Yemeni gov’t forces aim for Sanaa, but Houthi defeat will be a challenge

Yemeni government forces have claimed advances along the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait after the head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, ⁠Rashad al-Alimi, announced the start of a major offensive to capture all territories lost to the Houthis.

On Monday, forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognised government claimed the advance and headed north along the Red Sea coast, and said they had retaken the town of Dhubab and port city of Mocha. They also earlier said that they had launched a “strategic offensive” on the Houthi-held capital Sanaa.

Government forces are also attempting to reverse gains made by the Houthis in recent days around the key city of Taiz, in southwestern Yemen.

The Houthis, an Iranian-allied movement, have held the capital Sanaa since September 2014, before making other territorial gains in northern and western Yemen.

After four years of relative calm, fighting flared once again in July, before a Houthi offensive in early September saw the group make sweeping gains along the Red Sea coast, including the port city of Mocha and Bab al-Mandeb.

The Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia, is now attempting to regain that lost territory, but still faces divisions within the anti-Houthi camp.

“The [internationally recognised government’s] ground forces are big on paper and quite sizeable, but scattered across a bunch of fronts and running on old pre-war gear, so they can hold their lines but [currently] can’t push the Houthis out of their mountain strongholds,” Raiman al-Hamdani, a London-based Yemen analyst, told Al Jazeera.

The most recent fighting hints at a new escalation in the conflict, al-Hamdani said.

“This all seems to be moving into a more dangerous phase, and while the appetite for a full-scale war may exist among elements of the leadership on both sides, the reality is more complicated,” al-Hamdani said.

“In the longer term, the more plausible outcome is not the military destruction of one side by the other, but a negotiated and imperfect political settlement in which the Houthis retain substantial influence in northern Yemen, Saudi Arabia obtains greater security guarantees, and Yemen’s competing political and military factions are forced into some form of power-sharing arrangement,” al-Hamdani added.

“The problem is that reaching that point may require another period of serious escalation before any settlement.”

Government setting the agenda

Ahmed al-Shalafi, Al Jazeera’s Yemen correspondent and a specialist in Yemeni affairs, reported that the recent moves by the Yemeni government show “complete operational and political integration”.

“These moves lend a serious and decisive dimension to the announced battle to liberate Sanaa and restore the state,” he said.

Al-Shalafi said the government’s offensive is intended to start the confrontation on their own terms, rather than allowing the Houthis to dictate the stages of the war.

And even if the United States and Iran agree a deal to end their ongoing conflict, which began in late February, it might not seriously impact the fighting in Yemen.

Nicholas Brumfield, an independent Yemen analyst, told Al Jazeera that he believes the balance of power has not yet shifted in favour of either side.

“The Houthis are going to keep pushing in Taiz and Marib,” he said. “[Government] forces have been better on the defensive in Taiz … But the Houthis have been able to push in all directions at once in a way [government] forces just aren’t.”

However, Saeed Thabet, the head of Al Jazeera’s Yemen bureau, said the government’s advances, coming soon after al-Alimi’s announcement of the beginning of a new large-scale offensive against the Houthis, were a way of demonstrating that the government was serious about reversing Houthi gains.

“The military expansion is a message that the government is determined to implement what it says in its statements,” Thabet said. “In the past, a lot of Yemenis would not take these statements seriously.”

“The government forces will now attempt to … control Taiz’s Red Sea coast,” he added. “It will also attempt to contain the Houthi infiltration into some villages and areas in Taiz governorate, especially in al-Shamayatayn and al-Waziya districts. Sources there have told us that government security forces are sweeping those areas and capturing some [Houthi] armed men.”