Cartoon by Ghourab
The Houthis have won in Yemen: What next?
By Bruce Riedel
Brookings Institution: The Houthis have won the war in Yemen, defeating their opponents in the civil war, the Saudis who intervened in 2015 against them, and the United States which backed the Saudis. It is a remarkable accomplishment for a militia group with no air force or navy. It is also strikingly like Hezbollah’s success story in Lebanon.
WHO ARE THE HOUTHIS?
The Houthis are Zaydi Shiite Muslims, significantly different in doctrine and beliefs from the Shiites who dominate in Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere. They take their name from Zayd bin Ali, the great-grandson of Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, whom all Shiites revere. In 740, Zayd led an uprising against the Umayyad Empire, which ruled from Damascus. He was martyred in his revolt, and his head is believed to be buried in a shrine to him in Kerak, Jordan. Zaydis believe he was a model of a pure caliph who should have ruled instead of the Umayyads. The distinguishing feature of Zayd’s remembered biography is that he fought against a corrupt regime. The Houthis have made fighting corruption the centerpiece of their political program, at least nominally.
Followers of Zayd established themselves in north Yemen’s rugged mountains in the ninth century. For the next thousand years, the Zaydis fought for control of Yemen with various degrees of success. They fought against both the Ottomans and the Wahhabis in the 18th and 19th centuries. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, a Zaydi monarchy called the Mutawakkilite Kingdom took power in North Yemen.
In 1962, an Egyptian-backed revolutionary military cabal overthrew the Mutawakkilite king and established an Arab nationalist government with its capital in Sanaa. With Soviet assistance, Egypt sent tens of thousands of troops to back the republican coup. The Zaydi royalists fled to the mountains along the Saudi border to fight a civil war for control of the country. Saudi Arabia supported the royalists against Egypt, as did Israel, clandestinely. The war ended in a republican victory.
A Zaydi republican general named Ali Abdullah Saleh came to power after a succession of coups in 1978. Saleh ruled — or misruled — Yemen for the next 33 years. He united North and South Yemen in 1990, tilted toward Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and survived a Saudi-backed southern civil war in 1994. The Houthis emerged in the 1990s as a Zaydi resistance to Saleh and his corruption, led by a charismatic leader named Hussein al-Houthi, from whom they are named.
The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 deeply radicalized the Houthi movement, like it did many other Arabs. The Houthis adopted the slogan: “God is great, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.” The group also officially called itself Ansar Allah, or supporters of God. It was a turning point largely unrecognized outside Yemen, another unanticipated consequence of George W. Bush’s Iraq adventures.
After 2003, Saleh launched a series of military campaigns to destroy the Houthis. In 2004, Saleh’s forces killed Hussein al-Houthi. The Yemeni army and air force was used to suppress the rebellion in the far north of Yemen, especially in Saada province. The Saudis joined with Saleh in these campaigns, but they were unsuccessful.
The Arab Spring came to Yemen in 2011. Saleh was ousted as president in February 2012 and replaced by his former deputy, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. In 2014, the Houthis began secretly colluding with Saleh against Hadi. Even by the standards of Middle East politics, it was a remarkable and hypocritical reversal of alliances by both the Houthis and Saleh. It was temporary; the Houthis killed Saleh in December 2017 as he tried to switch sides again to join the Saudis.
WHY HAVE THEY WON?
Hezbollah, the Shiite movement in Lebanon which successfully expelled the Israeli army from the country in 2000, became an early role model and mentor for the Houthis. Iran is another source of support, especially since the Houthis and Iranians share a common enemy in Saudi Arabia.
Hezbollah’s success foreshadowed the Houthis’ in many ways. Both groups are serial human rights abusers who have successfully positioned themselves as the nationalist defenders of their country against hated foreign enemies: Israel and Saudi Arabia (both backed by America). Hezbollah ousted the Israelis from Lebanon after two decades of struggle, leading to the collapse of the Israeli-supported Christian mini-state in the country’s south. It now threatens Israel with tens of thousands of missiles and drones. The Houthis easily got the upper hand on the Saudis at the outset of their intervention in 2015 and now are poised to capture the last city in the north, Marib, controlled by Riyadh’s Yemeni clients. The Houthis routinely attack targets inside Saudi Arabia — and now in Abu Dhabi — with missiles and drones using technical expertise from Iran and Hezbollah.
The cost of the war to Yemenis is staggering. The United Nations Development Programme estimated in November that 377,000 Yemenis will have been killed by the conflict by the end of 2021, most indirectly and not in combat, 70% of them children under the age of five. The Saudi blockade of Yemen is a principal cause of the humanitarian catastrophe by denying food and medicine to the country >>>
In this regard, more power to them.
If such civil war was taking place in Iran with foreign nations bombing and destroying the country, the Western nations would call the Iranian Houthi as freedom fighters and self-determination. Israel has been occupying three other nation’s land based on UN charter and resolution and Brooking Institution dare say anything about that out of fear to anger the Jewish executives. US has those RED fingers depicted above all over the Middle East, destroyed Iraq thru their invasion and no one has been held to account for it and that is one of the example of the recent invasion/destruction. There are hundreds more like Iraq.
So, since it is a doggy dog world and justice is an illusion and interpretation of those who claim it, then I say more power to Iran for expanding its influence
NO ROOM FOR PALESTINIAN ON IRANIAN SITE BECAUSE WE ARE PERSIANS, NOT ARAB.
Ayatoolahs expansion in the Middle East is act of spreading hatred and terrorism toward civilized world, especially Israeli, which is the most advanced country in the M.E. Islamists' barbaric ideology has nothing to do with "Freedom..or Freedom fighters". It doesn't matter if they are in Iran, Iraq or Hottis in Yemen. They have no respect for "Freedom" or human lives. Human right abuse by Ayatollahs in Iran during last 4 decades has been well documented. Islamists don't even know what "Freedom" means.
Islamic thugs are bunch of unshaven, stinky bastards who try to impose their barbaric Sharia law from stone age, such as lashing people in public and stonning people to death, to the modern world. Iranians are well familar with Ayatoolahs mindsets, but Palestinians are NOT, because they never lived in Iran and they don't know what is going on in the Ayatollahs minds and how they look at life.