How the United States Can Avoid Losing a War in Yemen
How the United States Can Avoid Losing a War in Yemen
April 24, 2024
Elizabeth Turnage
On January 17th, 2024, the United States redesignated the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).[1] In the weeks that have followed, the United States has become increasingly active in the Gulf, shooting down Houthi drones and striking Houthi targets in Yemen.[2] Given the United States’ increasing involvement with the Houthis, this paper seeks to review the conflict to evaluate both the insurgent and counterinsurgent performance to date. In this evaluation, I argue that not only does the insurgency possess key indicators of success, but the counterinsurgency’s weaknesses debilitate the possibility for success.
To make this argument, this paper first presents the primary actors within the Houthi insurgency before presenting a concise modern history of the case. It then outlines the strengths and weaknesses of both the insurgents and counterinsurgents before concluding with an outlook for the insurgency.
The Actors
According to U.S. counterinsurgent doctrine, there are three primary actors in any given insurgency: The state, the insurgents, and external actors.[3] This characterization holds true in the Houthi case.
The State: The Republic of Yemen
The state of Yemen is located on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia to their north, Oman to their east, the Red Sea to their west, and the Gulf of Aden to their south. Within the country, Yemen contains the Asir Mountains in the west, where most of the population resides, and the large (mostly uninhabitable) Rub’ al-Khali desert in the east.[4]
The Government of Yemen (GoY) as it stands today was created in 1990, when the northern and southern sections unified as the Republic of Yemen.[5] From its inception, the GoY has had three primary actors that have engaged with the Houthis: President Ali Abdallah Saleh, who served as the president of the republic from 1990 to the Arab Spring in 2012;[6] and his successor Abdu Rabbu Mansor Hadi, who led the republic until his abdication in 2022.[7] The current president is President Rashad Mohammed Al-Alimi.[8]
While the country is majority Muslim, it contains significant religious, tribal, and political divisions within its population. The country has a large (35%) Shia minority and is composed of numerous tribes with complex loyalty and alliance structures.[9] In part due to these divides, Yemen has several non-state actors that operate within the country. In addition to the Houthis, who will be discussed momentarily, the GoY faces dissent from the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a successionist movement based in the south of the country.[10] The country has also experienced a persistent al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) presence in the southeast of the country.[11]
Figure 1: Map of Yemen[12]
The Insurgents: The Houthis
The Houthis are a group of Zayid Shiites consisting of a number of allied tribes in Northern Yemen, based primarily in the city of Saada.[13] While a number of economic, religious, political, and demographic grievances central to the movement traces its roots to the 1960s – when the Zaydi imamate that ruled Northern Yemen fell – the modern roots of the group trace to the creation of the al-Haqq political party and Believing Youth Forum (BYF) in the 1990s, which respectively promoted political representation of Northern Yemen and a Zayid revival.[14] From these political recognition and Zayid revival aspirations, the Houthis objectives have evolved significantly, with the group currently aspiring to consolidate and legitimize their rule in Yemen.[15]
The Houthi movement was originally led by Hussein al-Huthi, who served as a prominent member of the al-Haqq party and the leader of the BYF, would be the first leader and namesake of the Houthi movement.[16] Following his death, his father Badr al-Din al-Huthi became the spiritual leader of the movement, with other members of the Huthi family and al-Haqq politicians leading military operations.[17]
The External Actors: The Coalition(s) and Iran
The external actors in the insurgency can generally be divided into three groups: the Saudi coalition, the new U.S. coalition, and the Iranians and their proxies.
As a Sunni regime and geographic neighbor, Saudi Arabia has significant interest in the stability of Yemen. As such, Saudi Arabia has supported the GoY, a Sunni government, throughout most of the insurgency through a Saudi-led Coalition. The Coalition is comprised of several Sunni states: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates (who left the coalition in 2019), in addition to Pakistan and Eritrea, who joined the group in 2018. This group also received nominal support from western nations, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[18] As outlined below, this coalition opposed the Houthis until 2023.
The United States has emerged as a significant opponent of the Houthis in recent months. While the United States had historically opposed the Houthis via their support for the Saudi Coalition, they have recently entered the conflict directly – launching airstrikes and establishing a naval presence in the Red Sea – with a U.S. led coalition of western states. The coalition consists of approximately 20 countries, including Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the Seychelles, and the United Kingdom.[19]
Iran and Iranian proxy groups have supported the Houthi insurgency, but the Houthis should not be viewed as a direct proxy of Iran. Throughout the insurgency, Iran – and proxies like Hezbollah – have provided the Houthis with crucial weapons and training.[20] Yet, the Houthis are not reliant on Iranian support, and thus maintain autonomy from Iran.[21] Instead of a proxy, the Houthis act as a partner for Iran driven by mutual benefit: The Houthis gain material support, and the Iranians gain an ally against Israel, the UAE, and the United States within the Red Sea region.[22]
The Eras of the Houthi Insurgency:
The Houthi insurgency can be divided into four modern eras: the rise of the movement following 9/11, the establishment of military capabilities and alliances in the Sa’ada Wars, the rise of the Houthi State and proximate Civil War following the Arab Spring, and the Houthi’s attempt to emerge on the global scale in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.
~9/11 and the Arrest of Hussein al-Huthi:
While the buildup to the Houthi insurgency traces its roots to religious divisions, a historically autonomous population in northwestern Yemen, and political opposition to the Government of Yemen in the latter half of the 1900s, the proximate causes of the insurgency can be traced to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. Following the attack, President Saleh announced that Yemen would act as a partner to the United States in the War on Terror. This resulted in two significant changes. First, the announcement sparked increasing criticism of President Saleh by Hussein al-Huthi in Sa’ada, presenting an increased threat to GoY’s legitimacy of rule in the region. Simultaneously, GoY’s partner status with the United States led to an increase in military aid, training, and support, which inflated GoY’s coercive capabilities. The combination of an increasing threat and coercive capabilities led President Saleh to arrest Hussein al-Huthi in June 2004, forgoing a longstanding precedent of mediation between the Zayids and their Sunni neighbors and sparking the insurgent conflict.[23]
~The Sa’ada Wars:
The arrest of Hussein al-Huthi sparked a series of six Sa’ada Wars. This rolling conflict was driven primarily by the GoY and encompassed an era of near consistent conflict in Northwestern Yemen from June 2004 to February 2010, when a ceasefire was signed. Figure 2 provides an outline of the six waves of conflict. The conflict originally began in Sa’ada, and gradually expanded in geographic scope to encompass most of northwestern Yemen. Additionally, the conflict is notable for the GoY’s use of irregular militias (led by local Colonel Sheikhs) instead of or in addition to the GoY army.[24]
Figure 2: The Sa’ada Wars
The Sa’ada wars led to two key developments for the Houthi insurgency. First, the Houthis established military capabilities.[25] While the group began the wars with no true military structure, they became adept at irregular tactics, such as ambushes, by the Third Sa’ada War. Second, the Sa’ada wars impacted the allegiances of local tribes.[26] While most had supported GoY at the start of the conflict, widespread discontent stemming from GoY’s economic and political neglect of the region, poor treatment of GoY aligned militias, death of civilians in GoY attacks, and kinship ties to the Huthi family resulted in many tribes shifting allegiances to the Houthis by the final war.[27] Thus, by 2010, the Houthis had gained both military capabilities and domestic support from the population.
~The Arab Spring and a Proxy Civil War:
In 2011, the Arab Spring created a power vacuum in Yemen, allowing the Houthis to expand. The prodemocracy movement began in January 2011, and ultimately resulted with President Saleh’s removal from office and general chaos within the GoY. Capitalizing on this chaos, the Houthis moved south, and with the help of Iran, Hezbollah, and former President Saleh – who had formed an alliance with the Houthis – the group captured Yemen’s capital of Sana’a with only limited resistance.[28] During this time, the Houthis expanded their capabilities by taking control of Yemenis weapon caches and state media, which the group used to control narratives and disseminate propaganda.[29]
In early 2015, the Houthis seized control of the Yemeni government and deposed of the newly elected President Hadi, inciting the Yemen Civil War.[30] On the counterinsurgency side, a Saudi Arabia led coalition launched Operation Decisive Storm and Operation Restoring Hope with the “goal of restoring Yemen’s internationally recognized government.”[31] On the other side of the conflict, Iran and Hezbollah provided extensive support – in the form of training and weapons – to the Houthis.[32] In concert with Iranian support, former GoY President Saleh also joined forces with the Houthis in an attempt to settle his political vendettas, bringing his tribal support base over to the Houthi cause.[33]
Over the civil war, the Saudi coalition implemented airstrikes, a land, air, and sea blockade, trained local Yemeni forces, and conducted traditional military operations against Houthi targets.[34] Despite heavy pressure from the Coalition, the Houthis continued to gain territory, and began launching counterstrikes on Saudi Arabia. This offensive effort is exemplified by Operation Victory from God, a Houthi operation launched in 2019 targeting Saudi oil infrastructure.[35]
When a United Nations brokered truce was signed in April 2022, the Houthi insurgency celebrated a relative victory.[36] Despite a new alliance between the Hadi GoY and the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in 2020 and numerous strikes by the Coalition, the Houthis had succeeded in gaining and holding a large swath of territory in Yemen.[37] As a result, the Houthis gained “quasi-legitimacy” as a governing body in Yemen, and now controls approximately 70% of the Yemeni population through coercive force, a taxation system, and the weaponized control of food and water.[38] Figure 3 depicts Houthi territory as of January 2022.