The plateau roads into Hadramawt feel less like transit routes and more like fault lines. In recent months clashes between the Hadrami Elite and emerging tribal protection forces have stopped being episodic incidents and become a structural feature of local life. These fights are not only about checkpoints and personalities. They are about who carries the guns that define order in the governorate, who controls the pumps that keep generators running, and which external patrons can bend local loyalties to strategic purpose.
Anyone who has covered this region for more than a season knows the Hadrami Elite were born as a security solution that carried its own political freight. Created after the expulsion of AQAP from coastal towns, the Elite were built with Emirati training and support to plug a security vacuum in Mukalla and protect key infrastructure. That origin explains why the force is armed, organized, and locally rooted in ways that ordinary units of the fractured Yemeni army are not. It also explains why their presence escalates competition over influence rather than simply restoring the state.
What has changed is the weapon landscape. Tribal networks are no longer reliant on antiquated hunting rifles and small caches. Decades of conflict in Yemen produced large stockpiles, captured ordnance, and commercial flows of arms across porous borders. In Wadi Hadramawt and the Masila basin those arsenals have migrated from jihadist hideouts and shadowy depots into the hands of tribal commanders asserting local security claims. The result is a local order where both sides can bring heavy weapons to a fight, and where a single checkpoint dispute can turn deadly.
The Hadramawt Tribal Alliance has not been a mere spectator. Its move to create the Hadramawt Protection Forces and to erect checkpoints around oil installations was a political tactic turned military posture. That formalization of tribal force-making changed incentives. What began as blockades and demonstrations over power and pay has hardened into armed deterrence. When tribal brigades organize around oil revenue demands and public-service grievances, the line between protest and armed rebellion blurs. Local actors say they are protecting livelihoods and local rights. Observers see the logic of leverage: control the flows of oil and fuel and you force a reluctant central authority to bargain.
Clashes have been catalytic. Street protests over power outages have repeatedly spilled into confrontations with security elements aligned to the Hadrami Elite. Those protests have been both spontaneous and politically engineered, a dangerous mix. The state apparatus, already weak in service delivery, now looks militarized in parts: public buildings are defended by heavily armed units and the populace responds with armed checkpoints and patrols. This dynamic has multiplied flashpoints and increased the chance that local disputes will invite external intervention.
There is a clear pattern to who arms whom and why. External patrons supply security architecture and political cover; local patrons convert that architecture into extraction, legitimacy, or protection. In Hadramawt this has meant the Hadrami Elite operate with sophisticated logistics and a political narrative tied to counterterrorism. Tribal forces leverage kinship networks, local knowledge, and access to oil infrastructure. Both sides have incentives to keep arms in circulation: they bolster bargaining power, cement clientage ties, and protect revenues. The danger is that arms become the currency of politics rather than a last resort. Historical patterns in the governorate show that when militias replace public services, fragmentation becomes resilient.
The immediate cost is local: markets interrupted, oil operations intermittently shut, and civilians squeezed by blackouts and fuel shortages. The strategic cost is larger. Hadramawt sits astride export routes and oil basins that any future peace or reconstruction effort must stabilize. When those assets are controlled by competing armed groups the window for a political settlement narrows. The presence of tribal arsenals also complicates counterterrorism: AQAP and other violent groups have historically survived by exploiting local grievances. Heavy-handed attempts to disarm tribes without credible political guarantees risk pushing some back into the arms of opportunistic extremists.
Policy responses so far have been reactive and stovepiped. Local mediation initiatives and short-term pledges on revenue sharing have been announced, but the underlying militarized bargains remain intact. International actors who claim to want stability must stop treating Hadramawt as an abstract governance problem and start treating it as a negotiated security ecosystem. That means three urgent priorities: remove the economics that make arms useful by guaranteeing transparent revenue-sharing and fuel supplies; integrate and professionalize local fighters through vetted recruitment and pay structures tied to civilian oversight; and demand verifiable deconfliction steps from external patrons in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi so local actors do not have incentives to arm themselves as proxies.
I have seen Hadrami towns where elders still prefer tribal arbitration over courts, and that preference will not change with a single memorandum. But the weaponization of dispute resolution does change outcomes. If the next year is like the last, the governorate will fossilize into zones of patronage where arms discipline is enforced by whoever can pay fighters and keep the lights on. If that happens, Yemen’s eastern oil wealth will become a fortress for fragmentation rather than a lever for reconstruction.
Local actors deserve better strategy than being offered a choice between being armed or being ignored. Donors and diplomats should stop treating the Hadrami Elite and the tribal protection forces as symmetrical threats and start treating them as bargaining partners in a phased disarmament and integration process. That requires political courage, not more weapons. The clock is short. Hadramawt is where Yemen’s fractures meet its wealth. If arms remain the dominant instrument of power there, peace will be a bystander to the next round of violence.