Al Anad was a product of South Yemen’s Cold War alignment. The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen armed its air force with Soviet MiG-21s, Su-7s and Su-22s, and according to an AFP report cited by English Wikipedia the Soviet Union built Al Anad for it. The base sits in the Tuban district of Lahij Governorate, north of Aden, astride the main road from the interior into the port city. No official opening date, runway data or ICAO designator was found for this dataset.

Geography made it a battlefield. When the 1994 civil war began on 4 May, the southern air force struck Sanaa, Hodeidah and Taiz, and the northern air force answered by bombing Aden, Al Anad and the al-Haswa power station, according to Wikipedia’s account of the war. On 20 May northern forces claimed to have overrun Al Anad, which Wikipedia calls one of the key entry points to Aden. Journalists who visited the front, as reported by the Washington Post and summarised by Wikipedia, found northern and southern forces still fighting at close quarters around the base under artillery and rocket fire, and northern officers conceded that some southern units were still in the area. Northern troops entered Aden on 4 July and the war ended on 7 July; the southern air force’s aircraft passed into the unified, northern-led service.

After 2001 Al Anad took on a role its builders had not imagined. English Wikipedia describes it as the headquarters of United States intelligence-gathering and counter-terrorism operations in southern Yemen against al-Qaeda. That role ended with the collapse of the state. The Houthis took Sanaa in September 2014; on 21 March 2015, CNN reported, the US military was evacuating about 100 special operations personnel from Al Anad because of the deteriorating security situation — the last American forces in the country.

The base then changed hands twice within five months. On 25 March 2015, Wikipedia records, MiG-29s loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi scrambled from Al Anad to protect his compound in Aden from aircraft flying out of Houthi-held al-Dailami. The same day the base was taken over by Houthi fighters and the 201st Armoured Brigade, according to the Yemen Times as cited by Wikipedia. On 26 March the Saudi-led coalition began its air campaign, and its strikes that day also hit Al Anad. Government loyalists backed by Saudi and Emirati ground forces advanced north from Aden and retook the base on 3 August 2015.

Wikipedia says the government’s air force was afterwards rebuilt and trained by the United Arab Emirates to fly close air support. Which aircraft and units have been based at Al Anad since has not been published by the government or by major international media, and none is listed here.

On the government side of the front line and within range of Houthi weapons, Al Anad has been attacked repeatedly. English Wikipedia, citing the Arabian Rights Watch Association, says a Tochka tactical ballistic missile fired by Houthi forces struck the base on 31 January 2016, killing dozens of Sudanese fighters and Yemeni recruits; no more precise figure was found.

On 10 January 2019 a Houthi drone penetrated the base during a military parade and exploded above a podium where senior officers were sitting. According to the BBC report cited by Wikipedia, the head of the Yemeni intelligence agency and six soldiers were killed. On 29 August 2021 drones and ballistic missiles struck the base; Al Jazeera, cited by Wikipedia, reported 30 soldiers killed and 60 wounded, and the toll was later reported as more than 40 dead. Wikipedia attributes both attacks to the Houthis; the Houthi statements on them could not be checked for this dataset.

The war around Lahij has not ended. In 2026 Al Jazeera reported renewed Houthi advances on the Red Sea coast and in Taiz governorate, and government aircraft flying their own strikes from mid-July. It did not say where those aircraft were based, and this dataset does not guess.