In the end, the Houthis prevailed. They went on to gain global notoriety during the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza by shooting missiles and drones at Israel and at ships in the Red Sea. They now rule northern Yemen, where most of the country’s population lives.
Southern Yemen is ostensibly governed by the internationally recognized government. But much of the area is controlled by a patchwork of armed groups. The most powerful among them is the S.T.C. Founded in 2017 with financial and military support from the Emirates, the group is calling for the creation of an independent southern Yemen. Such a state existed for several decades until it unified with northern Yemen in 1990.
Residents told a New York Times reporter on Wednesday that S.T.C. forces had taken control of Seiyun, a key city in Hadramout, after brief clashes with a remnant of Yemen’s national army. The forces also spread out across the strategic valley called Wadi Hadramout and secured major urban centers and military bases, according to S.T.C.-affiliated news media in Yemen.
“It looked more like a handover than a battle,” said Ahmed, a Seiyun resident who insisted on being identified only by his first name in order to protect him from retribution. Human rights groups say the S.T.C. has stifled civil society and committed other rights violations, which S.T.C. officials deny.
An S.T.C. soldier who fought in the takeover of Seiyun and asked to be identified only by his first name, Mazen, because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said his unit had been surprised by how quickly the rival forces retreated. “We didn’t expect them to flee,” he said.
A senior S.T.C. official, Amr Bidh, said in a statement to The Times that the group had taken action because the Hadramout valley had become a smuggling hub for terrorist cells and Houthi-linked figures to move weapons, money and fighters “with little oversight.” He said the S.T.C.’s goal was “to stabilize the oil-producing areas of Hadramout.”
“Restoring security around these sites is essential not only for local stability, but also for energy security,” Mr. Bidh said.
But analysts say the S.T.C.’s goals are broader than that.
“They see Saudi Arabia working toward a political settlement with the Houthis in the north and want to ensure they hold full control of the south before any deal is reached,” Mr. al-Basha, the analyst, said.
S.T.C. forces are expected to continue moving east into the neighboring region of Al-Mahra, he added. Al-Mahra borders Oman, and it is the last major area of the south outside of S.T.C. control.
On social media, S.T.C. officials circulated a video of one of its representatives discussing the offensive in English, a sign that the group was eager to frame its moves in a positive light for a Western audience.
Hadramout extends from the Saudi border in the north down to the Arabian Sea in the south. The coastal areas had been under the S.T.C.’s control for years. But the inland valley was under the control of other forces, and the oil fields there were a key source of funding for the beleaguered government.
This year, a tribal leader named Amr bin Habresh, who had cultivated close ties with Saudi Arabia, demanded a greater share of the country’s oil wealth, as well as improved services for the province’s residents. In January, his forces took control of the oil fields, cutting off supplies to the government.
This week, Petromasila, a Yemeni company, announced a halt to production in two major areas of the oil fields, citing the deteriorating security situation. The shutdown led to widespread blackouts in the region.
On Wednesday, S.T.C. units advanced toward the oil company to confront Mr. bin Habresh’s forces. Appearing in a video published on social media, while flanked by supporters with rifles slung over their shoulders, Mr. bin Habresh vowed to fight back.
“If they approach the oil facilities or attempt to enter our land by force,” he said, “we will resist them.”
Ahmed, the Seiyun resident, said he did not care who controlled the city so long as they restored institutions and fixed basic services like electricity.
“Like anyone else, I just want the power outages to end and security to return,” he said.
Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Vivian Nereim is the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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