Lessons From the UAE War in Yemen

On the one hand, the Emirati forces deserve a rest after five years of continuous operations in Yemen. The UAE is not a large country and maintains a deployable ground force of fewer than 20,000 troops. Around 3,500 UAE troops were deployed in Yemen, with nearly 3,000 additional UAE airmen, sailors and soldiers operating in direct support offshore and in neighboring regions. About a sixth of the country’s entire fighting force was at war at any given moment, and the commanders I worked with had been deployed almost continuously since the war’s start in 2015. From their perspective, the Emiratis believe—with good reason—that they stopped the Houthi rebels from taking over most of Yemen and, simultaneously, prevented al-Qaeda from setting up its largest territorial caliphate after it made inroads in the port of Mukalla in 2015.