With the conflict in Yemen against the Houthis having dragged on for a decade and a half, some are inclined to deal with the group as the de facto authority rather than continue fighting it. After all, those who ruled Sanaa in the past were generally dealt with regardless of their identity or ideology.
This is a pragmatic proposition. The problem, however, lies in the Houthi project itself. The group is fundamentally at odds with the very idea of the state, and its conduct has revealed its determination to preserve the authority of the “organization.”
The Houthis want to benefit from the state’s resources and institutions, as well as the recognition afforded to it by others, while retaining their weapons as an armed group and waging wars in accordance with their external alliances. From this perspective, attaining power becomes a means of advancing the group’s own project.
The events beginning in 2013 and continuing over the following two years provide a clear test case. The Houthis were invited to participate in the National Dialogue Conference and signed the Peace and National Partnership Agreement, under which they were rewarded with seats and special privileges for Saada and given the opportunity to participate in the executive branch. In return, they were required to hand over their medium and heavy weapons to state institutions.
The group is at odds with the very idea of the state
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
Instead, the process ended with their seizure of state institutions, the detention of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and the dissolution of parliament, among other developments. They then proceeded to absorb state institutions and exclude everyone else. It was only natural that war would erupt among Yemenis.
After establishing its dominance, the group expected to become the state, and for the state to become synonymous with the Houthis. But that was not quite what happened. Instead, it established a network of supervisors who wielded actual authority parallel to official government positions.
The second experiment came when former President Ali Abdullah Saleh allied himself with the Houthis in a governing “partnership.” At the time, despite being out of power, Saleh still controlled most of the armed forces. Yet even Saleh misjudged the group, and he ultimately ended up being killed in the street in 2017. Some may regard this simply as a struggle for power that ended with Houthi supremacy and argue that the new reality should, therefore, be accepted and dealt with accordingly.
Once again, why not be pragmatic and deal with whoever has come to rule Sanaa, just as was done in the past, from Imam Yahya to President Judge Abdul Rahman Al-Iryani and, ultimately, Saleh?
The truth is that this has already been tried. But the Houthis, as an ideological group, refused to transform themselves into a state. They continued to wage wars against neighboring Saudi Arabia and the wider region, and before that against the Yemeni people. They remained an armed organization with their own parallel institutions.
Some argue that the new reality should be accepted
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
This is where comparisons with Daesh and Hezbollah arise, not because their ideologies and experiences are identical, but because of the nature of their relationship with the state. Daesh represents a more extreme case: It rejected existing states and sought to establish a caliphate extending beyond its borders. It wanted a state fashioned according to its own ideological principles. Hezbollah, by contrast, created a model that combines participation in state institutions with the retention of an independent armed force beyond the state’s accountability, while operating as a group whose ultimate point of reference lies abroad.
We cannot describe the Houthis as a Yemeni state, or speak of a “Yemeni Houthi imamate,” in the way one might refer to Yemen’s former Mutawakkilite kingdom or the republic, because they are a group subordinate to Iran. The Houthis in Sanaa have, to some extent, resembled Daesh in Mosul or Hezbollah in southern Lebanon: They designed a state according to the dictates of their ideology.
Is this rebellion the result of the Houthis never having been given a chance by their neighbors and the international community? In reality, the opposite is true. The US, Europeans, and the UN gave the Houthis an opportunity other armed groups in the region could only have dreamed of.
The Stockholm Agreement came to rescue them from defeat and collapse. Yet Western governments that sought to accommodate the group failed to turn it into a more civilian political actor or transform it into a conventional governing system.
Riyadh then tried, with Muscat’s participation and in coordination with the UN envoy at the time, to entice the Houthis into becoming a peaceful neighbor through an agreement to step away from war. Salaries for their employees were paid, the airport and port were reopened to them, and a delegation was sent to visit them in their “capital,” Sanaa, a gesture carrying significant political recognition. The Houthis made full use of the visit for high-profile propaganda purposes and reaped both political and material gains from it.
During the period in which efforts were being made to rehabilitate the Houthis into a respectable neighboring “state,” the group was simultaneously working with Iran, largely out of sight, to build offensive military capabilities. Before 2023 was over, it had resumed operating as a cross-border armed group.
Contrary to what some researchers believe, the Houthis are yet another Iranian proxy in the region, not the nucleus of an ordinary Yemeni system of government. There is a clear distinction between an ally and a subordinate. An ally is someone whose interests coincide with yours; a subordinate is someone whose will is constrained by yours.
The group’s extremist ideology is ultimately less important than understanding its intentions when it gains control of a country such as Yemen.
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a Saudi journalist and intellectual. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published. X: @aalrashed