Houthis Make Gains in Yemen’s Civil War

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

U.S. President Joe Biden on Feb. 4 announced an end to support for Saudi-led military offensive operations in Yemen. A day later, the State Department said it would lift the terrorist designation against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Both moves will be welcomed in Iran, their ally, and the tide has turned in favour of the rebels.

The Houthis, an armed movement representing Yemen’s Zaydis, a branch of Shia Islam, continue making gains in Yemen’s civil war, whereas the Saudi-led forces opposing them face discord within their coalition.

Saudi Arabia’s air force launched its first air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in March 2015. The campaign, Operation Decisive Storm, at the time seemed likely to be over within weeks.

The Saudis wanted Abdu Rabu Mansur Hadi restored as Yemen’s president following his overthrow in a Houthi-led rebellion the previous September. Hadi had been elected president in 2012 after protests lasting nearly a year against former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Fearing their growing power, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates opened their air and ground war against the Houthis.

The UN Security Council in April 2015 retrospectively gave carte blanche to the coalition, which in addition to Saudi Arabia involved a dozen Arab and Muslim countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Morocco, and the Gulf states, except Oman.

The resolution legally sanctioned coalition military action and control over movements in and out of Yemen, including the use of a blockade, which soon exacted an appalling human toll.

The Houthi movement, named after the family it is associated with, emerged from Yemen’s northern province Saada, bordering Saudi Arabia, in the 1980s. Yemen’s Zaidi Shia minority makes up about one-third of the country’s population.

The Houthis had formed a broad tribal alliance in Yemen’s north in opposition to an expanding extremist Sunni Salafism in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which exported the ideology to Yemen. In response, Zaidi clerics began to militarise their followers against Riyadh and its allies. They were also motivated by what they saw as Saleh’s economic discrimination of the north.

A hybrid range of forces make up the Houthis, also referred to as Ansar Allah, with some 60 per cent of the former Yemeni army having allied with the group. Their influence has grown since first challenging Saleh in 2004. They fought six rounds of war from 2004-2010 against Saleh’s forces, until the 2011 Arab Spring uprising toppled him.

A September 2019 report by Renad Mansour and Peter Salisbury, “Between Order and Chaos,” estimated Houthi strength at 180,000-200,000 armed men with access to weapons systems ranging from tanks and technical vehicles to anti-tank guided missiles and long-range ballistic missiles. The group claims many of the advanced parts their arsenal were captured when they took control of Sanaa in 2014.

The Houthis have had support from Iran, a fellow Shia state. Saudi and Yemeni governments have accused Iran of smuggling arms, including ballistic missiles and drones, to the Houthis, enabling them to keep fighting. The Saudis have intercepted many arms shipments off the Yemeni coast over the past several years.

But Tehran’s influence is likely limited politically, especially since Iranians and Houthis adhere to different schools of Shiite Islam.

The Houthis control a third of Yemeni territory including the major population centres. They have even breached Saudi borders.

For the past year, they have steadily advanced in Marib province, roughly 160 kilometres northeast of Sanaa. Capturing it would give the Houthis control over lucrative oil and natural gas reserves.

During his election campaign, Biden expressed opposition to the war in Yemen and was highly critical of the Saudis’ stance. He has made ending the conflict in Yemen a priority since taking office.

Meanwhile, the war continues to drag on and has caused a humanitarian catastrophe affecting some 80 per cent of the population, with 250,00 dead and more than 3.6 million people internally displaced, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

More than two million Yemeni children under the age of five are expected to suffer acute malnutrition this year, which may lead to the death of 400,000 of them, report the World Food Program, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, UNICEF and the World Health Organisation.