DUBAI (Dispatches) -- Saudi-backed former Yemeni president Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi on Thursday ceded power to a council whose members form the core of an anti-Ansarullah alliance as Saudi Arabia looks to exit a costly war.
The war is a multifaceted one and Saudi Arabia has struggled to hold together its proxy factions under the military alliance assembled to fight the Yemeni army and its popular Ansarullah allies, the de facto authorities in the north.
The move aims to unify pro-Saudi ranks by giving more parties a say and sidelining divisive figures -- Hadi and his dismissed deputy, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a top general who in the past fought both the Yemeni army and southern separatists.
Hadi, who failed to build a power base of his own, has been in exile in Saudi Arabia since 2015, and his regime has contended with separatists for control of the south while Ansarullah and its allies control most populated areas of Yemen.
Hadi has been criticized by coalition partner the United Arab Emirates, which largely ended its presence in Yemen in 2019 but holds sway through local mercenaries.
Saudi Arabia is fatigued by a costly war that had been in military stalemate for years and is a sore point with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, which recalibrated ties with Riyadh due to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Blows to the kingdom recently spiraled with intense Yemeni missile and drone strikes on Saudi oil facilities and retaliatory assaults against the UAE. This followed big gains by Ansarullah and the Yemeni army in energy-rich Ma’rib last year.
“The council’s appointment points to how unsustainable the status quo had become, particularly after Houthi breakthroughs in central Yemen last year,” said Peter Salisbury, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group, referring to an ethnic Yemeni community that forms the backbone of Ansarullah.
“There was a sense that without some big changes the Houthis would eventually win the war.”
The UN envoy is still pressing for a permanent ceasefire and inclusive talks to end the conflict which has killed tens of thousands, pushed millions into hunger and left 80% of the population of some 30 million reliant on aid.
Ansarullah spokesman Muhammad Abdul-Salam said Hadi’s bogus government has come to an end
“The development has refuted allegations of the countries that attacked Yemen under the pretext of confronting coup plotters against him,” he via his Twitter account on Thursday evening.

“The international community and the UN no longer have an excuse to continue using the term ‘internationally recognized Yemeni government’ to massacre the Yemeni nation and enforce a tight siege on the Arab country.”
Abdul-Salam also slammed talks hosted by Saudi Arabia on the Yemeni conflict, saying the future of the Arab country will be only determined by the Yemeni people.
“The Yemeni nation does not care about the talks sponsored by illegal parties. The only option for the Saudi-led coalition to promote peace is to stop the attacks, lift its siege and move out its forces. Other than that, efforts to settle the conflict are nothing but desperate attempts to regroup mercenaries and use them to escalate the tensions,” he said.
Ansarullah has already shunned the meeting in Riyadh that was hosted by the Riyadh-led Persian Gulf Cooperation Council and involved Hadi representatives as well as U.S. special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking.
The Yemeni resistance movement insisted that it would not travel to enemy territory for talks.
The presidential council is chaired by Rashad al-Alimi, an adviser to Hadi and a former interior minister in the former government of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Alimi enjoys close ties with Saudi Arabia as well as the Al-Qaeda-linked Islah party inside Yemen.
The council has seven members, including Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, the head of the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) – an umbrella group of heavily armed takfiri militants propped up by the United Arab Emirates.
Sheikh Sultan al-Aradah, the pro-Hadi governor of energy-rich Ma’rib province, was also named a member of the council. So was Tariq Saleh, a high-profile militant commander who has close ties with the UAE.
Last week, UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg announced a two-month ceasefire that went into effect on April 2, saying the truce could be renewed with the consent of the parties.
Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states.
The objective was to bring back to power the Hadi regime and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.
The war has stopped well short of all of its goals, despite killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and turning the entire country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.