Due to the 2015 civil war, Yemen’s national order has vanished. Whatever viable attempt of conflict resolution must take into account a variety of existing micro-orders on a local basis. Deconstructing Yemen’s layers of conflict, this essay traces post-2015 internal transformations of power, arguing that Yemen has started a process of gradual feudalisation, based on militias and warlords, thus shifting from a multiple geographies scheme to an archipelagolike system of connected but rival feuds.

Eleonora Ardemagni is an expert of Yemen, Gulf monarchies and Arab military forces, and Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), teaching assistant at the Catholic University of Milan and Gulf analyst for the NATO Defense College Foundation.