The takeover of Al-Makha by the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) on September 10 and the swift collapse of government-aligned forces offer a sobering assessment of the challenges confronting Yemen’s military institution— an inseparable predicament from the broader political crisis that has gripped the country for more than a decade. The state of fragmentation and division affecting the armed forces is, at its core, a direct reflection of the crisis of the Yemeni state itself, marked by institutional erosion, contested legitimacy, and the rise of competing power centers that intersect and collide.

The loss of the West Coast and Houthi advances in rural Taiz have exposed the consequences of this division. Fractured by competing local loyalties and opposing political agendas, government-aligned forces have repeatedly failed to operate under a unified national command. The government’s announcement of Operation Dawn of Yemen, a major Saudi-backed counteroffensive, on October 4, appears to herald a new, deadly phase of Yemen’s long-running war, and reinforces the urgent need for the government and its regional and international partners to commit to rebuilding the Yemeni military.

Examining the military’s fragmentation, however, requires more than analyzing the dynamics of the ongoing conflict. Divisions within Yemen’s military are rooted in decades of political conflict and flawed state-building efforts that date back to the 1962 revolution, the period of southern independence, and later, Yemeni unification. Examining how these divisions developed over time sheds light on why military reform in Yemen has been so difficult and can also point to possible ways to reorganize the military on professional, inclusive, and national foundations to advance a unified political project.

The Historical Roots of the Crisis

The Formation of Armies in the North and South

The Yemeni military has remained one of the most complex challenges related to state-building in the country. This has been the case since the 1962 revolution that overthrew the Mutawakkilite Imamate and the founding of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) in North Yemen. In 1962, the army of the YAR took shape from two opposing camps: the remnants of the military inherited from the Mutawakkilite Kingdom, most of whose manpower came from the tribes of the North; and the masses of volunteers who joined the ranks of the revolution, for whom reception and training camps were opened in most of the northern governorates. Egypt played a pivotal role in the formation of the nascent republic’s army through field training and qualification programs and by hosting Yemeni officers and personnel. Its nucleus was formed of four infantry brigades: the Al-Thawra (Revolution) Brigade, the Al-Uruba (Arabism) Brigade, the Al-Nasr (Victory) Brigade, and the Al-Wahda (Unity) Brigade. But the war’s dynamics, shaped by complex regional entanglements and aimed at consolidating the young republican system in North Yemen, came to dominate the military’s development, constraining the emergence of a professional national military institution. The war was framed as part of a broader regional struggle between Gamal Abdel Nasser’s republican regime, which supported national liberation movements, and monarchies that feared the spread of Nasserism. This regional dimension intensified the conflict between republicans and royalists and kept the state in a cycle of wartime readiness, leaving the republic with little opportunity to establish stable institutions or to consolidate its armed forces.

In 1966, under Abdullah al-Sallal, the military officer who led the revolutionary forces that overthrew the imamate and the YAR’s first president, took steps to establish more firmly rooted command and organizational structures through the creation of four bodies: the War Operations Authority; the Army Administration Authority; the Supply and Provisioning Authority; and the General Military Armament Authority. The War Operations Authority occupied second place in the chain of command, directly below the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Al-Sallal.^[1]

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, military institutions in the North underwent successive structural and organizational reforms, but none went so far as to forge a national military doctrine or build a professional, institutionalized national army, as these reforms were constrained by the prevailing political settlements and balances.

In 1975, President Ibrahim al-Hamdi, a former military officer who led a military coup against the republic’s civilian government the year prior, undertook a comprehensive restructuring of the armed forces as part of his project to modernize the state and consolidate his authority. He dismissed several senior commanders and replaced them with commanders loyal to the new revolutionary orientation, and merged units to form four principal forces: the Giants forces, the General Reserve forces, the Paratrooper forces, and the Military Police forces. Following Al-Hamdi’s assassination in 1977, his successors, President Ahmed al-Ghashmi, and later, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, implemented structural and organizational changes, increasing the army’s size and manpower. However, this quantitative expansion was not accompanied by parallel progress in building command-and-control institutions on national and professional foundations. The redistribution of senior positions and the formation of military units remained, to varying degrees, tied to the political calculations of those in power and to networks of personal, regional, and family loyalty.

Under President Saleh in particular, the regime built a network of power centers within the military and security establishment by assigning command positions to figures connected to him through family, tribal, or regional ties. This strengthened the presidency’s control over the principal levers of military power. The practice was not limited to senior appointments; it also extended to the creation of important units and formations whose commanders and power bases were closely linked to the ruling circle.

Critically, this pattern of military development weakened the institutional chain of command. Many power centers within the military came to derive their influence from their proximity to the president and the networks of loyalty surrounding him, rather than solely from their formal position within the armed forces. The military thus gradually shifted from an institution whose primary function was ostensibly to protect the state and the republican system into one of the principal instruments through which the regime exercised power and maintained its survival.

This trajectory had a lasting impact on the development of the Yemeni military. It entrenched multiple power centers within the institution, weakened its ability to operate as a cohesive national force, and made subsequent political change directly dependent on the fate of the military power centers established during this period.

In the South, the nucleus of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen’s army took shape before independence in 1967, from multiple elements, including members of the organized resistance against British occupation affiliated with the Liberation Front and the National Front, remnants of the South Arabian Federation Army established by the British, and units of the various Yemeni sultanates that had retained semi-official military structures during the colonial period. Despite subsequent attempts to unify the army’s doctrine and build its institutional structures, the nature of the state and the intensity of internal rivalries within the ruling Socialist Party impeded the creation of a professional, independent military institution. This turned the army into a weapon in internal power struggles rather than a protector of the state.

Notably, neither the northern nor the southern army emerged from a gradual, stable process of institution-building aimed at creating a unified national military under state authority and a single central command. Instead, both were formed amid turbulent revolutionary and political circumstances by incorporating military formations and popular resistance groups with differing tribal, regional, and political backgrounds.

The unification of Yemen in 1990 and the agreement to merge the armed forces heralded a new phase of failure. The outcome was that the two armies, which had nominally united through a political agreement, fought one another in the 1994 civil war. The result of that conflict was the demobilization of most forces from the army of the former South Yemen and the concentration of authority in the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his family, who treated the southern governorates less as an integral part of the nation and more as a defeated territory.

The Division of Military Institutions Post 2011

Against the backdrop of the 2011 uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, divisions within the armed forces fractured the military along competing political and command lines, effectively creating two parallel military camps: the first loyal to Saleh, with the Republican Guard as its backbone, and the second loyal to General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, centered on the 1st Armored Division. Al-Ahmar, who declared his support for the youth-led uprising, attracted several military region and brigade commanders who followed him, and the Yemeni army split, illustrating how decades of military development had failed to replace personal, family, and regional loyalties with a shared national institutional allegiance.

During the transitional period established under the Gulf Cooperation Council-brokered political agreement, as the presidency was transferred to Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Saleh’s vice president and a former southern military officer, the state began preparing to restructure the military and dismantle its traditional power centers. But this process was never fully completed. The transitional authority lacked the ability to impose its decisions on various military and tribal centers of influence. Political consensus on the military’s future was fragile and limited amid the ongoing struggle among traditional forces for influence within the state.

In the last 15 years, the armed forces have undergone a series of transformations and structural crises that have eroded their institutional cohesion, weakened their command-and-control structures, and undermined their ability to function as an inclusive national institution. This collapse has been accompanied by the emergence of multiple new military and security formations with varying political orientations, funding sources, organizational structures, and combat doctrines, leading to fragmentation in the military sphere.

This fragmentation was entrenched when Houthi forces seized Sana’a in September 2014. Because the command structures of the pre-existing Yemeni armed forces remained centered in Sana’a, the anti-Houthi camp evolved into semi-official armed entities organized along political, regional, or ideological lines. Though nominal units were incorporated into what remained of the state army, these newly formed or reconstituted forces represented a fundamental break from Yemen’s historical national military institution rather than its continuation.

The long war that followed also led to the emergence of an increasing number of military and security formations linked to regional political actors. Iran invested heavily in the Houthis, while Saudi Arabia supported the army of the internationally recognized government and later established the Nation’s Shield forces. The UAE supported forces loyal to the now-dissolved Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Giants Brigades, and the National Resistance forces. This complexity and the ongoing conflict postponed serious discussions on reforming Yemen’s defense and security sectors.

This, in turn, produced a striking paradox in the development trajectory of military actors in Yemen. While the Houthis moved toward institutionalizing their militia, gradually transforming it into a semi-regular military structure with more cohesive, unified command and control, the anti-Houthi forces moved in the opposite direction, toward further fragmentation.

Over the years, this reality has been evident on the battlefield. The Houthis have repeatedly succeeded in isolating and confronting fronts manned by various forces one by one, while the components of the internationally recognized government have consistently struggled to achieve unified military preparedness or to make operational decisions. Each battle involving a faction or front aligned with the government was treated as a separate test of that actor’s commitment to the government camp—a camp that lacked both a unified political vision and a single operational command.

Despite numerous initiatives aimed at restructuring and unifying the military institution, foremost among them the formation of the Joint Military and Security Committee that emerged from the 2019 Riyadh Agreement, a power-sharing deal aimed at ending military clashes between the STC and pro-government forces, these efforts failed to bring about any meaningful transformation. Fragmentation, division, and competition among local and regional power centers remained dominant features, contributing to the complexities of the Yemeni crisis at both the political and military levels.

An Uphill Battle for Genuine Reform

Two major developments over the past three years – the regional conflict that began in late 2023 and the aborted STC takeover of eastern Yemen – were important turning points that prompted local, regional, and international actors to reassess their approach to Yemen—not only to end the war and reach a political settlement, but also to rebuild state institutions, particularly the military and security institutions. These developments show that the persistence of multiple centers of armed power and the absence of a unified national military command are not merely consequences of the war but have also become factors that threaten the sustainability of any political settlement and constrain the state’s ability to assert its authority and monopolize the use of force.

Hamas’ assault on October 7, 2023, and the outbreak of regional war and the start of the Houthi campaign on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden demonstrated that the fragility and fragmentation of the Yemeni military was no longer merely an internal problem but had turned into a direct threat to regional and international security. The military forces affiliated with the internationally recognized government were unable to control Yemen’s waterways or deter the Houthis.

The second change came with the transformation of the anti-Houthi camp after UAE-backed armed forces affiliated with the secessionist STC attempted to seize control of Hadramawt and Al-Mahra. This demonstrated that multiple centers of power and overlapping mandates among official institutions and military and security formations affiliated with different political and regional actors remain a major obstacle to establishing stable political and security arrangements. Saudi Arabia’s decisive resolution of the battle for eastern Yemen against the pro-STC forces led the UAE to withdraw its military presence from Yemen, and Riyadh became the principal actor overseeing the Yemeni military.

Immediately, Saudi Arabia prioritized organizational changes in the pro-government force through the formation of the Supreme Military Committee, which was tasked with restructuring and reorganizing various military and security units. Lieutenant General Fahd al-Salman, a Saudi military commander, was named chairman of the committee, through which Riyadh ensured administrative, financial, and operational control over the various military forces on the government side. These included former UAE-backed forces such as the Giants Brigades, the Support and Backup Brigades, the Saiqa Brigades, the Hadrami Elite forces, the Shabwa Defense forces, and the National Resistance forces, comprising several brigades on the West Coast. Other forces included the National Army, comprising regular military structures, many of which are affiliated with the Islamist Islah party; Coast Guard forces; and the Nation’s Shield Forces and the Emergency Forces, Salafi-oriented brigades established and trained by Saudi Arabia.^[2]

On paper, the Supreme Military Committee achieved some initial progress following its formation. In the first phase, it established a framework to unify command and operational structures under a central authority, attempted to define powers and responsibilities, and established a biometric registration system to curb fraudulent ‘ghost’ personnel. This represented an important step toward better governing the military sector and reducing the financial and administrative imbalances that have accompanied the war, foremost among them the phenomenon of ghost soldiers and dual employment, which contributed to the emergence of a war economy within some state institutions and military groups.

However, these reforms failed to establish unified institutional and command structures or a cohesive operational decision-making mechanism, shortcomings clearly exposed in the September fighting that saw Houthi forces capture Al-Makha and other areas along Yemen’s southwest coast. Instead, they gave rise to two competing approaches within the government camp, each seeking to influence Riyadh’s position on the future of Yemen’s military institution.

The first camp argued that the measures implemented by the Supreme Military Committee represented a suitable formula for managing existing rivalries. It favored keeping the current structure, with Saudi Arabia as the principal guarantor for the coordination and management of the military system. Supporters of this approach argued that a rapid move toward comprehensive restructuring could unsettle the fragile balance and political projects that have taken shape and become entrenched in recent years.^[3]

The second camp argued that all military factions should fall under the Ministry of Defense. It viewed it as the natural path toward restoring the state and its monopoly over the use of armed force. It maintained that such an arrangement would also strengthen the state’s political weight, given the military strength and size of the forces under its authority. This vision, however, faced broad resistance among military forces that feared a full merger could tip the balance in favor of the Islah party, thereby reproducing existing power imbalances rather than resolving them.^[4]

Both approaches have clear limitations, underscoring the urgent need for a more realistic, gradual path that accounts for mutual fear among the parties and considers the political, social, and regional complexities governing the country. The building of the military in North Yemen and South Yemen, the merging of the two militaries in 1990, and the current state of fragmentation all suggest that a rapid and comprehensive merger under the Ministry of Defense could be interpreted as a redistribution of influence more than a national project to rebuild the military. The risk also remains that Southern forces may view the merger of STC-affiliated forces and the Giants Brigades into existing structures as an attempt to reduce their political and military representation, or as a circumvention of demands related to the Southern Cause.

Moving Beyond Piecemeal Solutions

Organizational and technical measures adopted thus far toward unifying Yemen’s military, important as they are, remain limited in scope and continue to fall short of the structural reforms required to truly rebuild the military and strengthen Yemeni state institutions. A more realistic and implementable approach should be based on the principle of unifying commands before unifying formations. This would not aim to establish parallel military structures on a permanent basis or to bypass the Ministry of Defense as the legal institution that regulates the armed forces. Rather, it would proceed from the assumption that a direct transition toward comprehensive merger under the current circumstances could produce counterproductive results. Accordingly, the proposed arrangements would constitute a transitional phase to prepare the Ministry of Defense to exercise its role as the sole institution responsible for organizing the Yemeni armed forces.

Within the proposed framework, the unification of the military command would begin through two parallel tracks. First, create a joint operations command that includes representatives of the various military forces within the government camp, working under the direct authority of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), which is tasked with coordinating military operations, managing frontlines, and unifying command and control. Second, establish a command for institutional military transformation, responsible for strategic planning and overseeing training, qualification, and structural development, paving the way for a more comprehensive and sustainable merger process in the future. In parallel, the anti-Houthi camp would launch a political-military dialogue to reach consensus on the foundations of an inclusive national military and political doctrine. This step is especially important given the lack of consensus on the military’s role in the post-war period.

Effective military control requires a clear chain of command that connects the Presidential Leadership Council to military units through the Joint Operations Command. This framework should be supported by unified communication systems, institutional oversight of appointments and resources, and accountability for executing orders. In parallel, the Joint Operations Command should standardize training, professional development, and organizational restructuring, with financial and logistical support contingent on compliance. Successful consolidation depends on political and military consensus on state authority over all military formations, reinforced by independent monitoring and dispute-resolution mechanisms.

Ultimately, the success of the rebuilding process will not be measured by the number of units merged or reorganized. It will be measured by the new military institution’s ability to integrate an inclusive national framework that monopolizes the use of armed force while remaining subject to legitimate political authorities. From this standpoint, reforming and rebuilding the Yemeni military should be viewed as part of a broader project to rebuild the state itself. Just as the state’s collapse contributed to the military’s disintegration, restoring the state and its stability remains contingent on a professional national army. Without addressing these structural problems, any restructuring process will remain exposed to the same imbalances that led to the military’s collapse.

This analysis is part of a series of publications produced by the Sana’a Center and funded by the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The series explores issues within economic, political, and environmental themes, aiming to inform discussion and policymaking related to Yemen that foster sustainable peace.