The Red Sea Crisis has Consolidated Houthi Control over Yemen

Detaining UN and NGO workers, intensifying attacks on global shipping, and earning the ire of regional and global powers. Are these the behaviors of a state acting out of desperation or the machinations of non-state actors consolidating power and flexing unchecked local military prowess? This is precisely the question being debated by analysts regarding the actions of the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen.

Over the past month, militias affiliated with the Houthis have increased attacks on Red Sea shipping, launched increasingly deadly drone attacks toward Israel, and detained more than fifty Yemenis working with foreign organizations. These were the immediate reactions to a recent financial crisis precipitated by the closure of the Central Bank in Sana’a, which has placed additional obstacles to currency transfers and civil servant salaries in Houthi-held territory in northern Yemen. The liquidity of the bifurcated Central Bank, with its other branch in Aden, had been maintained by Saudi financing since the onset of the conflict in 2015, affording the kingdom a degree of leverage over the Sana’a-based Houthi government. Irregular payments to public sector salaries in Sana’a, a consequence of periodic economic sanctions and continued restrictions, have long contributed to the decline of healthcare, sanitation, and other services across the country.

The decision to escalate the Red Sea crisis might be an act of revenge against the United States and Saudi Arabia for targeting Houthi military and financial capabilities. However, the Houthis might instead be perceiving the closure of the Sana’a Central Bank as Saudi Arabia abandoning the last form of leverage over the Houthi territory. After initially hedging their bets, the Houthis appear to have shifted almost entirely toward the Iranian camp, assuming that Iran and its allies can guarantee future state finances. Rather than pursue reconciliation with the internationally recognized government in Aden, the Houthi leadership has sought to isolate itself from the region further.

The Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the southern gate to the Red Sea, has historically been a source of global commerce and prosperity for states in South Arabia. Not only have the Houthis neglected this territorial treasure, but they have transformed it into Bab al-Mawt, or the gates of death, for shipping companies daring to cross the waters approximate to Yemeni territory. On June 12, the Houthis claimed their first successful drone boat attack against a Greek-owned carrier on the coast of Yemen. This has only encouraged a precipitous increase in the number of attacks, further threatening commercial shipping in the Red Sea region.

The proverbial gates were also closed to international organizations previously operating in Sana’a and its environs. Yemeni staff affiliated with the World Food Program, the National Democratic Institute, and others were spuriously charged with espionage and arrested, effectively closing one of the world’s last remaining windows into an increasingly isolated society. The innocuous gathering of population statistics and the coordination of foreign humanitarian aid were depicted by Houthi media as malicious intelligence gathering and as attempts to subvert government control.

These policy directions are typical of other Iranian proxies around the region, especially Hezbollah and Hamas, who have prioritized self-interested short-term destruction of society rather than focus on long-term development. In a country often dubbed as the greatest manmade humanitarian crisis, the Houthis have consolidated their political power at the expense of exacerbating the suffering of the country’s population. They have done so by drawing Yemen into a regional conflict with Israel and moving the country closer to Iran, making it difficult for Saudi Arabia and Yemeni opposition parties to reconvene the negotiations that appeared on the verge of ending the conflict as late as September 2023.

Rather than weaken the Houthi government, aerial bombing of Houthi military targets by American and British aircraft has only inflated the Houthi sense of self-prominence in regional affairs. What was once an empty slogan of “Death to American! Death to Israel!” has become an actionable policy. Furthermore, allied forces can’t hope to win a war from the air, especially against an enemy terrain well-known for its mountainous caverns that traverse the northern highlands of the country. 

This same terrain withstood centuries of Ottoman imperial wars, five years of intensive Egyptian bombing raids during the 1960s, and, most recently, a 2015 Saudi bombing campaign and blockade. The Houthi militias that fought the Saudis to a standstill and descended from the same tribes that clashed with the Ottomans and the Egyptians know well the futility of aerial campaigns. Accordingly, they are prepared to wait out the conflict in perpetuity. If the Biden administration is hoping to outlast the Houthis in a war of attrition, then they have already lost. While the Houthis have the luxury of time, the Biden administration is under pressure to “solve” the Yemen crisis before November.

After nearly a decade of civil war, a conflict that international interests have overrun is no closer to being solved than it was in 2014. If anything, the opposing sides have become even more entrenched, with the Houthis isolating themselves and their population from the outside world. The war in Yemen will not be solved by external actors forcing a particular model on the country but ultimately by Yemeni groups themselves. 

Unfortunately for the region and the Yemeni people, it looks as if the Houthis have garnered sufficient legitimacy and internal support to declare sole political control over the northern regions of the country. It remains, however, unlikely that Houthi governance could spread to the southern regions surrounding Aden or the eastern regions of Hadramawt. A potential outcome for Yemen remains a federalist state with at least three distinct regions, ultimately granting the Houthis a degree of autonomy in the north while dividing power up in the rest of the country. The international community must work to sever Iranian support for the group and force the Houthi leadership to assume responsibility for its own citizens and abandon extremist ideology in exchange for non-Iranian international support.

Asher Orkaby is a research fellow in Near Eastern Studies at Harvard University and the author of Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962–68, published by Oxford University Press. Follow him on X: @AsherOrkaby.

Image: MhmdArt / Shutterstock.com.