They are no different from ISIS and Al-Qaeda.. American magazine: The Houthis challenged the international system and their leaders must be targeted and defeated

The Houthis have long been a source of concern for anyone who cares about the well-being of the Yemeni people, the stability of the Arabian Peninsula, and security in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab. But the prominent role they have taken on since October 7 in the “axis of resistance” has raised these concerns to a new level.

Having spent a great deal of time negotiating with the Houthis at a time when I was focused solely on achieving peace in Yemen, I would caution that this is not a liberation movement. Rather, it is a vicious, chauvinistic, and violent group. I recall two moments of brutal clarity from senior Houthi leaders.

One was when they told me, long before they actually did it, that they were in an alliance of convenience only with Ali Abdullah Saleh, and as soon as he stopped being useful to them, they would kill him.

The second moment of clarity was when they told me that they would ultimately win in Yemen “because you care, and we don’t. You care about Yemenis dying. We don’t care about how many people die. When enough people die, you’ll beg us to make peace.”

Later, when I saw their snipers in Aden and Taiz killing civilians for fun—doctors and nurses in a hospital hiding under window frames to go about their business because a khat-addicted Houthi sniper on a rooftop was shooting anyone who showed himself from the window—the words of my interlocutor came back to mind.

Over the past two decades, the Houthis have become more violent and fanatical. They resisted Saleh’s attempts to subjugate them before he was ousted during Yemen’s version of the Arab Spring. When their leader, Hussein al-Houthi, was killed in 2004, Hussein’s brother, Abdulmalik, took over the movement, holding what turned out to be a deadly grudge against Saleh.

Their participation in the National Dialogue was in bad faith, as they were gradually seizing control of Yemen’s northern provinces and preparing for the attack on Sana’a, which they launched in September 2014.

The main factor that enabled this dramatic expansion of Houthi power, which later briefly extended to Aden in the far south, was the shift from war with Saleh to an opportunistic alliance with him that caused a large part of the Yemeni army that remained loyal to Saleh to surrender or assist him in the Houthi advance.

The Houthi advances reached their peak in 2015 before the Saudi-backed Yemeni government pushed them halfway to Sanaa, and the battle lines have largely stabilized over the decade since. Despite suffering heavy losses over the past 20 years of fighting various opponents, including the Saudis, nothing has happened to persuade the Houthis to concede or modify their approach.

They have become more battle-hardened, their field commanders accustomed to the accumulated wealth and fear of a war economy, and their ties to Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have grown closer, relying on both for military supplies, training and technical support.

The Houthis used and encouraged propaganda against the Saudis and their Western allies to good effect: the war was unpopular in the West, and Saudi Arabia realized it lacked the support to push for victory for the internationally recognized government. Instead, the Saudis became increasingly eager to exit the conflict, even if it meant handing Yemen over to the Houthis and paying them protection money to leave them in peace.

An interesting question to consider from their perspective is: Was the international community guilty of naivety in failing to provide unconditional support to the internationally recognized government, and was this largely due to the emotional hostility to the Saudis that is so common in Western progressive circles?

If the Houthis pose a real, chronic threat to the Arabian Sea and intend to hold freedom of navigation in the Red Sea hostage to whatever tactical interest they choose to pursue, is it inevitable to try to revive and empower the Saudi-Yemeni government alliance to suppress them?

It may be helpful to offer some reflections and anecdotes from the period from November 2014 to January 2017, when I was preparing to take up the ambassadorship, and then actually doing so – albeit in the frustration of my exile in Jeddah because we had to withdraw from Sana’a in early 2015.

I must say that those horrific conversations I mentioned at the beginning of this article came very early in my time in Muscat, where I had traveled to facilitate contact between the United States and the Houthis, who at that time were willing to talk to the British but not the Americans.

The Omanis graciously hosted two sessions of talks between me and senior Houthi leaders, which amounted to about ten hours of intensive discussions and negotiations in Arabic. I succeeded in my limited mission, and the U.S.-Houthi contact had already been established long before the June 2015 peace talks in Geneva.

Later, I played a prominent role in supporting the three rounds of peace talks between the Houthis and President Hadi’s representatives. I also communicated extensively with Saleh loyalists and his associates to try to work on this side of the Yemeni puzzle, and I came to know and admire the current leader of the legitimate government, Rashad Al-Alimi. Working closely with the excellent UN envoys, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed and Kenny Gluck, we tried everything to achieve peace and failed.

The peace talks were certainly remarkable. They evolved from the deep frustration of the talks in Geneva in June, when the Houthis refused even to participate, the government side showed up with a delegate linked to Al Qaeda, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon foolishly decided to show up to force the Houthis to take a photo, with the only effect of giving the Houthis the opportunity to secure concessions by threatening to boycott the photo shoot. After months of retreating to the Swiss mountains, the two sides finally met, albeit reluctantly and fruitlessly.

Then came Kuwait in the spring and summer of 2016—real peace talks that I think were probably the closest we’ll get to a peace agreement (albeit on very favorable terms to the Houthis) until 2023. We stayed in a comfortable hotel for about three months: the UN, the US, the UK, and several of the group of ambassadors supporting peace in Yemen, then known as the G18.

The Kuwaitis also provided a palace for the guests for some conversation. They were gracious and helpful hosts, but the same could not be said of their Houthi guests, who made endlessly unreasonable demands, including a constant supply of qat (an illegal drug in Kuwait whose supply or possession is usually a serious criminal offense).

They would arrive late to meetings, indulge in tantrums, walk out, make threats, and recriminate each other, and change their negotiating position from day to day.

There was a standoff when the main Houthi negotiator, Mohammed Abdul Salam, had his Facebook account shut down because of hateful material. The fix—getting him back on Facebook despite the hateful material—required showing his ID, which showed he was 13 years old. It turned out he had traveled to Kuwait on his son’s passport.

The Houthi delegation included real bigwigs who still hold important positions in the movement today. But I must record the reflections of a respected Yemeni politician, Abdul Karim al-Iryani, whose death during my tenure in Yemen was a tragedy at the end of an era. Speaking of Mahdi al-Mashat, the most disruptive and disruptive member of the delegation, al-Iryani is said to have remarked that his preference for a senior role in those days was a signal to go and die.

Mashat grew up in Saada as a worthless thug, and it was a coincidence that he was in Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s circle. This was clearly a sufficient qualification for his rise to high positions in the de facto administration, of which he now holds the title of “president.”

But we kept working, and we got closer and closer to a deal. Abdul Salam, who remains the Houthis’ chief negotiator and spokesman to this day, was serious about the Kuwait talks. He won the Saudis’ trust, and the outlines of an agreement began to take shape, with the Houthis retaining most of the reins of power in Yemen and Saudi Arabia withdrawing with dignity.

The Saudis want to get out of a war they feel they have been trapped in for years. They recently went so far as to pressure the legitimate government in Yemen to back down from challenging the status of banks in Sanaa, even though such financial institutions are, by definition, clients of terrorist financing.

The international community wants to see humanitarian needs in Yemen alleviated, knowing that the Houthis will continue to weaponize the Yemeni humanitarian crisis to further their interests. All of this raises the question: Is it possible to pursue peace in Yemen and deterrence in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab?

6. Recent US actions, including the formation of a coalition with the UK and others to counter Iranian and Houthi aggression, suggest that this will be a priority. Indeed, it should be. The right of shipping to peacefully transit international shipping lanes is well established and must be strengthened.

The Houthis are not a recognized government, and attacking them proportionately is not an act of war against Yemen—indeed, there is no reason why their leadership should be any more exempt from targeting than the leadership of ISIS or al-Qaeda.

Signaling to the Houthis that the challenge they face is too great, and accepting their talk of peace after nine years of brutality against the Yemeni people, is enough in itself to secure them the freedom to engage in international blackmail, which in effect means surrendering to them.

There is no guarantee that the new UN talks will lead to anything – so the Houthis can be told that these talks are welcome for their own sake, but they are not about maritime law enforcement, and that they will face serious consequences if their attacks continue.

The only condition here is that the kinetic action does not damage vital infrastructure on the Yemeni coast, especially the port of Hodeidah, which is essential for commercial and humanitarian operations on which the well-being of many Yemenis depends.

But we should look again at the extent to which the Houthis are diverting and exploiting humanitarian aid. We should also point out that the Houthis themselves are threatening Yemenis with famine by deterring ships from approaching Hodeidah.

The Houthis impose a tax on humanitarian aid entering territory they control from territory controlled by the legitimate government in Yemen. But this in itself is not sufficient reason to reject the idea of ​​diverting more aid through Aden and other ports controlled by the legitimate government in Yemen.

I should also add that during my tenure as ambassador, there was an endless series of incidents in which Iran was accused of arming the Houthis. This situation was always denied, and it was difficult to obtain international consensus on it, despite the strong evidence.

There was also reciprocity: as the Houthis advanced across Yemen in 2015, we saw them prioritize the release of prisoners of interest to Iran. There is no doubt about the technical, financial, and logistical support the Houthis enjoy from Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Now, we see this clearly in Iran’s support for Houthi aggression in the Red Sea, including with the Behshad. And this brings me to the final point, the “elephant in the room”—the cause of the problems still there: At what point will we hold Iran directly responsible for the asymmetric warfare it has waged against us?

The issue became acute not because of any Houthi action, but because of the killing of American soldiers in Jordan in an Iranian proxy attack. The Biden administration has raised the stakes again, hitting a series of Iranian-linked targets in Iraq and Syria in addition to launching more strikes against the Houthis.

But with Iran’s proxies continuing to launch anti-American attacks—especially if more Americans are killed—the United States has no choice but to impose direct consequences on Iran. People are already asking why Behshad wasn’t drowned.

Iran’s past behavior suggests that sending an unambiguous but proportionate message should not lead to reckless Iranian escalation. And Iran is a reasonable actor. For example, in late December, India deployed ships to warn Iran against further disruption of shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, and Iran backed down.

We hesitate to call for military action, but it now seems possible that Iran will simply continue to escalate until it is forced to back down in the face of a stronger response. Iran will only recalibrate its appetite for risk if it now faces severe, targeted sanctions for its aggression, along with a clear message that there will be more to come if necessary.

It is highly hoped that the current US response, by sending military assets to the region, will be sufficient to deter Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis from further escalation.

Source: American Long War Journal - Translated by: Yemen Youth Net