On November 9, the Qatari-owned Al-Quds al-Arabi daily carried the following report by its correspondent in Sanaa Khaled al-Hammadi: “Houthi and Congress Party sources revealed that the dispute between the two allies involved in the coup in Sanaa, i.e. the Houthi group and the followers of former President Ali Saleh, had escalated to the point of becoming public for the first time, and was apparently the reason behind their failure to form an insurrectionist government that includes both sides. Hence, many Congress and Houthi leaders issued mutual accusations yesterday, in an undiplomatic language and in a way that reveals the collapse of the relationship between them… Indeed, prominent member in the General People’s Congress Party (Saleh’s wing) Yasser al-Yamani said: “The Houthis have prepared death lists and squads in accordance with an Iranian plan.”

“And now, he added, they are waiting for the go time, in reference to a Houthi plot to liquidate the leaders and cadres of the Congress Party in the capital Sanaa… Likewise, the chief editor of Al-Methaq newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Congress Party, Muhammad Anaam, publically accused his party’s ally, i.e. the Houthi group, of liquidating the Congress Party on the political scene, writing on social media: “Those who have swept the employees’ salaries are now threatening to sweep the cadres of the General People’s Congress Party and sweep the people…” He thus announced: “More than 200 Congress Party cadres have been kidnapped and put in unknown prisons on arbitrary charges…” As for Houthi journalist Osama Sari, he accused former President Ali Saleh of smuggling his family outside of Yemen on an Omani plane that was allocated for the transportation of the wounded in the funeral bombing at the Great Hall in Sanaa...

“He added on social media: “They have escaped Yemen yesterday on an Omani plane, while leaving behind their country and people… Imagine how many wounded Saleh’s family threw on the airport’s sidewalks and prevented from travelling to receive urgent and necessary medical treatment…” At this level, political sources said to Al-Quds al-Arabi that the Houthi-Congress disputes, which have strongly emerged to the surface for the first time since the formation of their alliance upon the eruption of the Houthi war in Yemen in mid-2014, may have been the main reason behind the failure to form an insurrectionist government equally divided between the two sides, knowing that this government would have been led by leader in the Congress Party and pro-Saleh former Governor of Aden Abdul-Aziz Bin Habtour, while the presidency of the Supreme Political Council would have been given to prominent Houthi leader Saleh as-Sammad.

“The sources thus mentioned that the Supreme Political Council had assigned Bin Habtour to form the insurrectionist government last month, but that he had so far failed to do so due to deep disputes sweeping the Houthi-Congress alliance. And they assured that this alliance might collapse in the event of the signing of an UN-sponsored peace agreement, which both sides have been eluding to preserve their cohesion…”