Can Yemen hold together?

Fragmented statesUAEPLCPLC PLCMbSPLC in the Middle East are no rarity—think of Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Syria—but Yemen is the most disunited of all. Rent by civil war for the past eight years, it is a patchwork of competing factions. Last year a ceasefire between Saudi Arabia, which supports a toothless but internationally recognised government, and the Houthi rebels, who control a large swathe of territory including the capital, Sana’a, promised to stabilise the country and, on paper, to hold it together. Instead, the fragile ceasefire has enabled the Houthis to tighten their grip on the area under their control and has weakened the forces arrayed against them. After fighting those of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates () to a draw, the Houthis look poised to win the peace.At least nine different factions have been vying for power. The Presidential Leadership Council () that Saudi Arabia created last year claims to be Yemen’s legitimate government. The Saudis, who pay for it, recently promised another $1.2bn to keep it afloat. The claims to control the entire country but probably has the smallest footprint of all Yemen’s power-seeking factions. It is restricted to a mere wing of the presidential palace in Yemen’s second city, Aden, near Yemen’s southern tip (see map). Most of the ’s members live in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (), the kingdom’s de facto ruler, has been known to keep troublesome politicians and family members in a sort of gilded cage. The ’s eight representatives are often at loggerheads with each other.