Bardia Rahmani

April 30th, 2015

INAF 425

What Do the Houthis Want?

The Cause and Creed of Yemen’s Insurgency

I. Introduction

On January 20, 2015, Houthi rebels swept into the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, seizing the

presidential palace, forcing President Mansur Hadi from office, and replacing the

country’s parliament with an interim Revolutionary Committee. The Houthis, who hail

from the northern highlands of Sa’da, first rose up in 2004 after the Government of

Yemen (GoY) launched an offensive to capture religious leader Husayn al-Houthi.

Despite the killing of al-Houthi, from whom the movement takes its name, the insurgency

persisted throughout the 2000s—albeit in fits and starts. In August of 2014, protests over

increased fuel prices kicked off the latest, and most intense, round of conflict. Today, the

Houthis retain a tight grip on Sa’na and Yemen’s northern governorates, refusing to step

down until the various factions—the Salafist Islah Party, the Hadi government-in-exile,

the southern secessionists—agree to a unity government.

Followers of the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam, the Houthis have long been the

subject of fear and mistrust among the majority-Sunni population of Yemen. Since the

beginning of the Houthi insurgency in 2004, the GoY has portrayed the group as an

Islamist terrorist organization with regional ambitions. Former Yemeni President Saleh

has variously described the Houthi fighters as “terrorists,” “a Shi’ite Iranian’s cat’s paw,”

and “anti-republicans” seeking to reestablish the “pre-1962 Zaydi imamate.”1 In framing

the conflict as a sectarian one, and the Houthis as state-centric jihadists, the GoY has

sought to categorize Houthi violence “as a variety of terrorism reminiscent of other

Global War on Terror challenges.”2 The GoY’s interpretation of the movement as

fundamentally sectarian has gained currency abroad. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have

both designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization and are currently engaged in air

strikes to contain the threat. US officials, too, have condemned the Houthi movement,

warning Iran against exporting a Shia revolution to Yemen and offering arms and

logistical support to the ongoing counterinsurgency operation.

But how accurate is a sectarian reading of the movement? While the Houthis

certainly define themselves on the basis of their religious identity, it would be a mistake

to characterize the movement as jihadist in nature. The Houthis are not Islamist terrorists

in the vein of Hezbollah, Hamas, or Sunni al-Qaeda; rather, they are a conventional

insurgency primarily rooted in tribal and sectional grievances. In this paper, I will argue,

first, that the Houthi movement arose out of a confluence of political, economic, and

social factors in the northern Sa’da region. Second, insofar as religion plays a role in the

Houthi movement, it is primarily a rhetorical rather than substantive one; the movement’s

aims are secular and more or less consistent with Yemen’s republican tradition. Third, the

Houthi movement’s means and ends are not consistent with that of a terrorist

organization. Taken together, these arguments seek to challenge the dominant narrative

1 Saleh, as quoted in Salmoni, Barak A., Bryce Loidolt, and Madeleine Wells. Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen: The Huthi Phenomenon. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010. 8-9. 2 Saleh, in Salmoni, 8-9.

surrounding the Houthi insurgency and reframe the conflict in terms of sectionalism

rather than sectarianism.

II. The Context of the Houthi Movement

Any attempt to tease out the goals of the insurgency will be subject to uncertainty—not

merely because the causes of conflict are complex, but because there is significant

disagreement among the Houthis themselves over their ideology and objectives. As a

recent leaked State Department cable noted, “Houthi field commanders do not seem to

agree on key ideological and religious principles.”3 While there are certainly areas of

broad agreement among Houthi leaders, the movement struggles to identify itself “in

terms of what it seeks rather than solely what it opposes.”4 Nevertheless, an analysis of

the sources of friction within Yemen, as well as the proximate causes of conflict, can help

suggest an answer to the question of Houthi motives.

One long-standing source of conflict has been the economic disparity between the

regime and its periphery. Despite some oil wealth and billions in foreign aid, the regime

is not developmentally inclined; some $3.5 billion dollars a year (12% of GDP) is lost to

corruption or “spent on handouts for elites…rather than on community development

projects.”5 To the extent that the regime has engaged in economic development, it has

directed its efforts toward traditional power centers like Sana’a and Aden, leaving the

periphery “comparatively marginalized in material and development terms.”

3 United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Cable: 09SANAA2186_a. By Seche Stephen. Central Intelligence Agency. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.4 Salmoni, Barak A., Bryce Loidolt, and Madeleine Wells. Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen: The Huthi Phenomenon. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010. 235. 5 Phillips, Sarah. Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis. Abingdon: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2011. 34.

In practice, the GoY’s neglect of the periphery has manifested itself in a deep

urban-rural divide. The northern governorates of Amran, Hajja, and Sa’da, which are

90% rural, have little access to infrastructure, education, social welfare programs, and

employment relative to Sana’a and Aden.6 The national electric grid reaches only 15

percent of the rural population.7 Food and water distribution is intermittent, with over half

of the rural population suffering from food insecurity, compared to 27% in the major

cities.8 Recent improvements to Yemen’s economy have largely bypassed the periphery,

which is too geographically isolated to capture the benefits of increased trade. Yemen’s

primarily oil-led economic growth helped slash urban poverty rates from 32% in 2006, to

20% today; in that same timeframe, poverty “unambiguously worsened” by as much as

15 percent in the northern region of Amran-Hajja-Sa’da—the birthplace of the Houthi

insurgency.9

Rural Yemenis have an acute sense of their relative economic fortunes. In a poll

of Yemenis from six peripheral governorates conducted in 2008, 66.5% of respondents

believed living conditions had worsened in the last 12 months.10 Importantly, these

individuals saw the issue of inadequate and uneven development in primarily political

rather than economic terms. When asked to identify the cause of Yemen’s wealth

disparity, the vast majority of respondents, 75%, said “leadership” was at the root of the

problem.11 In particular, Yemenis pointed to the patrimonial system—payments to elites

6 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery. 217 Schultze-Kraft, M. "How Does State Fragility Affect Rural Development?" Institute of Development Studies (2012).8 Schultze-Kraft. "How Does State Fragility…”9 Schultze-Kraft. "How Does State Fragility…”10 Phillips, Sarah. Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis. Abingdon: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2011. 31. 11 Phillips. Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis. 31.

and tribal leaders in return for loyalty—as having displaced meaningful investments in

infrastructure and social welfare. In effect, rural Yemenis, particular those in the Zaydi

north, perceived their socioeconomic situation as the product of intentional neglect on the

part of the GoY.

The GoY’s social policies also fostered resentment among the periphery toward

the regime. In the late 1990s, as part of the regime’s “project of divide and rule,” the GoY

offered protection and support to Mubil al-Wadi’i.12 Al-Wadi’i, a Salafi ideologue with a

significant student following, called for the destruction of Zaydi shrines and tombs in

Sa’da, which his followers promptly carried out. In the 2000s, the GoY closed down

Zaydi schools associated with the Believing Youth (BY)—a Zaydi revivalist organization

that would eventually transform into the Houthi insurgency—and replaced them with

Salafi ones. President Saleh and his inner circle saw these institutions as vehicles for

explicit religious indoctrination of Sa’da youth. In reality, the BY youth camps focused

on “such mundane issues as after-school study, sports, and local field trips” and were

largely looked down upon by “more literalist [Zaydi] teachers and ulama…as possessing

inadequate religious content.”13 The GoY’s social policies vis-à-vis the northern

governorates proved deeply divisive. By systematically favoring Yemen’s Sunni majority

over its Zaydi minority, the GoY “contributed to a sense among Houthi loyalists that their

religion and culture were under ideological and physical siege.”14 This sense of social

marginalization would become a unifying force for the disparate tribes of the northern

highlands—though, as I will argue, Zaydism served a primarily organizational rather than

ideological purpose.

12 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 93. 13 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 98.14 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 93.

Finally, political developments served to compound lingering economic and

social grievances. While the 1991 Yemeni constitution was republican in nature,

subsequent amendments in 1994 and 2001 consolidated decision-making power with the

presidency and fundamentally renegotiated Yemen’s parliamentary system. The result

was that, by 2006, Sa’da and the northern governments had lost effective representation

in parliament. Yemen has two major parties—the GPC, a non-ideological ruling party

consisting of Saleh’s family and inner circle, and the JMP, a loose confederation of

opposition parties. In the 2006 election, the GPC won 244 of 301 seats. Of the 60 seats

that went to the JMP, the Salafi Islah Party won 46; the Yemeni Socialist Party, which

represents secessionists in the south, won seven; the secular Nasserite and Ba’ath parties

won three and one seat, respectively.15 This left Al-Haqq, the Zaydi party representing the

Amran-Hajja-Sa’da region, with zero seats in parliament—effectively disenfranchising

10% of Yemen’s electorate.16

Nor did Sa’da have informal access to the government. In his lectures, Husayn al-

Houthi, a prominent leader of the insurgency, bemoaned the fact that “the Wahhabis were

able to call [Salafi military commander and relative of Saleh] Ali Muhsin directly.” 17 The

Zaydis, by comparison, had no government officials within the corridors of power.

Meanwhile, despite a membership of just 18,000, “at least one representative from the

[Nasserite] party was almost always included in meetings” among high-level regime

officials.18 The 2006 election fostered a deep sense of political disillusionment among the

Yemenis in the northern governorates. A survey conducted the following year found that,

15 Phillips. Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 106-107.16 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 38.17 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 118. 18 Phillips. Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 107.

in general, participants believed they were unable to solve problems through traditional

means because “power is concentrated at the top.”19

The removal of fuel subsidies in August of 2014 came against the backdrop of

simmering sectional tensions and political frustration. With legitimate grievances against

Sana’a but few avenues to air them nonviolently, the Houthi insurgency reemerged from

a period of relative silence. Thus, while the Houthis remain internally divided regarding

their vision of a post-war settlement, the ultimate and proximate initiators of conflict

suggest primarily material grievances. Economic neglect, social discrimination, and

political marginalization created the powder keg; the removal of subsidies ignited it.

Anti-corruption and pro-development provisions, as well as a more equitable structuring

of the political system, will likely feature into any Houthi-backed settlement.

III. The Role of Zaydism

Identifying socioeconomic and political factors as the impetus for the Houthi movement

does not necessarily imply that the group is secular. After all, countless violent

movements have capitalized on political grievances to deliver inherently religious

outcomes. Al-Qaeda’s opposition to Western involvement in the Middle East, for

example, is largely a function of its global jihadist ideology. Given its inflammatory

rhetoric and explicitly Zaydi identity, the case for the Houthis as religiously motivated

initially appears strong. Yet an examination of Zaydi theology, as well as the statements

and actions of Houthi leaders, should suggest a more nuanced understanding. Religion

does play a central organizational and rhetorical role in the movement. It does not,

however, inform its ends; the Houthis have little interest either in creating a post-war

19 Phillips. Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis. 31.

political order predicated on Zaydi religious beliefs or in reestablishing the pre-1962

imamate.

Like most Shiites, Zaydis of northern Yemen trace the succession of caliphs

through Ali and his sons, Husayn and Hassan, rejecting the early Sunni caliphs as

illegitimate. However, Zaydis depart from Twelver Shiites in their designation of Zayd

al-Baqir, rather than his brother Muhammad, as the fifth imam (for this reason, Zaydis

are referred to as Fivers). The particular beliefs and teachings of Zayd al-Baqir placed

Fivers on a different trajectory from mainstream Shi’ism. According to Zayd, though the

Sunni caliphs were mistaken in their rejection of Ali, they were not inherently sinful:

“When they were entrusted with government,” Zayd said of the caliphs, “they behaved

justly with the people and acted according to the Qur'an and the Sunnah.” 20

Zayd’s conciliatory stance has significant implications for Zaydi theology.

Because “most Zaydis are less vehement than other Shi’ites in their condemnation of the

early Sunni caliphs,” they are relatively tolerant toward diverging interpretations of

Islam.21 Zaydi theological beliefs are only marginally distinct from Sunni doctrine—“the

Shia of Yemen are more Sunni than any other Shia in the world,” writes one Islam expert,

“And the Sunni of Yemen are more Shia than any Sunni in the world.”22 Zaydis are

permitted to pray with Sunnis and have traditionally shied away from proselytizing and

otherwise spreading their beliefs to adherents of different sects.23 Thus, the notion that

Zaydi Houthis seek to impose their religious practices on majority-Sunni Yemen makes

20 The Encyclopedia of Religion Vol.16, Mircea Eliade, Charles J. Adams, Macmillan, 1987, p243.21 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 65. 22 Peterson, Scott. "Does Iran Play Role in Yemen Conflict?" The Christian Science Monitor. N.p., 11 Nov. 2009. Web. 01 May 2015.23 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 66.

little sense in the context of their unique theology. The idea of radical Zaydism, as a sort

of parallel to radical Wahhabism, seems to contradict the very moderation that lies at the

heart of the religious tradition. So, too, does the notion that the Houthis might convert or

subordinate Yemen’s Sunni population once in power, given the inherent similarities

between the two branches of Islam.

Nor do the Houthis seek to secede from Yemen and reestablish the imamate,

which existed in northern Yemen until 1962. While Zaydi revivalists have made

statements to this effect in the past, theological revisions to Zaydism in recent decades

have made the notion passé among leaders and scholars in Amran-Hajja-Sa’da. In order

to secure a place in the Yemeni republican system, the al-Haqq political party officially

declared the imamate “defunct” in 1990, and renounced khuruj—the practice of claiming

an imamate.24 Religious leaders followed suit. Today, there is broad “consensus of Zaydi

scholars…who renounce khuraj and an imamate dependent on Hashimi [tribal]

preeminence.”25 Houthi leaders, too, have denied that their movement seeks to reestablish

the caliphate. In an interview in 2014, Mohamad al-Bhukhaiti, the spokesman of the

Houthi political arm Ansar Allah, declared that, “Returning the imam’s rule is absolutely

unacceptable. We have never talked about this. Even [current Houthi leader] Abdul-

Malik Al-Houthi himself said the Zaydi doctrine is republican.”26 In refusing to call

khuraj, despite their dominant political position, the Houthis have placed themselves

firmly within the modern Zaydi tradition.

24 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 174.25 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 174.26 Al-Bukhaiti, as quoted in Al-Kharimi, Khalid. "Al-Bukhaiti to the Yemen Times:." Yemen Times, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

Despite al-Bhukhaiti’s claims, the GoY has pointed to Husayn al-Houthi’s pre-

insurgency lectures, which contain ostensibly violent religious content, as evidence of

Islamic radicalism among the Houthis. Al-Houthi’s rallying cry (‘God Is Great, Death to

America, Death to Israel, Curse Upon the Jews, Victory for Islam’), which members of

the Believing Youth took up during the 2004 Sana’a protests, is a particularly virulent

example of such rhetoric. It would be a mistake, however, to read too much into this

slogan. The primary intention of the slogan was to shed light on Saleh’s close

relationship with the US and Israel, a relationship that, according to al-Houthi, made him

more responsive to the West than to the Yemeni periphery. In condemning Saleh’s

policies, al-Houthi used rhetoric more or less typical of non-violent and violent

organizations throughout the Middle East. While certainly fiery, such statements “fell,

and continue to fall, within the normal discursive parameters of Friday sermons in Yemen

and the broader Arab world.”27 In his lectures, Husayn al-Houthi explicitly warned his

followers not to take the slogan as a literal incitement to violence, but rather as an attempt

to create “discontent that the Jews avoid.”28 Ultimately, Al-Houthi’s slogan sought to

capitalize on growing anti-US and anti-Saleh sentiments in Sa’da, while also “giving his

followers a way of identifying with one another.”29

In fact, an analysis of Husayn al-Houthi’s speeches from 2002 to 2003 by the

Rand Corporation indicates that they appear typical manifestations of anti-Western

sentiment in the Middle East region, not exhortations to jihad. At no point does Husayn

“make any outlandish claims, such as being the hidden Imam, nor does he call for the

27 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 120.28 Husayn al-Houthi, as quoted in Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 119. 29 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 119.

return of the Imamate to Northern Yemen.”30 While Husayn does make constant

references to Zaydism, “he does so to point out the relative weakness of Sa’da and the

lack of Zaydi cohesion when compared to Wahhabism.” The primary utility of Al-

Houthi’s religious rhetoric, then, was not in prescribing a post-war political agenda.

Instead, it sought to draw attention to Sa’da’s relative marginalization and mobilize

northerners under a common identity.

Yet even from an organizational standpoint, Zaydi religious identity did not play

as a great a role as one might imagine. There is a compelling case in favor of tribal and

familial bonds as the more salient cohesive force. According to Houthi spokesman al-

Bhukhaiti:

As for the sectarian aspect, Yemeni people, across the spectrum, do not

perceive the conflict as such. The sectarian factor has never been an issue

in deciding who we ally ourselves with. While it is part of who we are, it

occupies a secondary role and is not a decisive factor… in Yemen, tribal

affiliation and Arab nationalistic sentiments have more of an influence

among Yemenis than the sectarian identity.31

Indeed, one of the strongest social forces within Yemen is a value system known as

qabyala, or tribalism, “in which individual autonomy and collective honor take

precedence over other ties” such as state authority or religious faith. This tradition

elevates “solidarity with kinsmen” and protection of one’s family and tribe. Further,

given a history of sedentary subsistence agriculture, “Yemeni qaba’il exhibit a

30 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 120.31 Al-Bukhaiti, as quoted in Al-Kharimi, Khalid. "Al-Bukhaiti to the Yemen Times:." Yemen Times, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

particularly strong attachment to and identification with ‘their’ territories.”32 In other

words, tribes in Yemen act like self-contained “micro states,” held together not only by

familial bonds but also by a strong sense of place.

In this context, the GoY’s killing of Hussein al-Houthi following the 2004

protests in Sana’a would be seen as attack on the entire Hashimi confederation, the

dominant tribe in the northern highlands, as well as the territory that it inhabits. Tribal

solidarity would have also extended to the minority Bakil and Khawlan clans on account

of marriage and associational links. The particular heavy-handedness of the government’s

response would have further “violated local cultural norms whereby mediation and

violent rhetoric had traditionally served as a means to preempt violent action.”33 It would

also have reinforced the perception among northern tribes that they were being

collectively punished by the GoY, and that the correct response was collective defense. In

this sense, the focus on the Houthis’ Zaydi identity may be unwarranted. After all, it was

only after the 2004 GoY invasion of Sa’da that the Believing Youth transformed into a

full-fledged Houthi insurgency. The GoY’s actions in the north seem to have tapped into

a latent sense of tribal solidarity among the Sa’da population—a solidarity that al-Houthi

had tried, with only partial success, to activate with his religious rhetoric.

IV. Terrorist Group or Insurgency?

Categorizing the Houthi rebels as either terrorists or insurgents is a more difficult task

than meets the eye. This is primarily because the two terms are considered mutually

exclusive; one is either a terrorist or an insurgent, but not both. In this context, the word

32 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 3.33 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 3.

‘terrorist’ is being used to categorize a violent actor. But ‘terrorist’ can also refer to an act

perpetrated in furtherance of a group’s goals. Thus, to evaluate the GoY’s claim that the

Houthis are terrorists, a claim echoed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, we must ask two

separate questions. First, do the Houthis engage in terrorist acts? And second, are they

primarily a terrorist group or an insurgency?

In answering the first question, I will use the US State Department’s definition of

terrorism: “Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetuated against

noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to

influence an audience.”34 The Houthi movement engages in a number of tactics that

would be considered irregular, but that fall short of terrorism. The use of IEDs on major

roads has resulted in civilian loss of life; however, because the target of the roadside

bombs are military convoys, any harm that may come to noncombatants cannot be

considered “premeditated” or intended. The Houthis regularly attack administrative

buildings, bridges, and electricity statements, knowing that such attacks will kill

noncombatants and harm the general population; but these attacks are meant to achieve

concrete military objectives, not “influence an audience” by creating a climate of fear.

While the use of ambushes has a psychological “terror” component, the fact that these

attacks are directed at military targets disqualifies them from most definitions of

terrorism.

While most of its tactics are conventional, if irregular, the Houthis do engage in

practices that meet the definition of terrorism. The Houthis actively target tribal leaders in

league with the GoY, as well as their family members and homes. There are

34 Whittaker, David J. The Terrorism Reader. London: Routledge, 2001. 3.

independently verified cases of Houthis murdering GoY supporters in “gruesome ways”

with the apparent intention of “sending a message to local tribesmen to reject GoY

entreaties.”35 This tactic checks all the boxes of a terrorist attack: premeditation,

noncombatant targets, and the aim of influencing an audience through fear.

Answering the second question, however, requires a careful analysis of the

structure and ends of the Houthi movement. It is not simply enough to define a terrorist

group as one that engages in terrorist acts. A particularly illustrative example is the US

State Department’s designation of al-Qaeda as a terrorist group and the Taliban as an

insurgency. The latter group engages in frequent, and often appalling, acts of violence

against noncombatants in order to create a general climate of fear and advance its

political goals. To understand the State Department’s decision, then, let us consider the

following definition of insurgency:

An insurgency is a struggle between a nonruling group and the ruling

authorities in which the nonruling group consciously uses political

resources (e.g., organizational expertise, propaganda, and demonstrations)

and violence to destroy, reformulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of

one or more aspects of politics.36

While Al-Qaeda and the Taliban use both political resources and violence to further their

goals, the distinction between them is that the Taliban supports a fundamentally political

project. It emphasizes political goals such as winning popular support and holding

territory, with an eye toward ultimately engaging in governance. Violence is thus one of

35 Salmoni. Regime and Periphery, 183.36 Morris, Michael F. "Al-Qaeda As Insurgency." USAWC Strategy Research Project (2005): 4-8. U.S. Army War College, 18 Mar. 2005.

many tools of the insurgency, and by no means the predominant one. By contrast, Al-

Qaeda’s violence “replaces rather than complements a political program.”37 Al-Qaeda

certainly uses token political resources such as propaganda videos in service of a political

agenda. But such tactics are auxiliary, and violence predominates Al-Qaeda’s strategic

thinking and goals.

A recent U.S. Army War College paper offers a sound distinction between

insurgency and terrorist group:

Terrorists and insurgents may employ exactly the same methods, and

utilize force or the threat thereof to coerce their target audiences and

further the organizational agenda…Thus, the use of terror in and of itself

does not equate to terrorism; the former is merely a tactical tool of the

latter. Lawrence Freedman suggests that the terror of terrorists equates to

“strategic” terrorism, because it is the primary means by which they

pursue their agenda. However, the terror insurgents employ is more

tactical in nature, since it is only one of several violent tools such groups

wield.38

The implication here is that there is a range of state and sub-state actors that engage in

terrorist behavior, but that insurgencies do so incidentally. To remove this tool from their

toolkit would not fundamentally change the nature of the organization. For a terrorist

group to refrain from terrorism, however, would be a contradiction in terms.

This offers a fairly unambiguous answer to the question of whether the Houthis

are a terrorist group. From a tactical standpoint, the Houthis could continue to engage in

37 Morris, “Al-Qaeda as Insurgency.”38 Morris, “Al-Qaeda as Insurgency.”

their military campaign without the use of terrorism, regardless of changes in efficacy.

Strategically, violence complements a robust political agenda that includes enforcing law

and order, offering services to its population, communicating its message internally and

externally, and negotiating a political settlement with outside factions.

V. Conclusion

In evaluating the interpretation of the Houthis as Islamist terrorists, a full picture of the

group begins to emerge. One can identify a number of ultimate causes of the insurgency:

uneven development amidst a climate of rampant corruption, a GoY-backed program of

social discrimination, and a lack of political avenues for change. At the same time, these

grievances fell upon the traditionally neglected population of the Amran-Hajja-Sa’da,

which shares a sense of “apartness” from Yemen’s geographic center. Two proximate

causes served as tipping points in the conflict. The first was the killing of Husayn al-

Houthi, which promoted an ‘us vs. them’ mentality among northern tribesmen and

convinced the Believing Youth to engage in armed struggle. The second was the removal

of fuel subsidies, which hit the food-insecure periphery particularly hard and marked a

period of renewed conflict. Zaydism played a role insofar as it coincided with existing

tribal identities and helped define the northern highlands in opposition to the rest of

Yemen.

While the GoY’s description of the Houthis as “terrorists” has elements of truth, it

is ultimately misleading. The Houthi movement, for all its internal inconsistencies and

ambiguities, has a robust enough political agenda and diverse enough tactics to qualify as

a traditional insurgency. That the GoY and the Gulf States have insisted on the terrorist

designation is a function of our current political climate. As long as the West focuses its

collective attention on waging a Global War on Terror, nations will continue to

characterize nationalist uprisings as manifestations of international jihadism. In some

cases these characterizations will prove accurate, and in others they will not. For this

reason, rhetoric cannot replace careful analysis of the motivations and tactics of violent

movements. In the case of Yemen, an understanding of the Houthi insurgency as

sectional rather than sectarian could have vast implications in terms of how foreign

nations choose to act.