The Facilities Protection Force

Little-Known Military Brigades and Armed Groups in Yemen: A Series

This series maps the activity of little-known military brigades and armed groups proliferating throughout the conflict in Yemen. Mapping these actors has become relevant for understanding future trajectories of violence in Yemen as some of them have developed significant combat capabilities with shifting allegiances. While some follow their own interests, others have clear allegiances to the internationally recognized government or the Southern Transitional Council. As with actors in other conflict scenarios, such allegiances are, however, never set in stone. Rather, allegiances are a fluid process, shifting due to changes of outside circumstances (e.g. the behavior of a patron) or battlefield victories. In order to be better prepared for these changes, this series maps the activity of such military brigades and armed groups — some of them have become relevant already, while others may see their turn towards increased relevance in the future.

This piece provides a deep dive into an actor that is not yet covered in much detail by traditional media; as such, it draws on OSINT, including new media sources, more than traditional ACLED analyses. Some of these sources are not used in ACLED’s data collection, yet the information garnered from them for this piece has been either triangulated or presented with the appropriate caveats.

Since at least 1994, the protection of government and other facilities in Yemen has been assigned to a police force called the Facilities Security and Public Figures Protection Police Force. Based on publicly available sources, this police force was responsible for planning, coordinating, and executing the protection of government facilities and projects, the headquarters of embassies and international organizations, as well as providing protection for public figures (Republic of Yemen Ministry of Interior; Facebook, 4 September 2012).

With the signing of the Riyadh Agreement in November 2019, a different unit called the Facilities Protection Forces (FPF) — purportedly a neutral agency — has been assigned the task of securing critical infrastructure in Aden, the interim capital of the internationally recognized government. Scrutinizing the supposed neutrality of the FPF, this piece describes the units history in Aden-Lahij and then briefly outlines how it differs from the traditional Facilities Security and Public Figures Protection Police Force.

After the 2015 war and the Houthi attempt to take over Aden, which resulted in instability in the governorate, armed groups composed of Popular Committees that participated in the fighting against the Houthis took responsibility for protecting...

Looking Forward

While the traditional Facilities Security and Public Figures Protection Police Force seems to maintain an impartial policing role following the orders of its respective local leadership, the same cannot be said of the FPF. Through its structural integration into the Support and Reinforcement Brigades and strong links to the STC, the FPF lacks the impartiality required to secure infrastructure in Aden and Lahij while maintaining equal distance from both parties to the Riyadh Agreement.

As the Aden-Lahij FPF remains in full force, monitoring trends in its activity will be crucial to understanding which conflict party will control strategic infrastructure in Aden. Although the FPF, as a security force, will not likely be engaging in heavy fighting, rare instances of infighting with pro-STC armed groups have already been reported...