Yemens

Aden, Yemen – Abu Amjad was shopping with his two children last week, finally able to take them out and buy them new clothes – a cherished Ramadan tradition in Yemen.

The 35-year-old is a teacher, and he had just received his salary. That payment was a sign things are improving in Aden – the salaries are funded by Saudi Arabia as a way of backing the Yemeni government, which has recently arrived to take control of Aden after the defeat of secessionist forces.

But problems and instability are never far away in Yemen.

Just as soon as the children, Amjad, 10, and Mona, 7, began trying on their outfits, the sound of gunfire erupted. Shoppers froze. Amjad and Mona clutched their father, asking to leave.

About 3km (2 miles) away, security forces had opened fire on protesters who attempted to breach the gates of al-Maashiq Palace, where members of the Yemeni government have been based since they arrived from Riyadh a week ago.

The gunfire shattered the family’s moment of joy.

“It ruins your joy when you see a person bleed and robs you of peace when you hear prolonged gunfire,” Abu Amjad told Al Jazeera.

After years of operating from exile, Yemen’s Saudi-backed, UN-recognised cabinet is spending Ramadan in Aden, a move that has coincided with improvements in basic services and a renewed sense of relief. Yet that relief was overshadowed by the deadly confrontation between security forces and antigovernment protesters, in which at least one person was killed.

“That was the first clash after the return of the government to Aden. Our concern is that it may not be the last,” said Abu Amjad.

Government wins

Yemen’s new Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani has said that stabilising Aden and other areas under government control was among the new government’s main priorities.

The Yemeni government is currently in its strongest position for years. An advance by the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) at the end of last year in eastern Yemen ultimately was a step too far for the United Arab Emirates-backed group.

Saudi Arabia considered the STC advance the crossing of a red line, and lent its full military backing to the Yemeni government, allowing it to take territory it had not controlled for years.

Now, the Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia are focused on attempting to improve conditions in the southern and eastern areas of Yemen under government control, to attract more public support. That would in turn weaken support for both the STC and the Houthi rebels, who have controlled northwestern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa, since the country’s war began in 2014.

Lit city and busy markets

Abdulrahman Mansour, a bus driver and resident of Khormaksar in Aden, said Ramadan this year feels different.

“When I see the lights on and the markets busy on Ramadan nights in Aden, it feels like a different city. The improvement is undeniable,” Mansour, 42, told Al Jazeera.

He noted that one distinct difference this Ramadan is the stable provision of electricity. “This reminds me of the pre-war time. We used to take that service for granted,” said Mansour.

“When the city is dark at night, it appears gloomy, and families prefer to stay home. The movement of people brings life to the city and helps small businesses keep afloat, especially in Ramadan,” Mansour added.

Yemeni Electricity Minister Adnan al-Kaf said last week that efforts to improve electricity services in Aden and other provinces continue, noting that Saudi support had contributed to improved service over the past two months.

Wafiq Saleh, a Yemeni economic researcher, said the improvement in the living standards of citizens in Aden and southern Yemen, in general, was obvious, particularly after Saudi Arabia’s payment of public sector salaries and the supply of basic services such as water and electricity.

Saleh told Al Jazeera, “The recent Saudi financial support has been very generous, and it can help the government during this period by enabling it to work on reactivating dormant resources, resuming oil exports, combating corruption, and improving the efficiency of revenue collection with transparency and good governance.”

But Saleh emphasised that the progress achieved so far is not the result of economic reforms by the Yemeni government, but rather because of Saudi support.

Therefore, according to the economist, the improvement in the living situation and the currency’s value may not be sustainable, even if it is a positive indicator and may be the first step towards promised economic reforms in the country.

“There must be a comprehensive vision for developing revenue collection so that the government can implement sustainable economic reforms,” Saleh said.

Search for cooking gas

While the distribution of electricity has improved in Aden, other essential services remain strained. Cooking gas shortages remain a major concern. The search for it remains a daily struggle for families in the port city, and the crisis has intensified in Ramadan.

Lines of vehicles queue at stations, while residents wait with cylinders for a few litres (quarts) of gas.

“Going from one station to another in search of cooking gas while fasting is exhausting,” said Fawaz Ahmed, a 42-year resident of Khormaksar district.

Fawaz describes the shortage of cooking gas as a cause of hunger in the city. “If I stay in [my home] village, I would resort to firewood. But in the city, that option is not available, and if we find firewood in the market, it is expensive.”

Gas distributors say the quantity of cooking gas supplied to them is not adequate, citing this as the root cause of the crisis. Supplies are transported from Marib province in northern Yemen.

Tensions to continue

The cooking gas shortage is a sign that it will not be plain sailing for the Yemeni government in Aden.

And opponents will likely seize on any ongoing problems to foment more unrest.

Majed al-Daari, editor-in-chief of the independent Yemeni news site Maraqiboun Press, described the situation in Aden as “very worrying”.

“What happened to the demonstrators at the start of Ramadan underscores the fragility of the political and security situation. Tensions are set to continue,” al-Daari said.

“The STC will continue mobilising its supporters against the government. This is its last card that it will use to restore lost political interests,” al-Daari added.

The STC said in a statement last week that raids and arbitrary arrests had targeted people who had participated in the recent protests. These attacks, the statement emphasised, would only increase the determination of the southerner secessionists.

For Abu Amjad,  demonstrations in Aden give space to chaos, which he resents.

“At least, Ramadan should pass without protests. Political actors should spare us this month so we can fast and share some joy with our children,” he said.

Aden, Yemen – Lying on the outskirts of Yemen’s interim capital, Aden, al-Basateen district starts where the paved roads end, stretching into narrow, sandy alleyways. It reveals a decades-old refugee story in which Arabic blends with Somali and the faces harbour memories of a different place, across the sea.

Residents know the area by several names, including “Yemen’s Mogadishu” and “the Somalis’ neighbourhood” – a reference to the demographic shift it has seen since the 1990s, when civil war in Somalia pushed thousands of families across the Gulf of Aden in search of safety.

Today, local sources estimate the district’s population at more than 40,000, with people of Somali origin making up the majority. They live in harsh conditions where economic vulnerability overlaps with an unresolved legal status.

Some arrived as children holding the hands of relatives, while others were born in Aden and have known no other home. But they all share one thing in common: the refugee label stamped on their official documents.

Harsh living conditions

As dawn breaks, dozens of men gather at the entrances of the area’s main streets, waiting to be picked up to do a day’s work in construction or manual labour. Many depend on this fragile pattern of employment to put food on the table.

Residents say the lack of regular work has become the defining feature of life in al-Basateen, as extreme poverty spreads and humanitarian aid declines.

Ashour Hassan, a resident in his mid-30s, waiting at a main road junction for someone to hire him to wash a car, told Al Jazeera that he earns between 3,000 and 4,000 Yemeni rials a day (less than $3). That amount is not enough to cover the needs of his family, which lives in a single room in a neighbourhood lacking basic services, surrounded by dirt roads and piles of rubbish.

In a voice mixed with fatigue and despair, Ashour summed up life in al-Basateen: “We live day to day. If we find work, we eat. If we don’t, we wait without food until tomorrow.”

Families in al-Basateen typically rely on both men and women to be breadwinners.

Some women work cleaning homes, while others run small businesses, such as selling bread and traditional foods that blend Yemeni and Somali flavours, and which become especially popular during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Many children also find themselves pushed into work despite their age. One of the main jobs for children involves sifting through waste for materials they can sell, such as plastic or scrap metal, to help support their families.

Little sense of belonging

Poverty is clearly visible in al-Basateen’s architecture and appearance, with tightly packed homes, some made of metal sheets and consisting of only one or two rooms, separated by dirt roads covered in rubbish.

But that is not the only burden weighing on al-Basateen’s Somali residents. A deeper feeling of what many here call “suspended belonging” hangs over them, with the first generation of refugees still carrying memories of a distant homeland and speaking its language, while the second and third generations know only Aden and speak Arabic in the local dialect, with Somalia only known through family stories.

Fatima Jame embodies this paradox. A mother of four, she was born in Aden to Somali parents. She told Al Jazeera: “We know no country other than Yemen. We studied here and got married here, but we do not have Yemeni identity, and in front of the law, we are still refugees.”

Fatima lives with her family in a modest two-room home. Her husband works as a porter in one of the city’s markets, while she helps support the family by preparing and selling traditional foods. Even so, she says their combined income “barely covers rent and food” because of the high cost of living and few job opportunities.

A bleak reality

Conditions in Yemen were never the best for migrants and refugees, but they have significantly worsened since a civil war began in 2014 between the Iranian-backed Houthis and the central government in Sanaa, in Yemen’s north.

The violence from that war, along with declining aid and shrinking job opportunities have increased pressure on both host communities and refugees.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that funding for support programmes in Yemen in 2025 met only 25 percent of the country’s actual needs, directly affecting the lives of thousands of families. Residents of al-Basateen say the aid they used to receive has sharply declined, and in many cases has stopped altogether.

Youssef Mohammed, 53, says he was one of the first Somali arrivals to the district in the 1990s, and now supports a family of seven.

“[We] have not received any support from organisations for years,” Youssef said, adding that some families “chose to return to Somalia rather than stay and die of hunger here”.

He believes the crisis affects everyone in Yemen, “but [that] the refugee remains the weakest link.”

Despite the bleak picture, a few have managed to improve their material conditions through education or by opening small businesses that have helped stimulate the local economy. But they remain an exception, and the flow of refugees continues.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula, but is also the region’s only signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and therefore allows foreign arrivals to apply for asylum or refugee status. According to the United Nations refugee agency, Yemen hosted more than 61,000 asylum seekers and refugees as of July 2025, the vast majority from Somalia and Ethiopia.

Arrivals in recent years have typically travelled to Yemen via boats, with many planning to use Yemen as a transit point before moving on to richer countries like Saudi Arabia.

Hussein Adel is one of those recent arrivals. He is 30, but leans on a crutch on a street corner in al-Basateen.

Hussein arrived in Aden only a few months ago, having made the dangerous journey on a small boat carrying African migrants.

He told Al Jazeera that he fled death and hunger, only to find himself facing a harsher reality. Hussein shelters on the rooftop of a relative’s home and spends his days searching the city for occasional work. His leg injury, he said, was caused by Omani border guards who shot him while he was crossing into Yemen.

As evening falls, the noise in al-Basateen’s alleyways quiets down. Men lean against the walls of worn-out homes, and children chase a ball through narrow passages barely wide enough for their dreams.

On the surface, life looks normal – like any working-class neighbourhood in a city exhausted by crises. But here, in “Yemen’s Mogadishu”, there is an extra trauma – the sense of a lack of belonging, the memory of refugees fleeing danger and poverty at home, and a lack of stability that will not go away.

It is no longer possible to interpret the Yemeni landscape solely through the lens of politics. The developments witnessed in the southern Yemeni governorates under government control in recent months clearly indicate that security and military affairs have become the decisive factor in determining the course of power on the ground. Any governmental or political arrangements will be unsustainable unless the issue of security control and the unification of military command are resolved.

Nor can the escalating Saudi–Emirati rift between two allies who have militarily, politically and economically shaped southern Yemen in recent years be overlooked, given its direct impact on the balance of power and stability.

Over the past years, a complex security structure has taken shape across the southern governorates, comprising official units and others that emerged during the war. Some of these units are linked to state institutions, while others were established with Emirati support, such as the Southern Transitional Council’s forces, which number in the tens of thousands, or through local arrangements shaped by the circumstances of the conflict.

Although recent months have seen moves to restructure this landscape following the defeat of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which declared its dissolution in Hadhramaut and al-Mahra on January 3, 2026, security control remains uneven from one governorate to another. Furthermore, the STC’s security and military formations have not disappeared entirely; some have been redeployed, while the fate of others remains unknown.

In Aden, the temporary capital, security agencies operate within a complex structure. Some units formerly affiliated with the STC have seen their personnel and weapons disappear, while others have been renamed or redeployed. However, longstanding networks of influence remain, and the transfer of leadership or redeployment of camps reflects attempts to rebalance power rather than a definitive resolution of the situation.

The same applies, to varying degrees, to Lahij, Abyan, Dhale, Shabwah and Hadhramaut, where the state’s ability to assert effective authority varies, as does the level of coordination between official security forces and the formations that emerged during the war.

The most sensitive issue at this stage is the integration of military and security formations into the Ministries of Defence and Interior. The state seeks to end parallel security authority, but the process faces complex challenges, including differing sources of funding for some units, varying political loyalties, fears among some commanders of losing local influence, and considerations related to the composition of these forces. As a result, integration appears gradual, relying more on redeployment and restructuring than on decisive measures that could risk triggering confrontation.

The government now based in Aden, southern Yemen, finds itself facing a delicate equation: it must impose its security authority without plunging the country into renewed internal conflict.

The transition from multiple armed groups to a state monopoly on the use of force requires political consensus, regional support and international backing. Any hasty move could reignite internal clashes, particularly given existing political and regional sensitivities, as well as fears that the Saudi–Emirati dispute could once again trigger confrontation on the ground.

For this reason, government efforts are focused first on establishing a stable security environment.

This trajectory cannot be understood without considering the regional dimension. Saudi Arabia views Yemen as a direct strategic depth for its national security and seeks the emergence of a stable state along its southern border.

The dispute between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, particularly after Yemen requested the withdrawal of Emirati forces from its territory, has become a significant factor shaping the course of the crisis, especially amid Saudi accusations that Abu Dhabi continues to support the STC and consolidate its influence on the ground.

Yemen today is part of a broader regional landscape, intertwined with Red Sea dynamics and maritime routes, competition for influence in the Horn of Africa, and tensions stretching from Sudan to Somalia to the Gulf. For this reason, international actors — particularly the United States — are keen to keep the situation in Yemen under control, fearing that a security collapse could trigger intra-Gulf conflict, threaten international shipping, create space for a new wave of armed groups, or allow the Houthis to exploit the situation.

In the next phase, the government is likely to continue efforts to consolidate security control in Aden and other southern governorates, including Hadhramaut, which borders Saudi Arabia, while gradually integrating military units and maintaining political balances to prevent renewed conflict.

The success of these efforts will determine whether the country is moving towards gradual stability or another round of reshaping power centres. Given this reality, the central question remains: who truly possesses the ability to impose security on the ground, particularly as some actors continue to push the Southern Transitional Council towards escalation that could reignite the conflict?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.