New Delhi: The Houthi rebels of Yemen said this week they were joining the war against Israel, raising fears of the ongoing conflict spreading wider in West Asia.
The Houthis are an insurgent group that controls most of the northern part of war-torn Yemen and largely follows the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam.
Yemen has been in the grips of a brutal civil war since the Houthis seized the capital Sana’a in 2014, and the internationally recognised government retreated to Aden to the south.
The civil conflict in the run-up and since has been seen as another theatre of the notorious proxy war between Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran, the two big regional powers.
While the rebels are reportedly backed by Iran, Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of a coalition fighting the Houthis on behalf of the government.
There have been signs of improvement, amid talks between the Houthis and Saudis, as well as a China-brokered detente between Riyadh and Tehran.
Despite some flare-ups, a relative calm has taken root in Yemen since an April 2022 UN-brokered truce.
But the ongoing war in the region has cast a fresh shadow on tensions in the region.
The Saudis have reportedly joined the US in intercepting the Houthis’ attempted missile strikes on Israel, a first for the kingdom, which has not formally recognised the Jewish state since it was formed in 1948.
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Who are the Houthis?
The Houthis are Zaydis, a Shia minority community that takes its name from Zayd ibn Ali, a great-grandson of the Caliph Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, who is revered as the first Imam in Shia Islam.
The Zaydis make up 35 percent of Yemen’s total population.
The Houthis belong to the northwestern Sa’dah province, which predominantly adheres to Zaydi Shia Islam.
The emergence of the Houthi insurgency dates back to the 1990s, and is described as a reaction to rising Saudi influence.
While the two sides are said to have shared a deep interdependence, Yemen’s relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained over the years.
The animosity can be traced back to 1934 — two years after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was formed — when Yemen declared war on its northern neighbour over a border dispute. The war culminated in a treaty settling border issues.
Saudi Arabia was also believed to be a proxy player in the eight-year Yemen civil war that started in 1962 following the death of Imam Ahmad, after the monarchy led by his son was overthrown by sections of the armed forces who declared the region ‘Yemen Arab Republic’.
While Egypt intervened on behalf of the republic, the Saudis waded in in support of the royalists.
At the time, the northern and southern parts of Yemen were separate, with the latter under British control until 1967. After independence, the south was first named ‘People’s Republic of Yemen’, but came to be known as ‘People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen’ in 1969 after a communist coup.
In 1978, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a military officer, took office as president in north Yemen.
In 1990, the Yemen Arab Republic and People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen announced that they would come together and form the Republic of Yemen, under Saleh.
The same year, when Yemen voted against a UN resolution sanctioning military action against Iraq, Saudi Arabia expelled at least 3,50,000 Yemeni migrant workers by suspending their residency privileges.
Saudi Arabia’s actions stemmed from Iraq invading its neighbouring country Kuwait in August 1990, which led to the Persian Gulf War.
“The lost remittances and unemployed returnees imposed major socioeconomic problems on Yemen that continue to plague the country today,” according to an analysis piece by US think tank Washington Institute, which focuses on the US’ foreign policy in the Middle East.
In 1994, Yemen entered into yet another bout of civil war — between a southern separatist movement and the republic’s government.
It is under these circumstances that the Houthi movement began, to curtail the growing influence of Saudi Wahhabism in northern Yemen.
The movement was founded by Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, a member of parliament from 1993 to 1997.
Al-Houthi was a strong critic of Saleh — described as a strongman leader — over allegations that his government was aligning too closely with the US and Israel, and began rallying supporters for anti-government demonstrations in the early 2000s.
The killing of al-Houthi by security forces in 2004 triggered a six-year war that also drew in Saudi Arabia, after one of its border guards was killed by Houthi fighters in 2009.
The Houthis established their foothold in the chaos that engulfed Yemen following protests triggered by the Arab Spring, as citizens came out on the streets against government corruption and poverty.
They finally managed to gain control of the capital in 2014.
Iranian involvement
According to a 2021 paper by the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force has provided the Houthis with training and a growing arsenal of sophisticated weapons and technology for anti-tank guided missiles, sea mines, explosive-laden UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), ballistic and cruise missiles, unmanned maritime vehicles (UMVs), and other weapons and systems”.
This assessment, it said, was based on an analysis of “4,103 Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia, within Yemen and against other targets… in the Gulf between 1 January 2016 and 20 October 2021”.
Over an 18-month period starting April 2015, the US Navy intercepted five shipments of Iranian weapons meant for the Houthis in Yemen, a senior officer of the force said in October 2016.
In 2018, a report by UN experts said Iran had violated an arms embargo by “directly or indirectly” supplying missiles to the Houthi rebels.
The US and Saudi Arabia, the same year, displayed physical evidence of what they said were Iranian weapons deployed to militants in Yemen and Afghanistan. Iran has, however, denied the claims, saying it would be in violation of UN resolutions.
In 2019, the UN’s Panel of Experts on Yemen said in a report that the Houthis were gaining access to increasingly advanced drone technology. The panel further said that the rebels were making use of kamikaze drones.
‘War crimes’ in Yemen
The war has led to widespread devastation in Yemen, triggering a humanitarian catastrophe.
The UN’s Yemen experts have said it has “reasonable grounds to believe that the parties to the conflict have committed and continue to commit serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law. Some of which may amount to war crimes”.
The world body estimates that “80 percent of the country struggles to put food on the table and access basic services” in light of the conflict.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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