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The opinions expressed herein are strictly personal and do not necessarily reflect the position of ISPI.

The ISPI online papers are also published with the support of Fondazione Cariplo.

Analysis No. 315, April 2017

FROM INSURGENTS TO HYBRID SECURITY ACTORS? DECONSTRUCTING YEMEN’S HUTHI MOVEMENT

Eleonora Ardemagni

The Huthi movement has been often pictured as an Iranian proxy, overstating existing support by

Teheran and the regional Shia networks, while underestimating the weight of Ansarullah’s local

insurgency. This paper aims to deconstruct and contextualize the Ansarullah phenomenon before

and during Yemen’s regionalized civil war. Husayn Al-Huthi’s movement re-discovered Zaydi

tradition, but contextualized it into the politicization of the Shia trend. The paper isolates and

addresses the intersected layers which mark the periphery-regime conflict between the Huthis and

the government, analyzing why the Sa’da wars (2004-10) represented a general test for the 2015

crisis. The contribution also investigates how the Huthi movement has managed to take advantage

from regional and domestic dynamics to enhance its political leverage, transforming the Huthis

from local fighters to national challengers inside Yemen’s hybrid political order.

Eleonora Ardemagni is Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean Analyst at the NATO Defense College Foundation,

regular analyst for ISPI and the Aspen Institute Italy.

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1.1 The local context. Framing the Zaydi Shia movement in Yemen

Zaydism (from the name of the fifth imam Zayd b. ‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin) is

the Yemeni Shia branch. Now, it is predominantly located among Sa’da,

Hajja, Sana’a and Dhamar regions, the northern Yemen’s highlands (bilad

al-qaba’il, the land of tribes), representing 35-40% of the national

population. Zaydi religious élite, the sayyid (pl. sâda) claims direct lineage

from the Prophet Muhammad1. The Al-Huthi family is Zaydi Shia: they

are sâda, belonging to the Hashemite social stratum. The city of Sa’da has

always been their fiefdom; the ancestors of Sa’da’s sâda proceed from

Hijaz, Iraq and Iran. Under the banner of the Imamate (imāma, the rule

of the Imam), the Zaydi Shia élite ruled North Yemen from 897 till 1962,

the year of the republican revolution: Zaydis don’t have an imam since

that year. Zaydism has distinct features with respect to other Shia

branches, as Jaafarism (Twelver Shiism), mostly spread in Iran, Lebanon

and the Gulf.

First of all, Zaydis have mixed theological references: syncretism, rather

than dogmatism, characterizes their doctrinal elaboration, permeable, in

modern times, to socialist and Marxist compatible ideas, as social justice.

The Imam must be physically present within the political community and

he must be a sayyid. The imamate is a political contract2: hereditary

succession is practiced but not institutionalized. Zaydism allows khuruj,

the upheaval against a ruler judged as unfair, far from the quietist stance

of other Shia sects, as Jaafarism. In 1990, a number of Zaydi ‘ulama

signed a manifesto claiming for the abolishment of the imamate, justified

by the changed historical context. According to several interpretations,

Zaydis claim the primacy of reason above tradition (al-‘aql qabl al-naql),

given also their relationship with the Mu’tazila3 thought, promoted and

studied by the Zaydiyya, which also allows ijtihad (the hermeneutic effort)

as a way to read the holy text. As a result, voices in the Yemeni Zaydi

community opened to the Sunna, seeking for possible points of

convergence, as the return to the schools of jurisprudence (madahib; sing.

madhab) to contest the legal-rational authority of the imam (marja‘iyya).

Differently from the Twelvers, Zaydis don’t agree the dissimulation of

their faith in case of danger (inkar al-taqiyya), as well as the return of the

Mahdi currently hidden, which is the pillar of Jaafarism.

1 Yemen’s sâda are not only Zaydis, since there are also Sunni sâda, especially from the

Hadhramaut region.

2 S. Dorlian, La mouvance zaydite dans le Yémen contemporain. Une modernisation avortée,

L’Harmattan, Paris, 2013.

3 The Mu’tazila is a philosophical school of Islam which emphasizes the role of rational

argument in religious discourse.

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From a social point of view, the sâda stand at the top of Sa’da’s social

hierarchy, followed by the judges (qudât, sing. qadi) and the qabili (tribal

men). However, the 1962 revolution altered rooted social balances. During

the civil war (1962-70), fought between Imamate’s supporters, backed by

Saudi Arabia, and pro-republic revolutionaries, sustained by Egypt,

Sa’da’s religious élite opposed the republican forces: but they lost.4 During

the civil war, the sâda had apical roles in the imam’s army. The Zaydi Shia

majority, including many sâda, then accepted the new republican State.

Nevertheless, from 1970 on, the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), in the

footsteps of Nasserism, marginalized the sâda, who enjoyed a certain

territorial autonomy and developed parallel economic networks with

southern Arabia’s tribal clans. On the contrary, the republican regime

promoted a policy of neo-patrimonial cooptation towards Sa’da’s qabili, so

progressively alienating them from tribal bases. Qadi ‘Abd Al-Rahman

Al-Iryani presidency (1967-74) appointed many northern shuyyukh (tribal

chiefs, sing. shaykh), as heads of regular army’s brigades, the so-called

“Colonel shaykhs”5.

The Ali Abdullah Saleh presidency (1978-2011) continued Al-Iryani’s

military politics with regard to northern highlands’ tribes, coupled with

the promotion of Sanhani men into the army.6 However, Saleh excluded

northern tribal chiefs from the upper ranks of the army, as a coup-proofing

strategy: during the six Sa’da wars (2004-10), the “Colonel shaykhs”

headed tribal militias which fought alongside the regular army against

the Huthis, so highlighting the hybrid security governance pattern shaped

by the regime7. Moreover, such a policy encouraged multiple belongings,

since many fighters were at the same time Zaydis, soldiers and Sa’da’s

inhabitants. Yemen’s reunification, occurred in 1990, fostered Zaydi’s

growing involvement in party politics. Given the patronage function of the

Yemeni parties, Saleh-led General People Congress (GPC) and Islah,

guided by the Al-Ahmar family, encompassed a large number of Zaydis,

but only two parties made clear reference to the Zaydi tradition: the Union

of Popular Forces (UPF), founded in 1962, and Hizb al-Haqq, where

Husayn Al-Huthi organized the Believing Youth (al-Shabab al-Mumin)

movement, till the rupture in 1997.

4 M. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970, Oxford, Oxford

University Press, 1971.

5 M. Brandt, “The Irregular of the Sa‘ada War: ˊColonel Sheykhsˋ and ˊTribal Militiasˋ in

Yemen’s Huthi conflict”, in H. Lackner (ed.), Why Yemen Matters. A Society in Transition,

London, Saqi Books, 2014, chapter 5.

6 From Sanhan, Saleh’s tribal clan, belonging to the Hashid tribal confederation.

7 In hybrid political orders “diverse state and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or

compete”, since “the state and its monopoly of violence are contested”. R. Luckham and T. Kirk,

“The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political Orders: A Framework for Analysis and Research”,

Stability: International Journal of Security & Development, 2013.

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1.2 The Zaydi Shia revival. How Husayn Al-Huthi’s movement

re-discovered Zaydi tradition

From the Eighties, perceived threats to the Zaydi ˊideological purityˋ were

on the rise, so paving the way for Husayn Al-Huthi’s Zaydi revivalist

movement. First of all, the brand-new Yemeni state, although not

sectarian-biased, needed a shared religious narrative in order to coalesce

different interest groups, enhancing the internal legitimacy of the state.

For this reason, the regime has tried, since 1990 on, to build a republican

discourse able to integrate and, at the same time, to neutralize Zaydi

peculiar claims, as the imamate. The Saleh-led regime attempted to

assimilate Zaydism in the republican sphere, fostering a process of

“modernization from within”.

The “Sunnisation” strategy8, aimed to promote identity convergences

between Zaydism and Shafeism (Yemen’s Sunni madhab), emphasized

Zaydi scholars’ voices opened to the Sunni doctrine. Secondly, Saudi

Arabia supported the spread of Salafism in northern Yemen, to counter

the Zaydiyya along the Saudi border, financing the opening of Salafi

madrasat in the territorial core of Zaydism. Therefore, the traditional

sâda-qabili class cleavage frequently became even sectarian, since many

tribes adhered to the Salafi thought and, among them, a consistent

number of northern brigades’ militaries and government-allied tribal

militias.

In such a context, Muqbil Al-Waadi (born in 1930 in a Zaydi tribe of Sa’da),

the leading Yemeni Salafi scholar, opened the Dar al-Hadith madrasa in

Dammaj, at the centre of the Sa’da region9. Denouncing the dilution of the

Zaydi identity, Husayn Al-Huthi, born in 1959, Hizb Al-Haqq’s member of

the Parliament (1993-97), left the party in 1997, when his political

movement, the Believing Youth, was a growing reality. In January 2002,

at the dawn of the Ansarullah’s experience10, the Huthis’ slogan appeared

for the first time, during a conference held at the Imam Al-Hadi madrasa,

in Marran district (Sa’da province): Husayn Al-Huthi invited militants to

repeat “God is great!, death to America!, death to Israel!, curse upon the

Jews! victory to Islam!”11, which rapidly became the signature mark of the

enigmatic Huthi rebellion.

8 L. Bonnefoy, “Les identités religieuse contemporaines au Yémen: convergence, résistance et

instrumentalisations”, Revue de mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, no. 121-22, April

2008.

9 L. Bonnefoy, How Salafism Came to Yemen: An Unknown Legacy of Juhayman al-‘Utaybi 30

Years On, Middle East Institute, October 1, 2009.

10 Militants of the Huthi movement refer to themselves as Ansarullah/Ansar Allah (Partisans of

God).

11 “Allahu akhbar, al-mawt li-Amrika, al-mawt li-Israil, al-la ‘na, ‘ala-l-yahud, al-nasr

li-l-islam”.

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As clearly emerges from this symbolic episode, Al-Huthi gave a strong

political message to Ansarullah’s claims, adopting a confrontational

approach vis-à-vis the government and its international allies. Foreign

policy, rather than social policies was the first public subject of conflict

between the Huthis and the government. Looking at Husayn Al-Huthi’s

social stance, he promoted marriage alliances between sâda and qabili’s

families, despite their dissimilar lineage. Such an unusual cross-class

choice produced “networks of mutual support” able to overcome different

strata and unite rival geographical centers in northern highlands12,

allowing Huthi movement’s outreach beyond traditional fiefdoms. Husayn

Al-Huthi used to collect zakat in Sa’da. From a doctrinal point of view,

Al-Huthi opted for a dogmatic approach to the holy text, so narrowing

spaces for theological dialogue with Sunnism.

Since the Seventies, Badr al-Din Al-Huthi, Husayn’s father and a Sa’da

cleric, supported Zaydi revivalism against Wahhabi influences: he studied

in Iran, at the hawza13 of Qom (1994-97), elaborating on the Jarudi school

of thought, which is the closest of Zaydi approaches to Twelver Shiism. For

the Huthis, the main legacy of the Islamic revolution is the

anti-imperialist message developed by khomeinism, rather than its strict

theological core. Moreover, the velayat e-faqih theory14, extended by

ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to the political sphere15, established

unintentionally a doctrinal bridge between Twelver Shiite (with a quietist

tradition) and Zaydis (who believe in a community-engaged imam and

allow khuruj).

From a cultural perspective, the Huthi movement imported many

celebrations and practices coming from Twelver Shia, as the annual

Ghadir Khumm festival16, an Iranian-style celebration of the ‘Ashura and

the commemoration of the Islamic revolution. As a matter of fact, Husayn

Al-Huthi re-discovered Yemen’s Zaydi tradition, shifting the focus on

politics and opening a new season of confrontation with Yemeni central

authorities. From a theological point of view, he affirmed a dogmatic

approach to Zaydism, putting the imamate, also as a symbol, at the centre

of the debate.

12 B.A. Salmoni, B. Loidolt, M. Wells, Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen. The Huthi

Phenomenon, RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2010, p. 37.

13 Hawza ‘ilmiyya, “the territory of learning”, referred to a community of learning in a specific

place.

14 The government of doctors in religious law.

15 L. Louër, Transnational Shia Politics: religious and political networks in the Gulf, New York,

Columbia University Press, 2008, p.151.

16 International Crisis Group, Yemen: Defusing the Saada Time Bomb, Middle East Report no.

86, May 2009, p. 10.

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Alongside the revivalist choice, Al-Huthi focused on Zaydi political

militancy, building an ideological discourse based upon the

anti-imperialist stance of Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution, in the

chronological framework of the politicization of the Shia. Beyond general

claims, the detailed agenda of the Huthis, a religious, political movement

and a militia, still remains vague and rich in ambiguities, even though

their leaders frequently reiterated the allegiance to the Yemeni state.

2. Huthis vs central government. Layers of a periphery-regime conflict

The Huthi movement and the central government live a long-standing

regime-periphery conflict for power and resources. The dispute has

contributed to erode already fragile Yemen’s sovereignty and economy,

emboldening regional and/or tribal rooted struggles for autonomy. The

conflict reportedly started, in January 2003, with anti-government

demonstrations. Al-Shabab al-Mumin shouted its slogan, in a Sa’da

mosque, at president Saleh’s presence: protesters asked for the end of

Saleh’s alliance with the United States. In September 2004, Yemen’s

security forces killed Husayn Al-Huthi in Sa’da’s Haydan district.

The centre-periphery conflict between the Huthis and the Sana’a-based

regime has multiple, intersected layers. First of all, it is a struggle amid

rural areas and the urban core of Yemen. Northeastern regions, as Sa’da,

Hajja and large segments of Al-Jawf, have always been marginalized by

the central power, in terms of welfare and infrastructures. Locals use to

live in 200-500 people mountainous villages, with a medium-high level of

population density. Arable land is limited and the inhabitants have

developed networks of informal economy, especially towards Saudi Arabia,

due to cross-border tribal alliances. Arms and qat smuggling are

consistent parts of Sa’da’s alternative economy.

In 2014, Ansarullah rejected the federal reform draft envisaged by

president Abd Rabu Mansur Hadi: it would cluster predominantly Huthis’

lands (Sa’da, Amran, Sana’a and Dhamar) in the new macro-region of Azal,

with a high density of population, no access to the sea and few natural

resources. At Ansarullah’s eyes, this plan was the trigger factor towards

the coup17.

The Huthi-regime conflict is also about competing tribes. In the Sa’da

region, the Huthi movement’s fiefdom, the Bakil and the Khawlan bin

‘Amr tribal confederations are the most represented. Both are excluded by

the Sana’a-based circles of power: Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Sanhan tribal clan

belongs to the Hashid confederation, who also encompasses the powerful

17 E. Ardemagni, The Yemeni Conflict. Genealogy, Game-Changers and Regional Implications,

Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), Analysis no. 294, April 2016.

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Al-Ahmar family, who lead not only the Islah party, but many

locally-based militias too. Such a reality implies a decisive political

consequence: the regime has never had real military power on northern

highlands. The army is not welcomed, since security is provided by local

militias and customary law (‘urf) systematically prevails on civil law.

But the conflict has even a social connotation, which contributes to

furtherly divide Sa’da’s social space, encompassing different classes as

sâda (the religious élite) and qabili (the tribal men). The Saleh-led regime

(as the current president Hadi’s government) was a tribal-based power: on

the contrary, the Huthi movement has originally grown in the sâda milieu,

even though it has managed to coagulate a wider, cross-class support from

2014 on, undermining the Yemeni political transition. Saleh stressed and

intentionally overstated the role of sâda within the Huthis’ ranks to rally

tribes support, notwithstanding many Ansarullah’s sympathizers

belonged to the tribal stratum. The conflict does not have a sectarian

genealogy: Saleh is a Zaydi Shia too, even though he never framed his

regime with sectarian tones. However, the Huthis-government armed

confrontation has nurtured sectarianism. The Sana’a-based regime

progressively stigmatized the Huthi movement on the basis of the Shia

identity and then as an Iranian proxy, in order to secure Saudi Arabia’s

support, involving Salafi militias on the battlefield. Moreover, the regime

has depoliticized Ansarullah’s political claims, framing its quest for

autonomy into a strictly religious offensive. Such a political discourse, in

the context of the six Sa’da wars (2004-10), arrested the Zaydi self-process

of modernization, leaving more room than before to hard-liners’ stances.

2.1 Producing Huthis’ mythology. The Sa’da wars as a general test for the

civil conflict

The Sa’da wars (2004-10) had a fundamental role in the Huthis’

elaboration of a “group mythology”: they were able to rally local consensus

and wide the original base of support fighting six rounds of war against

Sana’a. At the beginning of the Sa’da wars, Ansarullah had reportedly no

organizational hierarchy or order of battle. Started as a low intensity

conflict, the Yemeni government choose to deploy more than 40.000

soldiers, included the Central Security Forces’ Counter-terrorism unit

(trained by the US to fight against jihadists). The war provoked a number

of casualties between hundreds and 20.000, with more than 200.000

internal displaced persons. Adopting a diachronic lens, the Sa’da wars

have represented a general test for the civil strife that broke-out in

January 2015.

These events share common features: first of all, both the conflicts spilled

over the original areas. Since 2004, Sa’da has been the epicenter of the

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Huthis-army rift (especially the Haydan district), but the battles also

reached the province of Sana’a (fifth Sa’da war, March 2008-July 2008)

and northern Amran region (Harf Sufyan district, sixth Sa’da war, August

2009-February 2010)18. From 2014 on, the Huthi-Saleh faction was able to

control Amran, Al-Jawf and then, after Ansarullah’s coup in Sana’a, Shia

insurgents seized large swaths of predominantly Sunni territories

included Aden, mixing the use of force and tribal alliances/desistence.

Secondly, hybrid military actors appear in both conflicts. With regard to

the Sa’da wars, “Colonel shaykhs” fought alongside the army the

Ansarullah’s militia. However, since the third Sa’da war (November 2005 to

early 2006), Saleh’s government started to involve Salafi armed groups into

the war, since the regular army wasn’t able to win the Huthis’ resistance

alone. The Popular army, organized by General Ali-Mohsin Al-Ahmar19,

rallied Hashid tribes (as the Al-Usaymat), plus mercenaries proceeding

from other regions and Salafi elements. Husayn Al-Ahmar, son of the

paramount shaykh Abdullah Al-Ahmar, was designed military chief, but

the militia was then stopped by president Saleh20, worried about the

Al-Ahmar’s empowerment in the north. During the fifth Sa’da’s war, the

Republican Army, led by Ahmed Ali Saleh, the son of the president, was also

deployed at Bani Hushaysh (north of Sana’a). Following 2010 Qatar’s

brokered ceasefire, the army withdraw from Sa’da, but clashes continued

amid “Colonel shayks” and Ali Mohsin’s militants against Ansarullah. In

the same way, the current Yemeni civil war presents two complex factions.

The insurgents front encompasses the Ansarullah’s militia (estimated

between 20.000 and 40.000 fighters), allied with Saleh’s loyalists, the most

well-trained segment of the army. Within the anti-Houthi faction (where

president Hadi’s leadership collect few support), the regular army fights

helped by Sunni tribal militias and popular committees, United Arab

Emirates-trained paramilitary forces (Al-Hizam brigades, Hadhrami Elite

Forces), southern secessionists and jihadists.

Thirdly, the role of jihadi militias is a constant dynamic. Since the fourth

Sa’da war (January 2007-June 2007), groups of “Afghan Yemenis”, coming

from southern tribal clans, joined the anti-Houthi faction, at regime’s

request. In the Eighties, these jihadi fighters had already supported jihad

in Afghanistan. Now, Al Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (sometimes with

the Ansar al-Shari‘a label) has been fighting the Shia insurgency, most of

all in central Yemen.

18 In Harf Sufyan (Amran), Bakil’s clans opposed to the government clashed with pro-regime

Al-Usaymat tribe, belonging to the Hashid confederation.

19 Chief of the 1st Armoured Division (the powerful division, firqa, of Northwestern Yemen). He

is not a member of the prominent Al-Ahmar family.

20 M. Brandt (2014).

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In both conflicts, war feeds and activates sectarianism. In 2013, violent

clashes between Huthis and Salafis at the Dar al-Hadith centre in

Dammaj (Sa’da province) marked the upgrading of sectarian tensions, at

the dawn of the civil conflict. The Huthi movement blamed Salafis to

recruit foreign fighters: clearly, this hostility finds its roots in the Sa’da

wars’ legacy, which already registered brutal clashes where tribal

mediation didn’t find space. On March 20, 2015, two suicide attacks

claimed by a Yemeni Daesh’s cell shake Badr and Hashoush mosques in

the occupied capital, provoking more than 130 victims predominately

among Shia: a clear worsening of the level of violence, since AQAP had

never bombed mosques in Yemen. Against culturalist/primordialist

visions, the Yemeni case shows that differences of religious sect can be

activated for political purposes in a suitable context. Sectarianism is the

consequence, not the origin of the struggle.

Lastly, Saudi Arabia’s military intervention characterizes Sa’da wars as

well as the 2015 civil conflict. In 2009, the Saudis launched a ground-air

offensive against the Huthis on the Saudi-Yemeni border, following Huthis’

incursions in Saudi territory and the killing of several border guards. In

spite of Riyadh’s proclaims of victory, Saudi Arabia didn’t manage to

weaken the northern guerrilla movement, since Ansarullah represents

more and more a national security threat for the Saudi kingdom21.

3. The agency-structure game. How the Huthis have taken advantage

from regional/domestic dynamics to improve their leverage in Yemen

Yemen is a permeable country, not only for men and arms, but for

ideologies too. Institutions are fragile, unable to provide security and

welfare on the whole territory. Tribes have a fierce sense of autonomy and

self-reliance, given strong regional-based identities. As a matter of fact,

Yemen has always been expose to high levels of external penetration.

Consequently, regional dynamics have a remarkable impact on Yemeni

local affairs. But Yemen’s long-lasting system of power (led by the

Saleh-regime before and then by Hadi), it is not the only actor able to ride

regional and domestic events for domestic purposes.

21 In 2009 and in 2015 again, thousands of residents were evacuated from Saudi Arabia’s border

towns in order to create a buffer zone. Huthis’ cross-border attacks damaged homes, stores and

cars in the city of Najran, a predominantly Ismaili centre where citizens have supported Saudi

Arabia’s military politics in Yemen so far, but have a long history of marginalization and

detachment from Riyadh. Sectarian tensions are on the rise: for instance, Saudis enrolled Sunni

extremist mercenaries from Aden to protect Najran’s neighborhoods. See L. Plotkin Boghardt,

M. Knights, Border Fight Could Shift Saudi Arabia’s Yemen War Calculus, The Washington

Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Watch 2736, December 6, 2016.

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Looking at the Huthi movement through an agency-structure analytical

framework, a recurrent feature emerges: Ansarullah (the agency) has

often demonstrated to be a smart player, taking advantage from regional

and/or internal events (the structure) to improve its leverage in Yemen, in

order to pursue identity recognition and territorial autonomy. Since 2002,

Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime multiplied hostile rhetoric against the rising

Huthi movement. After the attack against the USS-Cole harbored in Aden

(2002), Saleh accepted a security partnership with the United States,

based on strict securitization policies and U.S. drone campaigns: George W.

Bush had just started his post 9/11 war on terror and Yemen was already a

safe haven for Al-Qa’ida.

Notwithstanding the promise to eradicate jihadists, Saleh systematically

invested Washington’s financial, military and rhetorical resources to fight

the Huthis: such a security-diversion strategy became a regime-security

tool for Yemen’s expensive neopatrimonial system22. It was not by chance

that Saleh defined the Sa’da war as a fight against terror, blaming Huthis

for small-scale attacks against officials and soldiers in Sana’a, sending

some of them to the special court set up to judge suspected terrorists after

9/11. The central regime denounced the “imamate project” pursued by

“Iranian-backed fundamentalists”, so echoing the war on terror narrative.

On the other hand, this political discourse, which bet on religious

stigmatization to defuse political claims, nurtured Huthis’ narrative of

marginalization and victimhood, encouraging further radicalization.

In 2010-11, the “Arab uprisings” movement (started in Tunisia and Egypt),

created a window of opportunity for Ansarullah. The Huthi movement did

not start the protests against Saleh and his government: it joined the

square only when Saleh’s ousting became a possible objective. The Yemeni

thawra broke-out in Taiz (a Muslim Brothers and Salafi stronghold), and

then reached the capital Sana’a, where popular demonstrations for social

justice and dignity were rapidly hijacked by tribal party-politics. In

Summer 2014, Ansarullah organized a political-military showdown against

transitional institutions by taking over popular protests in Sana’a.

President Hadi’s severe cut on fuel subsidies, to meet IMF and World

Bank’s conditions for a financial aid package, emboldened street protests,

which rapidly turned under Huthi’s militants banners. Northern

regions-based Ansarullah’s supporters camped into the capital, claiming for

subsidies reintroduction: this was the gateway towards the coup. The

Huthis were able to capitalize on people’s disillusionment towards the

political transition, gaining consensus beyond their traditional strongholds

and establishing interest-driven alliances with Saleh’s loyal networks.

22 E. Ardemagni, “La politica estera come strumento di ri-generazione dei sistemi autoritari: lo

Yemen fra mutamento e continuità”, in Afriche e Orienti, 1-2/2015, pp.121-130.

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The “Middle Eastern Cold War” between Saudi Arabia and Iran23 has

changed the conflict, triggering the sectarian dimension and progressively

modifying main characters’ profiles. The relationship between the Huthi

movement and Iran resembles a self-fulfilling prophecy: political support

from Teheran to Sana’a has strengthened only from 2015 coup on, so time

after Saudis’ denounces. Iran doesn’t seem able to affect Huthis’

decision-making, but rather it look at them as useful non-state actors able

to pressure both Saudi Arabia’s borders and politics. On the other hand,

Zaydi Shia revivalists have a Yemeni, northern-focused agenda, not a

regional, Iranian proxy-style one. Nevertheless, Sa’da’s leadership has

increasingly lean on Iran’s political and media support to gain domestic

legitimacy vis-à-vis the Saudi “military aggression”, which has provoked a

clear “rally around the flag” effect. This strategy has also helped the Huthis

to acquire not only visibility at a regional level, but also “transnational

legitimacy”, coalescing ideological support among Shia groups.

3.1 From local rebellion to national opposition. How the Houthi

Movement changed

The Yemeni civil war has definitely transformed the Huthi movement

from a local fighter into a national challenger24. Zaydi revivalist militias

managed not only to occupy Sana’a, but they started to control far,

traditionally Sunni areas, as Taiz, Hodeida, Mokha and, for few months,

Aden. Such a reality had a political and military impact on the Huthis,

who are now a more miscellaneous and loose movement than before: they

are able to rapidly aggregate or disaggregate popular consensus.

Ideological loyalists (pro-Iranian, anti-Americans, anti-Jews) represent

the Huthis’ core, as Zaydi Hashemites, willing to defend the ˊpurityˋ of

their lineage: this is why the northern movement tends to rally support

among Yemen’s non-Zaydi Hashemites too. Northern tribesmen disposed

to protect lands and properties are another significant component. The

Huthis encompass even mercenary fighters, organized in local popular

committees since 2014: these informal security networks often overlap

with Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ones25.

Capitalizing on the failure of the political transition started in 2011, the

Huthi movement was skillful to canalize the rising anti-establishment

mood, marked by strong opposition vis-à-vis corruption and the de facto

23 F. Gregory Gause III, Beyond Sectarianism: The New Middle East Cold War, Brookings Doha

Center, Analysis paper, 2014.

24 As Christopher Boucek anticipated in the aftermath of the Sa’da wars. C. Boucek, War in

Saada. From Local Insurrection to National Challenge, Carnegie Endowment for International

Peace, Carnegie Papers no. 110, 2010.

25 International Crisis Group, Yemen: Is Peace Possible?, Middle East Report no. 167, February

2016, p. 6.

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regime continuity. As political outsiders, they coagulated consensus

beyond traditional basins. Huthis’ rising involvement in national politics,

for instance during the National Dialogue Conference (NDC, 2013-14), has

emphasized the coexistence of two different political wings within the

movement. The original and conservative wing, based in Sa’da, which

cares about orthodoxy, with a strict observation of customs (as the ban on

music with the exception of fighting songs) and the pragmatic one,

politically engaged in Sana’a, charged to elaborate a political platform for

the movement and opened to liberals and leftists’ contributions. At the

NDC, Huthis delegated from the Sa’da governorate (since the “Colonel

Shaykhs” component was not represented) advocated for shari‘a as one

source, not the source, of the Yemeni state, boldly suggesting a civil,

rather than religious, state.

The ongoing war has also widened the spectrum of perceived Huthis’

enemies, fostering sectarianism. Central government, the army and Salafi

fighters still stand at the top of Zaydi revivalists’ rivals, but this range

encompasses now southern militias (when they contest the same territory),

Saudi-led military coalition soldiers and jihadists. Nowadays, Huthi

militants and AQAP clash in many governorates, as Al-Bayda, Shabwa,

Mareb, Al-Jawf and Taiz. Consequently, confessional belonging has

progressively become for the Huthi movement a tool of mobilization

against “takfiriyyin”.

The new regional and domestic context, coupled with fluid alliances, has

modified traditional guerrilla-centered Huthis’ warfare. In 2009,

cross-border raids dominated Huthis’ armed confrontation with Saudi

Arabia: Sa’da’s mountainous territorial morphology allows ambuscades

and wars of position. From 2015 on, the Zaydi revivalist movement, given

its alliance with Saleh’s loyalists (most of them proceeding from the

Republican Guard and former élite units) upgraded level and variety of

strategic capabilities: artillery rockets, medium-range and long-range

missiles are now daily used by the insurgent front, often committing

laws-of-war violations26. GPC’s militants remain the most skilled with

regard to ballistic systems, even though Huthis have reportedly received

technical military training by Hezbollah, Islamic Revolutionary Guard

Corps (IRGC) and Afghans who already fought in Syria under Al-Quds

26 With regard to the Yemeni conflict, international media use to cover and denounce Saudi-led

military coalition’s human rights violations, forgetting about the insurgents side. Instead,

“Houthi and allied forces committed serious laws-of-war violations by laying banned

antipersonnel landmines, mistreating detainees, and launching indiscriminate rockets into

populated areas in Yemen and southeastern Saudi Arabia, killing hundreds of civilians”. See

Human Rights Watch, Yemen- Country Summary, January 2017.

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Force commanders27. Moreover, shifting resources from welfare to warfare

could contribute, in the medium-long term, to reduce their popular

support in northern highlands, where the movement has systematically

dealt with security and justice provision. According to UNICEF, Sa’da’s

governorate is already the first in the world for chronic malnutrition rate

among children (8/10 children)28.

Lastly, the Huthi movement and political groups and/or militias belonging

to the transnational Shia network29 have enhanced frequency and level of

public interaction. In 2016, the Huthis sent official delegations to Lebanon

(August 2016), Iraq (September 201630) and Iran, multiplying visits at top

political and religious Shia venues. Hezbollah provides medical care for

Huthi fighters in Lebanon. Ansarullah’s TV station Al-Masira is allowed

to broadcast from south Beirut, the stronghold of Hezbollah; the insurgent

movement receives extensive coverage by Iranian and Lebanese media

channels. Now, the Huthis are not only perceived and recognized in the

Middle East as “Yemeni actors”, but also as “Shia actors”. Looking at

their speeches and slogans, this phenomenon increasingly assumes a

self-perception connotation. To better cope with multiple threats (regular

army, Sunni militias, Saudi Arabia), the Sa’da’s movement seeks for

identity recognition and external legitimacy. At the same time, regional

Shia actors (Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias) want to support Huthis’

Yemeni struggle to strengthen their ideological and political influence

abroad. Surely, Riyadh’s military involvement against Zaydi revivalists

always attracted Shia countries’ attention: for instance, during the sixth

Sa’da war (2009-10), people gathered in Nasiriya, a southern Shia Iraqi

province, to support the Huthi faction. In May 2005, Najaf and Qom

hawzat had already condemned Yemen’s army intervention (supported by

Riyadh) against the Huthis (first Sa’da war)31.

27 See Reuters, Exclusive-Iran steps up support for Houthis in Yemen’s war: sources, March 21,

2017.

28 UNICEF, Malnutrition amongst children in Yemen at an all-time high, warns UNICEF, News

Note, December 12, 2016.

29 Shia transnational networks develop around the marja‘iyya, which has remarkable

geographic extensions and the capacity to project authority transnationally. Since the Nineties

onwards, the networks of the marja‘iyya did not produce new transnational political movements,

but they rather revealed how clerical institutions embraced the globalization path. Refer to L.

Louër (2008).

30 For instance, on November 29, 2016, an Ansarullah’s delegation met in Baghdad with Qais

Al-Khazali, the Secretary general of the Iraqi militia Asaib Ahl Al-Haq (AAH). The Critical

Threats Project, Yemen and Gulf of Aden Review- December 7, 2016 ; Al-Masdar News, Houthi

Delegation Travel to Iraq and Iran, August 29, 2016.

31 S. Dorlian (2013), p. 145.

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4. Conclusions and Perspectives. Towards a Hybrid Security

Cohabitation in Sa’da and beyond?

Nowadays, prospects of stability for the Sa’da region rely on the balance

among tribal (Bakil and Khawlan bin ‘Amr, Hashid), confessional (Zaydis,

Salafis) and class (sâda, qabili) intertwined variables. In order to understand

the overall picture, all these factors must be framed in the periphery-centre

conflict between the Huthis and the government. Since 1962, Sa’da’s

“unsecured borderland”32 experienced a hybrid political order, mirrored by

multiple, competing and/or cooperating security actors. This was a divide et

impera device designed by Al-Iryani and then Saleh’s regimes, magnified by

the Sa’da wars. In this hybrid pattern of security governance, pro-regime

militias assured a ˊsecurity connectionˋ with Sana’a-based institutions,

fighting alongside the regular army and often replacing it. However, such a

perilous strategy has been progressively eroded due to the rise of

unmanageable social unbalances on the field, allowing the Huthis to become

the northern dominant power, in a context of anarchy.

From 2015 onwards, the large-scale, regionalized civil war has only

worsened the scenario, transforming the Huthi movement from a local

rebel to a national challenger of the current system of power.

Notwithstanding regional players’ influence and material support, looking

at the Huthis as Iranian proxies is a misleading representation, since it

overshadows origins and peculiarity not only of the Ansarullah movement,

but also of the whole Yemeni Zaydi history.

In the Eighties, Husayn Al-Huthi reacted against perceived Zaydi

identity’s dilution (“Sunnisation”) and Saudi Arabia’s attempts to spread

Salafism in northern highlands: Al-Huthi re-discovered Zaydi tradition,

focusing on political militancy. Therefore, he borrowed the anti-imperialist

stance and slogans of khomeinism, in the framework of the politicization

of the Shia. The six Sa’da wars’ rounds (2004-10) have represented a

general test for the civil conflict that broke-out in 2015, offering also to the

Huthis a theatre to forge their anti-regime warriors’ mythology.

Paradoxically, in the meantime, the Huthis’ main enemy, Ali Abdullah

Saleh, has become, their ally of interest in the fight for power and

resources against interim president Hadi’s institutions.

Since the first decade of the new century, Ansarullah has taken advantage

from regional and internal dynamics to improve its leverage in Yemen: the

alliance between Saleh (and then Hadi) governments with the United

States against jihadism, the 2011 Yemeni uprising, the popular protest

32 Unsecured borderland “where state authority is suspended or violently challenged by

alternative claimants to power or providers of security, including non-state armed groups”. R.

Luckham, T. Kirk (2013).

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against economic reforms in summer 2014, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry for

the hegemony in the Middle East. Such a smart strategy has allowed the

Huthis to expand military gains and political influence beyond Sa’da’s

fiefdom, so becoming central players in contemporary Yemen. As a

consequence, the movement has changed: it now encompasses a broader

and various popular support than before, with the coexistence of two

different political wings (“rigorists” and “pragmatics”). Huthis’ militias

have widened the spectrum of enemies to include Sunni militias, Arab

coalition soldiers and jihadists, escalating sectarian rhetoric. They have

also upgraded level and variety of strategic capabilities, due to the

alliance with Saleh’s loyalists and military training by Iran and Hezbollah,

shifting considerable resources from welfare to warfare in their

strongholds. As long as the war continues, Iran increases its engagement

in Yemen, in terms of sophisticated weapons provision and technical

advisors33. The Huthis are now perceived by external audiences first as

ˊShia actorsˋ and then as “Yemeni actors”, so collecting political and media

support by Shia regional networks.

After two years of war, Yemen’s state is deeply fragmented and contested,

divided between the self-proclaimed government based in Sana’a and led

by the Huthis-Saleh alliance, and the Aden-based one, headed by the

internationally-recognized interim president Hadi (which rallies an

anti-Huthis’ faction rather than a pro-Hadi group). Even the army is

divided to two competing sides. In the future of Yemen, whatever political

arrangement will have to take into account the issue of militias, first of all

Ansarullah, and the necessity to re-build a regular security sector. But

“sovereignty” and “civil-military relations” risk to resound as concepts

detached from Yemen’s current reality of tribal infighting, where hybridity

was the rule even before the 2015 crisis.

As a matter of fact, finding a balance between these apparently conflicting

interests is the real challenge Yemen’s decision-makers will have to face.

United Nations’ Security Council Resolution 2216 (April 14, 2015), the

legal basis for UN-led negotiations, doesn’t explicitly claim for Huthis’

disarmament, since it demands that all Yemeni parties, in particular the

Huthis, “relinquish all additional arms seized from military and security

institutions”34.

33 According to convergent reports, Iran provides drones to the Yemeni Shia faction (the Qasef-1,

similar to the Iranian-made ones) and anti-tank guided weapons. Iran has probably helped the

Huthis to develop a naval mining program and to modify pre-existing Scud missiles for longer

range capabilities. Teheran is also suspected to have transferred technology used by the Huthis

to carry out an unmanned remote-controlled boat attack against a Saudi vessel in the Red sea

(January 30, 2017). See among the others, Reuters (2017); The Critical Threats Project,

Warning Update: Iran’s Hybrid Warfare in Yemen, March 26, 2017.

34 UNSC no. 2216, April 14, 2015.

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Therefore, Yemen’s post-war military landscape is maybe going to

resemble Lebanon, where Hezbollah and the Lebanese Armed Forces

(LAF) experience a complex relationship of “complementarity”, amid

“cooperation and competition”35. The Yemeni army cannot operate in Sa’da

governorate due to local unfriendliness, as it happens between Hezbollah

and the LAF in some Lebanon’s territories (the South, the Beka’a valley).

Notwithstanding nobody succeed winning the war, the Ansarullah’s

faction, given its alliance with Saleh’s loyalists, has a better balance of

ground military forces with respect to the regular army, as Hezbollah in

Lebanon. For Ansarullah, the alliance with Saleh is decisive in terms of

military projection and capabilities.

Probably, post-war Yemen will institutionalize, de facto, a precarious

pattern of ˊhybrid security cohabitationˋ between regular and irregular

military forces such as the Huthis: but Sana’a’s institutions are less

resilient than Beirut’s ones. Moreover, “an end to the current big war will

not necessarily prevent the outbreak of a series of complex and

little-understood small wars across the country”36.

As Yemen’s regional and tribal-based identities strongly surface, security

is going to be constantly renegotiated by central institutions and local

stakeholders, following a slippery ˊpatchwork approachˋ to security,

rather than a general, institutions-centered framework. This is the kind of

security pattern designed in Sa’da, since decades, by the Yemeni regime: it

acted as a ˊTrojan horseˋ which allowed the Huthi movement to project

power and collect consensus beyond northern fiefdoms, till to enter the

same contested Yemeni state.

35 A topic analysed by academia and now openly debated in the political arena. Agenzia Fides,

President Aoun: militias of Hezbollah are "complementary" to the Lebanese Army, February 13,

2017; R. Dugulin, Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army: cooperation or competition?, Open

Democracy, March 1, 2012.

36 P. Salisbury, Yemen: Stemming the Rise of a Chaos State, Chatham House, Research Paper,

May 2016, p. 37.