Two crises in Yemen and Syria reveal how fragile peace can unravel when regional powers shift allegiances

The 609 tourists who boarded emergency flights from Socotra island to Jeddah on January 10th were unwitting witnesses to a seismic shift in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Their sudden stranding on a remote Yemeni island wasn’t just a travel mishap—it was a symptom of something far more consequential: the fracturing of the very alliances that had shaped the region’s conflicts for nearly a decade.

Within the same 24-hour period, hundreds of miles to the north, Kurdish fighters were evacuating parts of Aleppo while others dug in for what Syrian security forces warned could be a protracted standoff. Two crises, separated by geography but connected by a common thread: the instability that emerges when old certainties collapse and new battle lines are drawn.

The Gulf Rupture: When Partners Become Rivals

For years, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates operated as a unified force in Yemen’s brutal civil war. Their coalition, formed in 2015, seemed unshakeable—two wealthy Gulf monarchies determined to counter Iranian influence and restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government. That partnership is now in ruins.

The UAE’s withdrawal of troops from Yemen last week represents more than a military redeployment. It signals a fundamental divergence in strategic interests between the two powers. Where they once backed the same side, they now support opposing factions in Yemen’s labyrinthine civil war, transforming former partners into competitors fighting a proxy conflict within a proxy conflict.

The immediate impact was felt most acutely on Socotra, an archipelago that lies over 300 kilometers from Yemen’s mainland coast. The island, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its otherworldly dragon’s blood trees and unique biodiversity, had remained remarkably insulated from the mainland’s chaos. Its main lifeline to the outside world ran through UAE-controlled air routes. When those connections severed amid the diplomatic rupture, the island’s airport went dark.

For the hundreds of tourists—drawn by Socotra’s reputation as one of the world’s most alien-looking landscapes—the paradise became a prison. Among them was at least one Singaporean woman, part of a growing community of adventurous travelers seeking destinations untouched by mass tourism. They found themselves pawns in a geopolitical chess match, their predicament illustrating how quickly regional power plays can ensnare ordinary lives.

The Human Cost of Shifting Allegiances

The broader implications for Yemen are devastating. The country, already suffering through what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, now faces the prospect of its conflict splintering into even more chaotic fragments. When external sponsors begin fighting against each other through their local proxies, ceasefires become impossible to negotiate and humanitarian access becomes even more restricted.

The Saudi-UAE split could reignite fighting in areas that had achieved fragile stability. Southern Yemen, where UAE-backed separatist groups have significant influence, could see renewed clashes with Saudi-backed government forces. Aid organizations operating in these areas must now navigate not just one civil war, but multiple overlapping conflicts with different sponsors and different agendas.

For Yemen’s 30 million people, the message is grim: the international coalition that was supposed to restore stability has instead added another layer of complexity to their suffering. The fighting that began in 2014 has already killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. This new phase threatens to prolong the agony indefinitely.

Syria’s Unfinished Revolution

The situation unfolding in Aleppo tells a different but equally troubling story about the challenges of post-conflict reconciliation. President Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power promising to unite Syria after 14 years of devastating civil war. His government represents a significant shift from the Assad regime that preceded it, but his Islamist background and the nature of his rise to power have created deep suspicion among Syria’s Kurdish minority.

The Kurds, who carved out significant autonomy in northern and eastern Syria during the war, view al-Sharaa’s government with profound wariness. Having fought against the Islamic State and established functioning civil administration in their territories, they are deeply reluctant to surrender that autonomy to a central government they don’t trust.

The clashes in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maksoud neighborhood crystallize this tension. The area had been a Kurdish stronghold, a pocket of stability within Syria’s second-largest city. When Kurdish forces refused to leave under the terms of a ceasefire, the Syrian army moved to force them out. The failure of that ceasefire, despite backing from the United States and other international powers, demonstrates how difficult it will be to bridge the fundamental disagreements about Syria’s future.

The Limits of International Influence

Both crises reveal the diminishing ability of international actors to shape outcomes in Middle Eastern conflicts. The United States welcomed the Aleppo ceasefire, but couldn’t make it stick. International mediators have struggled to maintain the Saudi-UAE coalition in Yemen. When regional powers decide their interests have diverged, outside pressure often proves ineffective.

This represents a significant shift from earlier periods when American or European diplomatic weight could compel compliance. Today’s Middle East is characterized by more assertive regional powers pursuing their own agendas, often in defiance of Western preferences. The UAE’s willingness to break with Saudi Arabia despite potential American disapproval demonstrates this new reality.

Tourism as Collateral Damage

The stranding of tourists on Socotra highlights an often-overlooked dimension of regional instability: the impact on economic diversification efforts. Many Middle Eastern countries have been trying to develop tourism sectors to reduce dependence on oil revenue or to provide economic alternatives in countries lacking natural resources.

Yemen had tentatively begun promoting Socotra as an eco-tourism destination, hoping to leverage its unique environment for economic benefit. Those aspirations now lie in ruins. The images of stranded tourists and darkened airports will reverberate far beyond this immediate crisis, deterring future visitors for years to come.

Syria faces similar challenges. Before the war, tourism contributed significantly to the Syrian economy, with ancient sites like Palmyra and vibrant cities like Damascus drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. The renewed violence in Aleppo—a city with a historic old town that was itself a UNESCO World Heritage site before the war destroyed much of it—sends a powerful signal that Syria remains far from safe for reconstruction, let alone tourism.

Fragmentation as the New Normal

Perhaps the most significant long-term impact of these twin crises is what they suggest about the trajectory of the Middle East. Rather than conflicts resolving into clear outcomes with winners and losers, the region appears to be settling into a pattern of fragmentation and perpetual low-intensity conflict.

Yemen increasingly looks like it may fracture permanently into multiple zones of control. Syria’s Kurdish regions may remain functionally autonomous regardless of Damascus’s formal authority. And as external powers like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, and Iran pursue competing interests, these frozen conflicts could persist for decades.

This fragmentation has profound implications for everything from humanitarian access to economic development to counterterrorism efforts. Ungoverned spaces and competing jurisdictions create environments where extremist groups can reconstitute themselves, where criminal networks can flourish, and where ordinary people cannot build normal lives.

The Path Forward

Breaking these cycles will require fundamentally different approaches. International actors may need to accept that some conflicts won’t resolve cleanly, that power-sharing arrangements and autonomous regions may be necessary compromises. Regional powers will need to recognize that their proxy competitions often inflict costs on their own interests as well as on the populations caught in between.

For the tourists who finally made it off Socotra island and for the Kurdish fighters weighing whether to stay and fight or accept evacuation from Aleppo, these geopolitical considerations may seem abstract. But their experiences—abruptly stranded, caught between competing forces, unsure if today’s arrangement will hold tomorrow—capture something essential about the Middle East’s current predicament.

In a region long defined by bold visions of pan-Arab unity or decisive military solutions, perhaps the most challenging task ahead is learning to manage complexity, accommodate difference, and accept that some problems have no clean resolution. The alternative—illustrated vividly in both Yemen and Syria—is ongoing crisis, perpetual displacement, and the steady erosion of any hope for stability.

As the last evacuation flight departed Socotra and Syrian forces continued their operations in Aleppo, one thing was clear: the Middle East’s transition from its recent wars to whatever comes next will be neither quick nor clean. And for millions of people across the region, the question is not when peace will come, but whether the concept of peace has any meaning at all in this fractured new reality.