The Southern Transitional Council’s crisis moved from the battlefield into a political struggle over legitimacy after a delegation in Riyadh announced the group’s dissolution, only for senior figures elsewhere to reject the move as invalid and made under pressure.
The dispute, reported on the event date of 2026-01-09, exposed a widening split inside the southern Yemeni separatist movement at a moment when its forces had already suffered territorial losses in Hadramout and al-Mahra and were under increasing pressure from the Saudi-backed government and its allies.
According to the evidence packet, Abdulrahman Jalal al-Sebaihi, the STC secretary-general and a member of the Riyadh delegation, appeared on Yemeni television to say the council would disband because the movement had not participated in decisions around the military operation in the eastern governorates. He argued that the STC’s continued existence no longer served the purpose for which it was created.
That statement immediately met resistance from other senior STC figures. The group’s spokesperson, Anwar Al-Tamimi, said decisions could only be taken by the full council and its institutions under the chairmanship of the president. Mohamed Al-Sahimi, the STC’s representative to the UK, said the Riyadh announcement could not be treated as valid because it had been made under duress and while the delegation was unreachable.
The dispute matters because it came after weeks of clashes between STC-aligned southern separatist militias and forces loyal to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government. The STC has long sought an independent state for southern Yemen, but its position weakened after the loss of ground in Hadramout and al-Mahra, territories Riyadh appears to have treated as a strategic red line. The packet says Saudi aircraft struck an alleged Emirati weapons cargo at Mukalla port, after which the UAE withdrew its counter-terrorism forces and STC units retreated.
Saudi and Yemeni authorities welcomed the Riyadh announcement, presenting it as a path toward healing divisions and strengthening national unity. But the STC’s own senior figures described a different reality: they said the delegation in Saudi Arabia had effectively lost contact with the rest of the movement after arriving, with some accounts saying delegates were taken away from the airport and their phones switched off.
The council’s public rebuttal and its call for protests in Aden and Mukalla suggest the issue is not simply whether one faction can dissolve another, but whether the movement still controls the process of its own decisions. That question is now central to any attempt to stabilize southern Yemen, where the STC’s future is tied to the broader conflict between separatist ambitions, Saudi security concerns, and the war against the Houthi movement.
The event date marks a political fracture rather than a final settlement. What follows will depend on whether the Riyadh delegation was acting for the STC as a whole or whether the council’s leadership can reassert control and reverse the announcement.
