The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Powerful religious militia rose from the ashes of America’s invasion of Iraq
my family when it happened. We watched them together. My little brothers, who are 10, cried a lot. All I could do was hug them and tell them it would go away, even though I could not be sure of this.”
Mahmoud, another Sana’a resident, said: “The explosions were tremendous. I woke up to find the whole family gathering at the door of my bedroom. The huge explosions reminded us of the same nightmare when the Saudi coalition started bombing Sana’a in 2015. Khalil, a resident of Hodeidah, added: “The explosions were really massive. My friend who lives in the residential block near the airport called me a minute after the explosions took place, telling me they were so powerful the roof of the house was shaking and the windows were broken.”
Another resident, Salah, said: “The city is filled with fear and anxiety. Many residents fled the city seeking safe shelters in the south controlled by the government.
The explosions were really terrifying because it was the first time the city was bombed from the sea. We are expecting the situation to go from bad to worse. The prices of the food supplies will shoot up, and the value of the local currency is likely to go down.”
Yet amid the fear, there was also defiance. When the Houthis began attacking and seizing ships in mid November, the movement said it was acting in support of Hamas and would not back down until Israel stopped fighting in Gaza.
Hussam, a 24-year-old in Sana’a, said the Yemeni people were “prepared to take a beating for the sake of their homeland, pride and honour”.
Nash, a 26-year-old also from the capital added: “I was with my family during the attacks. We all felt so much fear and the children were crying.
“But if it is upon us because of our support for Gaza, we will remain with Gaza.
If the war is great, we have the duty of our religion and to our brothers in Gaza.”
After their strikes, the RAF planes reached their base in Cyprus by around 3am after a round trip of nearly eight hours. Just how successful the strikes were in stopping further Houthi attacks was not immediately clear.
“We’re still doing the assessment of the actual impacts on all these targets,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said.
“That work is ongoing. So I think we’ll have a better sense of the specifics of the damage done here in the coming hours.”
The Houthi leadership reported five people had been killed and was quick to threaten its retaliation, saying it would continue to hit shipping.
Hussein al-Ezzi, a Houthi official in their foreign ministry, said there had been “a massive aggressive attack by American and British ships, submarines and warplanes”.
What was once a rag-tag sect has become a force capable of rousing the West into military action
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“America and Britain will undoubtedly have to prepare to pay a heavy price and bear all the dire consequences of this blatant aggression,” he said.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator and spokesman, accused the US and Britain of having “committed foolishness with this treacherous aggression”. “They were wrong if they thought that they would deter Yemen from supporting Palestine and Gaza,” he wrote online. He added that Houthi “targeting will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine”.
Nato, along with nations including Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, said they supported the strikes. France did not sign a statement backing them.
Meanwhile, Iran called the attack “a breach of international laws” and Turkey accused the US and the UK of “trying to turn the Red Sea into a sea of blood”.
he Houthis’ journey from religious sect to regional disruptors is one of violence, opportunism and political cunning.
Their leaders’ blurring of religious, nationalist and populist rhetoric has sometimes made it difficult to understand what they want. What is not in dispute is their embrace of militarism and their proven track record as a disciplined, focused fighting force.
“The Houthis display a sense of euphoric hubris, viewing divine intervention and aligning themselves with history on their side,” Mohamed al-Basha, a senior Middle East analyst at Navanti Group, said. “The prevailing mindset is one of constant war, cultivated over two decades of conflict. Self-fulfilling prophecies work in their favour, leading to unexpected engagements such as fighting Israel or targeting Israeli-linked assets. Unforeseen drone and rocket exchanges with the US Navy and the UK Navy have become a reality.”
The Houthi movement – named for the surname and clan of their founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi,
– is principally made up of Zaidi Muslims, a sect of Shia Islam followed in northern Yemen. They emerged as a religious youth movement in the early 1990s but became increasingly radicalised following the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
When Hussein Badreddin was killed by a Yemeni government air strike in 2004, his brother Abdul Malik al-Houthi took over and led a guerrilla insurgency.
In 2009, the Yemeni government said it had killed him, but days later he appeared on television and shrugged off claims of his demise as pure lies.
Since then, he’s become possibly the most powerful man in Yemen, the ultimate authority overseeing a group that now controls a third of the country – and is growing in swagger thanks to training and weapons support from Iran.
Houthi, like the other militant leaders, is very secretive. It’s not clear whether he’s married or has children; even his birth year is disputed, though he’s likely in his early 40s.
The insurgency remained mostly local until 2011 when Houthis joined a disparate alliance of opposition groups in the Arab Spring protests that eventually ended the 22-year rule of president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In the aftermath, the group was a part of the National Dialogue Council, a body that was meant to pave the way for a new, democratic and inclusive government. “I would say the more radical voices are now in the forefront. When I was still in Yemen and we were part of the national dialogue council they brought forward more softleaning liberal voices who can talk to the rest of the Yemenis,” said Baraa Shiban, a Yemeni academic at the Royal United Services Institute who was involved in the Arab Spring protests and formation of the council.
“But I think the more radical militant people were always in charge. We saw more extreme interpretations of Islamic practices they tried to implement immediately in areas under their control,” he added.
In 2015 the Houthis made a bid for total power, harnessing popular anger at the new government’s move to end fuel subsidies to mount a coup. They quickly seized control of the capital Sana’a and the crucial Red Sea port of Hodeidah.
Other groups, especially in the south, fought back. In March 2015, a Saudi-led regional alliance intervened to restore the government.
The operation quickly became a quagmire. Although nominally outgunned by the Saudis, who fielded the latest in Western fast jets, tanks, ‘We are still assessing the actual impact on targets. We will have a better sense of the damage done in the coming hours’
‘The prices of food supplies will shoot up and the value of the local currency is likely to go down’
and other weaponry, the coalition failed to dislodge the militants.
The Houthis aligned themselves with Iran, which used small boats to smuggle increasingly sophisticated weaponry, including ballistic missiles and drones that were used in several high-profile attacks, deep into Saudi Arabia itself.
But the secret of their staying power was not Iranian hardware.
“It was a whole mess. Although legitimately you still have the Yemeni government, the Saudis were backing different factions. Then they brought the UAE in the south, and the Emiratis were backing a faction that was basically separatists,” said Mr Shiban.
The Houthis, by contrast, had “a very strict military hierarchy, a clear chain of command without rival forces within them”. They began to co-ordinate closely with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia also backed by Iran, to cement control, he added.
“People forget this, but at one point many Houthi leaders were flying back and forth to meet Hezbollah commanders. They copied Hezbollah.”
They came closest to defeat in 2018 when a coalition and Yemeni government offensive nearly captured Hodeidah before a UN-backed ceasefire designed to avoid a famine
‘Houthi leaders were flying back and forth to meet Hezbollah commanders. They copied Hezbollah
stopped the fighting. Critics argue that was short-sighted – it left the Houthis in control of the west coast and able to continue receiving smuggled weapons from Iran.
In 2021, the sides agreed to a ceasefire that has miraculously, more or less held. Since then, Yemen has enjoyed a period of relative calm.
Recent UN-backed, Oman-brokered peace talks between the Saudis and the Houthis have resulted in the reopening of Hodeidah harbour and Sana’a airport and raised hopes the decade-long conflict could be brought to a peaceful conclusion. That is now in jeopardy.
The group has a tight hold on the Yemeni society in the areas it controls, providing day-to-day security in which city streets are safe unlike in government-controlled Aden, which is overrun by a dozen competing militias while cracking on any form of dissent.
Abdul Malek al-Houthi has ruled with an iron fist, establishing a military state and snuffing out dissent thanks to a strong internal intelligence apparatus.
The level of repression means gauging popularity is almost impossible.
“People are hesitant to speak out, making it challenging to discern their true
On Friday, hundreds of thousands of people, some carrying Kalashnikov rifles, massed for a demonstration in central Sana’a to condemn America and Israel.
Crowds waving Yemen and Palestinian flags chanted “Death to America, death to Israel”. Other protests were seen in Hodeida and Ibb. The country has seen regular demonstrations since the Israel-Hamas war flared in October, but witnesses said the protest after the strikes was particularly passionate.
“If America and its allies decide to declare open war on us, we’re ready for it and we won’t have any choice but to bring victory or fall as martyrs,” Abdel Azim Ali, one of the protesters, told AFP.
“We’re waiting for the day when we’re fighting a war with America,” said Mohammed Hussein. We’re not scared of the US or British air force. We’ve been bombed for nine years and another attack is nothing new for us,” said Abdallah Hassan. sentiments,” Mr Basha said.
Air strikes were not surprising, said Farea al-Muslimi, a research fellow on the Middle East and North African Programme at Chatham House. But they will not be enough to dislodge, or even deter, the powerful group
“The Houthis’ pushed it too far in the Red Sea and ignored all the calls to calm the situation including a private formal letter sent to the group leadership recently by the UK on behalf of the international community,” he said. “The targeted areas and military sites are really only peanuts in the wider context of Houthi weapon and military capabilities – especially their maritime weapons. They are savvier, more prepared, and more equipped than anyone is really acknowledging,” said Mr Muslimi.
He said the strikes may lead to an escalation, rather than a halt to missile attacks. “The strikes will not stop further attacks in the Red Sea – if anything, rather the opposite. The Houthis by now have missiles and weapons and technology that make US military bases in the Gulf very possible to reach.”
The Houthis have rejected the image of being mere puppets for Iran, and most Western Yemen watchers, including Western officials, agree the links should not be overblown.
Yes, the Houthi’s advanced military capabilities were provided by Iran’s IRGC, and the Yemeni group openly aligns itself with the so-called “axis of resistance”. Houthi’s recent statements have focused on religion and international struggle. The Houthi flag, which flanks Mr Houthi whenever he gives televised remarks, declares those mottos clearly: “God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
But he has also played with a secular, isolationist nationalism, claiming that they are defending Yemen and Yemenis from outside aggression, as well as addressing popular grievances about corruption.
That has led many observers to conclude that his real preoccupations are more domestic than regional.
Being seen to stand up to Israel militarily is popular both at home and across the region. Western officials say Arab governments deeply concerned about the Houthi actions in the Red Sea are wary of being seen to publicly criticize them given what is happening in Gaza. Meanwhile, “Iran gets to say yes, we’re unable to take on Israel directly, but our axis of resistance is finding ways to help. And it is low cost – the Houthis will get bombed, not the Iranians,” said Mr Shiban.