Dehai News Mailing List Archive: NYTimes.com: Plight of Houthi Rebels Is Clear in Visit to Yemenā€™s Capital

Bombed-out homes in Sana, the capital of Yemen. A Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Yemen to try to oust the Houthis, a rebel group aligned with Iran that seized the capital in 2014. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

SANA, Yemen — Before the war, the Officers Club in downtown Sana was a prime recreation destination, known for its pool and garden cafe.

Now, like much of Sana, the Yemeni capital, its bombed-out remnants are controlled by gun-wielding rebels from the group known as the Houthis. Dressed in ragtag uniforms and brimming with Islamist fervor, they pointed out holes from airstrikes and the rubble that had once been the Police Academy.

Still, they insisted their seizure of the capital had been good for Yemen.

“There was too much corruption and looting before,” said Masoud Saad, 19, who had dropped out of middle school to become a fighter. “We wanted to present the true religion of God in a correct way.”

Once a provincial militant movement in the mountains of northern Yemen, the Houthis surged to prominence after they seized control of the country’s northwest in 2014. Since then, they have pushed the national government into exile and set off a new Middle Eastern war in which they are in the cross hairs of an intensive bombardment campaign by Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab countries.

Now they are struggling to govern in the middle of a war that has ground to a destructive stalemate.

In an interview in his car, because the Defense Ministry had been bombed, Brig. Gen. Sharaf Luqman, a spokesman for Houthi-allied military units, acknowledged that the front lines had scarcely moved in the past year.

“We have lost everything, our infrastructure, and we have nothing left to lose,” he said. “Now it is a long war of attrition.”

*A nonfunctioning cement factory in Amran, Yemen, that was bombed twice by the Saudi-led coalition. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times*

The Houthis’ control of such key territory has made them essential to international efforts to end the conflict, leaving policy makers and negotiators struggling to figure out what they want. And the group’s anti-American stance rankles Washington, which used to count on the Yemeni government as an ally against Al Qaeda and has aided Saudi Arabia in its military campaign against the rebels.

The rebels’ slogan is spray-painted on walls and checkpoints throughout their territory: “God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse on the Jews. Victory for Islam.”

The Houthi movement began as a religious revival in the 1990s among Zaydi Muslims, an Arab religious minority in northern Yemen who sought to push back against efforts by Saudi Arabia to spread its fundamentalist version of Sunni Islam.

The group takes its name from its founder, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houthi, who was killed by Yemeni forces in 2004. His followers launched an insurgency against the government, and developed as a guerrilla force in a series of civil wars.

That background of insurgency rooted in backwater parts of the Arab world’s poorest state forged the group into a strong fighting force but gave it few skilled politicians, intellectuals or technocrats — a weakness glaringly apparent during a recent visit by New York Times journalists in Sana.

Much of the Houthis’ administration relies on civil servants who chafe under their control and on followers of a former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has allied with them.

Further impeding their efforts at governance is the Saudi bombardment, which has gravely damaged an already weak economy and infrastructure.

In interviews during a recent trip to Yemen, Houthi leaders and fighters described themselves as “revolutionaries” in the mold of Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza, saying their aim was to cleanse the country of corrupt leaders they considered beholden to foreign powers. In describing their goals, they spouted beliefs that often clashed with their behavior.

“I saw that they stood with justice and the oppressed,” said Majid Ali, who dropped out of a Sana university to join the Houthis when they seized the capital. “The goal was not to take control, but to help the oppressed and the weak.”

But their enemies in Yemen and Saudi Arabia insist that the Houthis are a dangerous proxy force being used by Iran to expand its influence and challenge Saudi influence.

Analysts and diplomats who follow Yemen say the reality is somewhere in between. While commonly considered Shiite, the Houthis’ Zaydi sect differs significantly from Iran’s official Shiite creed, and historically ties between the Houthis and Iran were not strong.

But their shared hatred for Saudi Arabia has brought them together in the current conflict, and Iran has given the Houthis weapons and technical help to attack Saudi forces along the border.

*A camp of displaced families in Yemen in October. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times*

April Longley Alley, a Yemen analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the Houthis’ surge out of the north to seize the capital had been opportunistic. Their objectives included gaining a decisive stake in national decision-making and in Yemen’s military and security apparatus.

What remains unclear, she said, is how the war has changed those goals.

“Now that they are in the capital, the question is how much of a stake do they think they can hold on to after this experience with governance,” she said.