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 But al Qaeda militants appear to be using the coalition's gains
against the Houthis in the south to entrench their position, as
fractures start to show between local groups of fighters with the
departure of their common enemy.
The prospect of returning exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi
remains distant, five months after an advance on his Aden bolthole
by the Houthis, who overran the capital a year ago from their
northern base, triggered the Saudi-led intervention.
At stake is not just who will rule Yemen, which regional power will
hold sway and whether its persistent jihadist threat can be ended,
but its future as a single state after centuries of tribal disputes
and regional divisions.
Saudi Arabia and its allies want to maintain the state created in
1990 by the merger of the old north and south Yemen, say informed
diplomats, but as anger grows over the humanitarian cost, the
possibility of division appears to be growing.
"In the absence of a political settlement the battle for Sanaa will
be long, brutal, and deadly with no obvious winner. A failure to
retake Sanaa by Hadi's camp is likely to lead to a de facto
partition of Yemen," said Ibrahim Fraihat, senior political analyst
at Brookings Doha Centre.
 Such a settlement still looks elusive, with each side attempting to
escalate the fighting since the fall of Aden.
In the north, the Houthis have pounded the Saudi border, determined
to ensure coalition victories and continued airstrikes come at a
cost. In southern Taiz, fierce fighting, and the bombardment of
civilians, continues.
Attention has increasingly turned to Marib, a dry tribal region
across the arid hills east of Sanaa, where Saudi-linked media and
local sources report a build-up of coalition-backed forces preparing
for a concerted thrust toward Yemen's capital.
GULF GROUND ROLE
The dozens of Emirati troops guarding Aden's smashed-up airport and
their helicopters, tanks and armored cars lined up on the apron
during a recent Reuters visit to the city were ample evidence of the
ground role played by Gulf states.
It was the direct involvement of Emirati ground forces, alongside
Yemeni troops trained in Saudi Arabia and equipped with
sophisticated heavy weapons that allowed the coalition to break
months of stalemate to take Aden, informed diplomats say.
The Arab states say the Houthis are a proxy for Iran, an accusation
the movement denies, countering that its advance is a revolution
against Western-backed officials it says are corrupt, as well as al
Qaeda militants. It has joined up with military allies of Yemen's
longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted by Arab Spring
unrest in 2012.
The further coalition forces move beyond areas where local support
is high, the harder it will be.
The most obvious launchpad for a new coalition military push is
Marib, where local tribes have for months fought back-and-forth
battles against the Houthis and Saleh's forces, and beyond which
lies a clear, safe supply route to Saudi Arabia.
Leaders of the exiled government's army have been quoted in Saudi
press saying they are building up forces in the province and are
ready for a push on Sanaa next month.
A local official told Reuters 130 armored vehicles, 1,000 Yemeni
troops trained in Saudi Arabia and military experts from the kingdom
and the UAE had arrived in recent days along with engineers to allow
its airstrip to import materiel.
A renewed barrage of attacks on Saudi border positions, including
the reported launch of a Scud missile at the kingdom on Tuesday,
showed the Houthis and Saleh are determined to make Gulf involvement
in the conflict hurt.
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On Friday a Saudi Apache helicopter came down on the border, killing
both pilots, while on Monday Houthi shells killed Major General
Abdulrahman al-Shahrani, commander of the 18th Brigade, and the
kingdom's highest ranking casualty of the conflict.
MILITANTS AND FRACTURED ALLIANCES
While the Emirati soldiers did sentry duty by Aden's runway or
rested in an upstairs terminal lounge, outside the front entrance
stood slight young men with assault rifles slung over their
shoulders and curling hair falling across bearded faces.
Many of these un-uniformed fighters, wearing flip-flops and Yemeni
futeh sarongs, took up arms when the Houthis reached their city,
abandoning daily life as their neighborhoods were engulfed by street
fighting.
But in Yemen's multi-sided conflict, it was never clear how many of
these fighters had loyalties beyond those to their immediate
neighborhood, whether to Hadi, to a southern separatist movement or
to other political or militant groups.
While coalition forces protect key facilities in Aden, basic
security in many areas of the city has collapsed, as a YouTube video
showing the mob execution of a suspected Houthi collaborator
demonstrated.
More alarming still for Hadi and the coalition, dozens of armed men
paraded through Aden's central Tawahi district on Saturday, raising
al Qaeda flags, days after a series of bombs exploded outside
government offices in the city, killing four.
Hamza al-Zinjibari, a local al Qaeda leader, earlier this month said
in a video message that most of the local, coalition-backed fighters
against the Houthis were in fact members of the militant group
"shaping the jihad" after military leaders fled.
Hadi's government insists the militant group played no role in the
defense of Aden from the Houthis and that its apparent display of
strength in the city last week was in fact the work of Saleh
supporters sowing instability after losing the city.
A local official in Aden said on Wednesday that Gulf forces were
training 2,000 local fighters including separatists, Hadi loyalists
and members of Islamist parties to take over security in the city
temporarily.
That strange mix of competing groups, including some who only a year
ago would have been sworn enemies, shows the fragility of the local
forces upon which the coalition plans depend.
(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Dubai and Sami Aboudi in
Jerusalem; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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