Archive February 1, 2026

The lights are on in Aden – at least for most of the day.

The apparently mundane detail is a huge difference for people in the southern Yemeni port city, which for years has suffered from extensive electricity blackouts, and a sign that something has changed.

It was noticeable enough for Saleh Taher, who lives in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, to comment on after making a recent visit to Aden.

Taher was unsure of what he would find on his trip to Aden, arriving on January 25, just weeks after Yemen’s government re-established its presence in the city.

The 32-year-old wondered if the streets would be tense so soon after the fall of the secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC).

The STC controlled the city and much of southern Yemen until a Saudi Arabian-backed government offensive forced them back in early January.

But as time passed, Taher’s anxiety faded. The streets of Aden appeared normal, and people were going about their jobs as usual.

And then there was the electricity. In a country that has now officially been at war for longer than a decade with multiple groups vying for territory, a utility that is taken for granted in much of the world is a sign of hope.

The sudden availability of electricity is partly the result of a multimillion-dollar fuel grant provided by Saudi Arabia to supply power stations. Observers consider it to be an effort to show that the presence of Yemen’s internationally recognised government can improve people’s lives.

Badea Sultan, an Aden-based independent journalist, told Al Jazeera that the “positive change” in services in Aden is palpable for residents and the city has entered a completely new stage.

Citing electricity as a key example, he said, “Power supply has largely stabilised. Today, we enjoy approximately 20 hours of continuous, uninterrupted service per day. This was a distant dream just two months ago.”

Sultan said the ongoing progress in Aden cannot be attributed solely to the United Nations-recognised government. He highlighted the role of Falah al-Shahrani, who arrived in Aden early this year as part of a high-level delegation from the Joint Forces Command of the Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen to follow up on security and military arrangements in the wake of the STC’s military collapse.

An adviser to the commander of the forces, al-Shahrani has worked with local and military leaders to reposition military camps outside Aden and has played a critical role in managing what Sultan described as a sensitive phase in the city.

“Al-Shahrani is effectively the de facto ruler of Aden now,” Sultan added.

Saudi-UAE tensions

In late December, tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over Yemen surfaced publicly, prompting Riyadh to adopt a sharper narrative and launch military operations aimed at pushing back the UAE-backed STC, which had crossed a Saudi red line by trying to take control of eastern Yemeni regions that bordered Saudi Arabia.

On December 30, the UAE announced its withdrawal from Yemen “of its own volition” after the Yemeni government demanded it do so. The UAE has been arming and funding the STC since its establishment in 2017.

At a news conference in Warsaw on Monday, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said, “The UAE has now decided to leave Yemen, and I think if that indeed is the case and the UAE has completely left the issue of Yemen, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will take responsibility.”

Some STC leaders travelled to Riyadh after the Saudi attacks on the STC and announced the dissolution of the group. But other STC leaders have rejected that statement and continue to try to rally support on the ground in southern Yemen.

Mass demoralisation

Saleh Qasim, a 45-year-old resident of Aden’s Sheikh Othman district, told Al Jazeera that “the Saudi era” has begun in Aden.

“Aden is recovering today, and that could be the path to Yemen’s recovery,” he said.

But he added that while the early signs are promising, it is still a bleak time for pro-independence southerners like himself.

The STC and its supporters want the restoration of the former South Yemen, an independent state that existed from 1967 to 1990 before uniting with North Yemen to form the united Republic of Yemen.

Supporters of secession feel that the south was disenfranchised in the united Yemen. They took their opportunity after the Houthi takeover of Sanaa and northwestern Yemen in 2014 and 2015, taking de facto control over Aden and other parts of southern Yemen.

It had finally seemed like the dream of an independent state was on the horizon, particularly with the backing of the UAE. But then came the Saudi-backed counterattack by the Yemeni government, and now, in the space of weeks, the dream of secession has been shattered, in the short term at least.

“This is the most frustrating moment for the secessionists,” Qasim said. “They have lost land, weapons and fighters. I can see the mass demoralisation among the independence seekers in Aden.”

He added: “I also aspire to see the south independent but through dialogue, not force.”

The STC has been trying to showcase its support in Aden with rallies every Friday that are attended by thousands of people in al-Aroudh Square.

There, the protesters raise the southern flag and the image of the STC’s on-the-run leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi. They also chant for independence, pledge to continue their struggle and voice their anger at the Saudi role. However, Sultan, the journalist, views these mass rallies as an emotional outlet for STC supporters that ultimately will not be able to restore the group’s lost leverage.

Sultan believes that local authorities are turning a blind eye to the demonstrations as a way of allowing STC supporters to blow off some steam.

“In my opinion, there is a deliberate effort to allow separatist demonstrators to vent their frustrations regarding recent developments, which have been quite shocking to them,” Sultan said.

Three challenges

On January 15, President Rashad al-Alimi, the head of the Presidential Leadership Council, Yemen’s UN-recognised authority, appointed Foreign Minister Shaya Mohsin al-Zindani as the ⁠country’s prime minister.

Consultations on the selection of cabinet members have been under way in Riyadh. Once finalised, the cabinet is expected to return to Aden to govern – a major move that would signal that the government is truly in control of the city for the first time in years.

However, challenges lie ahead as “the internal and external architects of chaos” have not abandoned their agenda in the south, Yemeni political analyst Sadam al-Huraibi told Al Jazeera, referring to the UAE and armed separatists.

Al-Huraibi identified three challenges that the new cabinet will potentially face in Aden. “One major threat is the terrorist or politically motivated bombings in Aden, which could quickly turn the city into a place of mourning.”

On January 21, an explosives-laden car detonated as a pro-government military commander’s convoy was moving in Aden. Five soldiers were killed, and three were wounded. No party has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“The other challenge is the risk of planned riots. Protesters may exploit the right to assembly and turn to violence in Aden. Such incidents can erupt sporadically and rob the city’s calm, affecting the government’s ability to function,” al-Huraibi said.

Al-Huraibi added that the third challenge is the UAE’s alleged covert coordination with separatists in southern cities to undermine Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government. “The UAE said it withdrew from Yemen, but there is no guarantee it will be completely disengaged,” he said.

Shifting the focus to the north

Yemeni officials today believe that a stable Aden and Saudi support are decisive success factors for shifting the focus to the north, where the Houthis have dominated for a decade.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mustafa Noman said in a recent interview that Saudi Arabia “has committed to pay the salaries of all the national army and the brigades, … the salaries of the government staff, including the diplomats”.

“And this is the first step,” he said. “First, we have to secure the capital in Aden, and then when the capital is stable and the services are functioning to a certain extent, the government starts operating from Aden.”

With the unified political and military bloc in the south, he said, the focus must shift to the peace process and confronting the Iran-backed Houthis.

Noman believes the Houthis are not ready for a peace process but they will change their minds when they see the new government operating in Aden and playing a governing role in the south.

For their part, the Houthis have downplayed the importance of the recent Saudi moves in the south, arguing that Saudi Arabia puts its interests first, not Yemen’s.

In a speech broadcast on January 23, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the head of the Houthi movement, said: “The Saudi – even at this stage – is not concerned with either unity or separation [in Yemen]. What concerns him is complete control, occupation and domination over the Yemeni people.”

The Houthis took control of Sanaa in 2014 and then toppled the Yemeni government in Sanaa in 2015, sparking a conflict that remains unresolved to date. They have been able to continue in power despite years of Saudi-led coalition air strikes, followed by air attacks since 2023 by the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.

Mohammed, a Houthi field commander, told Al Jazeera that he does not see a difference between the UAE and Saudi Arabia in Aden.

As the dust of another deadly conflict settles over the scarred ridges of Sulaiman and Kirthar ranges in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but most sparsely populated province, a volatile mix of long-ignored grievances, a brutal rebellion, proxy wars and high-stakes geopolitics erupts again.

For nearly 40 hours, a fierce battle was waged in those ridges in what officials called a “desperate” wave of coordinated separatist attacks across more than a dozen locations in the southwestern province of Balochistan, claimed by the banned group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which for decades has been fighting for an independent state.

Nearly 200 people were killed in the attacks – 31 civilians, 17 security personnel, in addition to 145 BLA fighters – more than 100 of them on Saturday alone, according to the Pakistani army. It was one of the biggest and most brazen attacks carried out by Baloch separatists, whose claim, however, of killing 84 Pakistani security personnel was dismissed by the authorities.

In the provincial capital, Quetta, where the scars of the decades-old conflict could be seen over the city’s police academy, the courts and the bazaars, the official message is once again of unwavering control.

“Our security forces, personnel and officers have fought bravely,” said Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, framing the BLA attacks as the “last gasp of a cornered enemy”.

Yet, this narrative of dominance is punctuated by the sobering death toll: more than a dozen security personnel killed and civilian families caught in the crossfire. The power move – of trying to project more power than actually wielding it – feels true for both sides.

‘Terrorism’ a foreign plot

Islamabad’s response to separatist attacks, once meticulously framed, is now a routine occurrence. The fighters are cadres of “Fitna-al-Hindustan”, which in Urdu translates to “India’s incitement”, it alleged. New Delhi has not yet responded to the charge.

The nomenclature of a “foreign hand” is now the cornerstone of Pakistan’s national security narrative, linking every attack to the hand of Islamabad’s historical rival. The complex, locally-rooted Baloch grievances are subsumed into a simpler, catchier, blame-shifting story of foreign subterfuge. It echoes past government statements, which blamed “neighbouring countries” for trying to derail its key economic projects.

The narrative of blaming the neighbours also positions the Pakistani military not as a party to an internal dispute, but as a defender of Pakistan’s territorial sanctity. But it is more than a narrative.

Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian national arrested and sentenced to death for espionage by a Pakistani court in 2016, is a living exhibit of Pakistan’s case against external interference.

Pakistan had released a video that appeared to show Jadhav confessing to facilitating attacks in Balochistan. While India denied involvement, Jadhav’s testimony fits the strategic nationalisation of a provincial conflict.

Grievances fuelling rebellion

On the ground, the official Pakistani script reads differently.

In the hushed conversations at Quetta’s tea shops, a different, more intimate story of political marginalisation and economic injustice unfolds, as residents wonder how poverty remains entrenched despite the province’s immense mineral wealth.

The promise of the $46bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), centred on the port of Gwadar in Balochistan, is viewed by locals not as a boon, but as one that might benefit Beijing and Islamabad, not the Baloch fishermen or shepherds.

“Sir, are you crazy!” exclaimed a security official at a coal mine in Spin Karez, where Al Jazeera had reached to document the plight of miners dying due to a lack of proper equipment.

“The insurgents [rebels] come in their hundreds and pick up everything, including [paramilitary] checkpoints. Who said it’s safe for you to be in this area?” he went on.

Baloch separatists have often raided mines and killed workers from other provinces who came looking for a livelihood. The encounter is one of many incidents in Balochistan as the province feels like the “Wild West” – no rules, no one really in charge.

This discontent is the oxygen that keeps the separatist movement alive.

As a security source told Al Jazeera: “A military can neutralise a militant, but it cannot neutralise a grievance. The state sees them as a terrorist network; many here see their sons and brothers who took up arms.”

The death of 18 civilians in the latest conflict is a tragic footnote that underscores this divide as the rebellion consumes the very people it claims to fight for.

Human cost of conflict

Balochistan is a land of haunting dualities. It is home to Gwadar, the gleaming linchpin of CPEC on the Arabian Sea, and to remote valleys where communication lines are the first casualty during any flare-up. Its porous borders with Iran and Afghanistan provide fighters with strategic depth. For Pakistan, the province is a source of strategic anxiety.

The human cost of the conflict is reflected in the region’s landscape and memory. As one recalls the raw testimony from a resident after a 2013 attack in Hazara town: “The wounded were lying here and there … we didn’t know who was who.”

Or the haunting question of a cadet after the 2016 Quetta police academy massacre: “Why were we called back in and told to stay here with no weapons?”

These statements are indictments of a persistent security failure and eroding social contract. They explain why the official claims of “unity behind security forces” sometimes feel less like a lived reality and more like an aspirational slogan.

“Everyone here is corrupt” was a startling statement from a former chief minister of Balochistan who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

People in Balochistan speak of widespread corruption plaguing the impoverished province, endemic and consuming every sphere of public services. Very little money, in that case, is actually left to provide basic services such as healthcare and education. Security is a luxury many do not even believe in any more.

The recent military operations in Balochistan demonstrate Pakistan’s formidable capacity for kinetic response. Drones monitor from above, forces patrol in strength, and rebels are cleared from strongholds.

Yet, like clockwork, the “national action plan” is dusted off and reviewed after every crisis. Vows are made, and the violence eventually returns. Despite multiple “surrender of weapons” ceremonies seen in recent years, the rate of nationalistic propaganda producing more recruits is probably much higher.

True stability in Balochistan requires a calculus that transcends body counts. It requires recognising that separatism draws from a well of genuine discontent, that development must be seen as inclusion rather than just extraction, and that political dialogue is not appeasement, but necessity.

Regional implications

Balochistan – bigger than Germany in area – is critical in the power play of regional influence, which involves China’s economic ambitions, Iran’s sectarian politics, the United States’ “containment” strategies, India’s enemy-of-my-enemy strategy, and Afghanistan’s alleged role in the province.

Pakistan’s challenge is to navigate these external currents while finally addressing the internal fissures that make its largest province so perilously vulnerable. The last 48 hours have again challenged the country’s domestic security architecture.

As it always does, the dust will settle again. Most of the Pakistani establishment and its media will forget Balochistan, again. And armchair analysts will continue with their punditry.

But whether the dust settles over a landscape moving towards durable peace or if it is just a quiet interlude before the next storm depends on who gets to write the next chapter.

When details of the Gaza peace plan were made clear in recent days, it was difficult not to see the parallels with the agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina 30 years ago.

The Gaza plan promises an end to attacks, but it institutionalises endless external control. The designers of this plan promise Palestinians governance based on the “best international standards”. Bosnians have been hearing this phrase for the past three decades. To this day, we still do not know what these standards actually are.

What we do know is that after the implantation of our foreign-negotiated peace plan, Bosnia became a semi-protectorate, a territory governed from the outside in the name of stability and without democratic sovereignty in which those who hold decision-making power cannot be held accountable.

The Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian War, were negotiated at a US military base, mediated by foreign diplomats and agreed upon by leaders of the warring parties, including representatives of neighbouring states that had supported the war. Ordinary Bosnian citizens were excluded from the process. The same logic underpins the Gaza plan: peace negotiated about a people, not with them.

The peace agreement reached without us legitimised wartime territorial divisions and created the basis for a highly fragmented political system resembling a confederation: two entities (Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and a weak central state with limited authority alongside a separate district (Brcko).

Nominally, power is exercised by a Council of Ministers and a rotating Presidency composed of three members, each from one of the three dominant ethnic groups. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Constitution, which should be the basis of governance, was not written by its citizens. It was drafted in English by the same international mediators that brokered the peace and was included in the accords as an annex. Until today, there is no official translation of the document into the local languages.

The Council of Ministers and the Presidency do not hold real power. The international community does. It controls state decision-making through two bodies: the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Peace Implementation Council (PIC).

The high representative, which per the rule has to be a European politician, has the authority to impose or annul laws and sack elected officials without them having legal recourse. To this day, Bosnians still do not know what qualifications are required to appoint someone to this position and give them ultimate authority with no accountability.

The PIC, which is made up of 55 representatives of various governments and international organisations, including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, NATO and the European Union, probably resembles the Gaza Strip’s Board of Peace the most. It oversees the work of the high representative, whose appointments it approves through a process that the citizens of Bosnia still do not really know. Decisions the body makes are driven by the interests of its individual members and communicated to the public through media statements. Nobody has the opportunity to question these decisions and journalists cannot discuss them with PIC members.

The governing bodies being set up for Gaza are similarly detached from accountability. There is the Board of Peace, headed by United States President Donald Trump, where states can buy membership for $1bn. Then there are two executive boards, one composed of US officials and businessmen and another composed of Western and regional officials. They are to supervise local governance, operating above domestic authority while claiming neutrality and expertise. And finally, there is a technocratic administration composed of “qualified Palestinians and international experts” to govern the Strip.

In Bosnia, the system of foreign control is built upon not just the domination of foreign powers but also upon the compliance of local elites. The international community has consistently relied on political actors willing to preserve the status quo in exchange for access to power. This arrangement rewards stagnation and punishes systemic change. It produces a donor-dependent civil society – one that is active and visible, but ultimately manageable from the outside.

It is no wonder that criticism of the international community in Bosnia and its bodies has been framed as a threat to peace. In the past, the OHR has gone as far as silencing certain media organisations that have been openly critical. In 1997, for example, NATO forces were asked to intervene against the public broadcaster of Republika Srpska and cut off its broadcast. The justification was that the OHR wanted to ensure “international norms of professional media conduct” were observed.

This logic persists today. In a video address in December marking the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Accords, the current high representative, Christian Schmidt of Germany, warned that “some today point the finger at the international community and its representatives, refusing to remember that without international intervention, as late as it came, Bosnia and Herzegovina would have descended into chaos and despair.”

He described Dayton as “the basis for the future” although “not the future itself” and concluded with a vague call for “action” rather than “complaining” without clarifying who should act or how.

Yet Bosnia has not fully succumbed to complacency. There has also been resistance. In 2014, public discontent poured into the streets across the country, beginning in Tuzla and spreading to more than 20 cities within days. Workers led the demonstrations. Citizens occupied public spaces, organised open assemblies and articulated political demands. For a brief moment, people experienced democracy outside the imposed foreign-controlled framework.

The response was repression, silence and disregard. The international community observed but did not engage. When the protests collapsed under political pressure and exhaustion, no institutional change followed.

The protests ceased, but visible traces of them remained in the form of graffiti on government buildings. Probably the most well-known one appears on the facade of the Sarajevo Canton building, and it reads: “Those who sow hunger reap wrath.”

What followed was a mass exodus. Close to 500,000 people have left the country since 2014. Many others are waiting for a chance to go. Meanwhile, nationalism, once a wartime ideology, has become a governing tool – used by local elites and tolerated, even stabilised, by the international community.

As feminist authors from Sarajevo Gorana Mlinarević and Nela Porobić wrote in their publication Peace That Is Not, peace “neither starts nor ends with the signing of a peace agreement”. They argued that the imposed peace in Bosnia has burdened its political, economic and social life for decades. The same burden now looms over Gaza.

If asked whether the Bosnian peace agreement was a success, most people in Bosnia would answer that it put an end to the war. That is true. But peace that merely stops violence without enabling freedom and dignity is not peace.

Peace imposed from above creates stability without justice and governance without democracy. The Bosnian semi-protectorate stands as a warning, not a model. Peace and democracy cannot exist without the participation of the people or if their will is ignored. Yet this is precisely what the “best international standards” continue to do.

Bosnia cannot be undone. Gaza has to be approached differently and can be if its people and other Palestinians are involved in the process and have the power to decide.