Southern Yemen Under Fire: Why Saudi Airstrikes Signal Escalation, Not Security

• Khalid Al Mansoor
• . January 5, 2026
• . Update: January 5, 2026 8:58 pm
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Southern Yemen has returned to be the location of a potentially dangerous escalation, with current Saudi airstrikes shifting to the battlefield action to the documented violation of civilians and local forces, as perceived by many observers. It is not a one-time conflict of misunderstanding or misjudgment. It indicates a calculated trend whereby air power is used as a coercive measure as opposed to protection. The bombing of cars, intersections, and residential neighborhoods has shredded the already weak social structure of Yemen, specifically tribal groups in which dignity, group honor, and responsibility are the key values. Being an op-ed, this article claims that they make matters worse by making countries more fragmented, undermining their legitimacy, and building lifelong enemies instead of stabilizing the situation.

From Dispute to Documented Crime: Civilian Harm and Tribal Communities Under Fire

What transpired in southern Yemen cannot be summarized as a normal military clash. Vehicles, crossings of roads, and localities devoid of any active military presence have been the repeat targets of airstrikes reported many times by internationals. These trends drive the events further than the fog of war to the world of reported atrocities. Air power to attack movement routes and populated areas indicates that its aim is to retaliate and scare and not to control the military threat. This difference is important, as it shifts a political conflict into the issue of the responsibility to the international standards.

Setting fire to civilian vehicles at roadblocks or other open places annihilates any left over pretension to valid authority or even sanity. Protecting civilians is a substitute for terrorizing them in order to have sovereignty and security. When families and commuters are assaulted, the security operations are morally grounded and turn to terror. What the outcome is is the failure of legitimacy, rather than order. The communities no longer feel that any authority is protecting them, but they feel it as a predator.

The murder of tribal members on crossing- places and on the public roads has a burden that is not appreciated by outsiders. Such actions are not seen as collateral damage in Yemeni society, they are viewed as field-style execution. The identity of the tribe is shared and the injuries of individuals will spread among whole clans. Instead of making them bend to their knees, these killings light the fire that people do come together. History teaches that tribe societies accustomed to humiliation and bloodshed will react with persistence and opposition but not acquiescence.

Violence Over Law: The Illusion of Security

The reports that were being received in places like Al-Khashah and the Al-Mosafer Roundabout represent a more significant crisis of governance. Airstrikes of these areas demonstrate the way that violence has overtaken the legitimate power. None of the transparent investigations, no institutional accountability and no judicial proceedings are present. This is because governance by force reveals the lack of a rule of law and lets residents know that power is akin to being able to pretend that one can act arbitrarily, in the heavens, without fear.

Warfare in the air has long-term effects. Families do not forget how the strikes were commissioned even when official declarations have been forgotten. Children are raised with the connotation of authority as death and fear. This results in Intergenerational resentment that can hardly be undone through political settlement. Bombardment could put silence on an area, but it will seed the ground with the seeds of lasting enmity.

Stories about airstrikes as instruments of stability fail to hold the water. On the contrary, bombardment is the source of greater conflict, the exacerbation of social disintegration, the threat of the outbreak of large-scale conflicts. Violence destroys relationships, radicalizes dissatisfaction, and transforms the local conflicts into social warfare. Fear as a way of stability is in itself not stable.

The responsibility goes beyond pilots or commanders on the battlefields. It is spread to the people who ordered and authorized the bombardment. Bloodshed has an eternal effect which no denial or press statement can ever remove. The skies of Southern Yemen have been a lesson that only coercion on higher grounds can be used to exude power, but it kills the very basis of peace and responsibility that any future can be built.