U.S. Strikes Give Yemen’s Houthis the Enemy They Long Sought
A religiously-inspired militia that emerged from Yemen’s northern mountains 20 years ago is now more powerful than ever.
In disrupting international shipping and drawing US military strikes, Yemen’s Houthi forces are trying to complete a two-decade-long transformation from a ragtag tribal insurgency into their country’s legitimate rulers.
Washington and its allies say they have attacked dozens of Houthi targets in the past two days, including on Saturday morning against a radar site. The Houthis’ deputy information minister, Nasr al-Din Amir, reported no material losses or casualties from that strike and called the site defunct.
The strikes are the latest sign that conflict stemming from Israel’s war in Gaza is widening across the Middle East, with the Red Sea as a new flashpoint between Washington and various Iran-backed groups.
The Houthis emerged emboldened from conflict with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, who intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 after the rebels seized the capital, San’a. Iran ramped up its supply of arms and training to the Houthis, bringing them into general alignment with Tehran though more loosely than the likes of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Now, dozens of attacks on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea – and a defiant response to American and British air strikes – have enabled the Houthis to show solidarity with the Palestinians and cast themselves as an international player. A road map aimed at a lasting peace in Yemen, which Saudi Arabia brokered with the Houthis last year in United Nations-backed talks, now appears in jeopardy.
More important, the latest confrontation has boosted the Houthis’ popularity in Yemen and the broader region, while distracting from the challenge of actually governing the northern areas the group controls.
“Who attacked your country?” Houthi leader Mohammed Ali al-Houthi asked Friday at a rally in San’a’s Sabeen Square. Tens of thousands of Yemenis who gathered there to protest the US strikes replied: “America!”
“America is the devil. America is your enemy. America is terrorism,” the Houthi leader said. Confrontation with the U.S. has long been an ambition for the Houthis, whose slogan includes the lines “death to America, death to Israel.”
White House spokesman John Kirby said Friday that the US doesn’t want war with Yemen but won’t hesitate to take further action.
President Biden told reporters he considered the Houthis to be terrorists. Three years ago, he reversed a last-minute Trump administration decision to designate the group as a terrorist organisation, citing the potential impact the label would have on humanitarian aid to Yemen, which has experienced famine and a cholera epidemic in recent years.
Elisabeth Kendall, a Middle East expert and the head of the University of Cambridge’s Girton College, said the Houthis are used to sustaining heavy air strikes and know the U.S. won’t escalate because it doesn’t want to put boots on the ground or further inflame regional tensions.
“This now makes them the victim-heroes, the heroic martyrs,” she said. “They have no real reason to stop and a high tolerance for casualties.”
The Houthis, a political movement and militia inspired by the Zaidi offshoot of Shiite Islam, have been waging a prolonged fight for dominance with the internationally recognised Yemeni government. They launched attacks on Israel after the beginning of its Gaza offensive but then turned to other targets, primarily international shipping lanes.
More than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza since hostilities began, according to Palestinian health authorities. The figures don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The conflict was sparked by a Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which Israeli officials say militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
After an intense bombing campaign and invasion, Israeli forces are now focused on gaining ground in central and southern Gaza. They are also tightening their grip on the north, where the military said it struck several rocket launch sites. Hamas regularly fires rockets into Israel, with the latest barrage coming Saturday morning.
International aid efforts are hindered by a continuing blackout after Israel cut off electricity and fuel to the small territory. The UN said Saturday that humanitarian missions to the north have faced increased access restrictions from Israel in recent weeks.
The Houthi attacks, meanwhile, have disrupted the movement of gas, oil and goods through the Bab al-Mandeb strait and the Suez Canal, through which more than 20% of the world’s containers transit, forcing some ships to divert around southern Africa.
The US-led strikes are aimed at deterring the Houthis from further attacks, though merchant shippers have been advised to avoid the waters around Yemen for several days while military operations continue.
Some 16 vessels made a U-turn following the first strikes. But 41 vessels were transiting the strait Saturday, compared with roughly 50 ahead of the strikes, according to Danish consulting firm Vespucci Maritime.
In all, Houthi attacks have hiked shipping costs and forced about a quarter of ships to reroute, according to British shipping-intelligence company Windward.
While the Houthis have said they were targeting any Israeli-affiliated ship, many targeted ships have no clear connection to Israel or the war. Iran supports them with arms and intelligence but says it doesn’t control their actions.
Maged Al-Madhaji, chairman of the Sana’a Center For Strategic Studies, said that the opportunity to harass the US and directly engage with the American military is the Houthis’ “most cherished aspiration.”
He said that as peace talks with Saudi Arabia gain steam, the group is seeking a new justification to keep it on a war footing. “This conflict will turn into an eternal battle with the international community,” he said.
The US.-led strikes have been condemned by some Yemeni political figures who are opposed to the Houthis but reject the violation of their country’s sovereignty.
Kendall, the Middle East expert, predicted that a U.S. strike that produced high civilian casualties could be a tipping point in the conflict that the Houthis would use to inflame emotions.
“War has become a way of life,” she said. “Governance for the people to create prosperity is an alien concept.”
Katherine Zimmerman, a counter-terrorism expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the U.S. government has sometimes been surprised by the Houthis’ military capabilities.
Washington closed its Yemen embassy in 2015, and it maintains a small number of military personnel in the country, according to a December 7 letter from Biden to Congress. But those troops are focused on countering al Qaeda and Islamic State and are believed to be deployed far from Houthi-controlled territory.
“Essentially, we find out their capabilities when they’re demonstrated,” said Zimmerman. U.S. intelligence likely doesn’t know where many Houthi weapons are stored, she said, and strikes so far appear to have targeted sites with electronic signatures that can be monitored.
Douglas London, a retired CIA officer with extensive Middle East experience, said there undoubtedly have been increased intelligence resources, particularly technical ones such as spy satellites and eavesdropping equipment, trained on Yemen in recent weeks as the Houthi attacks escalated. It is possible to recruit human sources there, he said, but such efforts are complicated by Yemen’s tribal, decentralised society, and the Houthis’ insular nature.
Rory Jones, Warren P. Strobel and Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this article.
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