The Houthis and Yemen's war: from northern rebellion to regional power

For much of the twentieth century, there was no single Yemeni state. In the north, Zaydi imams combined religious and political authority. The September 1962 revolution overthrew the imamate and opened a civil war: Egypt supported the republicans, while Saudi Arabia backed the royalists. The fighting ended in a compromise in 1970 that incorporated some royalists into the republic.⁶

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That history complicates any account of Yemen as an unchanging Sunni–Shia confrontation. Saudi Arabia had once supported a Zaydi royalist cause. The later Houthi movement emerged in the same northern religious landscape, but under different leaders, in a different state and against a different set of political opponents.⁶

The south followed another path. British rule centred on Aden ended in 1967, and the state that emerged subsequently adopted a Marxist system. North and South Yemen united in May 1990. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the northern president, became president of the new republic; southern leader Ali Salem al-Beidh became vice-president.⁷⁸

Their partnership did not last. Rivalries within the new state led to civil war in 1994 and a southern attempt to secede. Saleh's forces captured Aden in July. Yemen remained formally united, but unity had survived through military victory, leaving the question of how power would be shared unresolved.⁸

For the future Houthi movement, the immediate grievance lay farther north. Religious revivalists around Saada believed Zaydi teaching and influence were being displaced, including by expanding Salafi religious institutions. Their response began through education and organisation before it became an armed rebellion.¹

Zaydism is a branch of Shia Islam with deep roots in Yemen. It is distinct from the Twelver tradition dominant in Iran. That distinction matters: a shared Shia label does not explain the movement's origins or establish that its followers began as agents of Tehran.⁹

In the 1990s, the Believing Youth organised religious teaching, social activities and summer camps. Hussein al-Houthi, a former parliamentarian, became an influential figure within this wider revival. He increasingly criticised Saleh's government and its relationship with the United States. What began within Yemen's political and religious life moved towards a direct confrontation with the president.¹

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In 2004 government forces attempted to subdue Hussein and his followers. Hussein was killed that September. The movement survived him, taking the family's name; his brother Abdulmalik became its leader. Six rounds of war between the government and the Houthis followed across 2004–10.⁹

The wars also reshaped civilian life in Saada. Human Rights Watch's 2008 investigation described displacement, restrictions on humanitarian access and communities beyond the reach of relief agencies. Even after an announced end to fighting, access to rural districts could remain severely restricted. A ceasefire announcement did not necessarily let a displaced family return home or obtain assistance.¹⁰

The state had repeatedly tried to defeat the movement. By the uprising of 2011, the Houthis had established control across much of Saada and joined protests against Saleh. They entered the next national crisis with an armed organisation and a territorial base.¹

Yemen's 2011 protest movement demanded a change in how the country was governed. A transition agreement brokered through the Gulf Cooperation Council and supported by the UN provided for Saleh to hand power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. Hadi took office in 2012, and a National Dialogue Conference followed in 2013–14.¹¹

The dialogue attempted something broader than replacing a president. Participants addressed the structure of the state, rights, governance and the relationship between its regions. Its outcome envisaged a federal, democratic Yemen. Turning that programme into a functioning political order required agreement on institutions and implementation after the conference ended.¹¹

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That agreement did not hold. Disputes over the transition continued while the Houthis expanded militarily. In September 2014 they took Sanaa, supported by forces aligned with their former enemy Saleh. The president who had fought them was now helping them displace the successor who had taken his office.²

The alliance gave the advance a significance beyond the arrival of rebel fighters. State institutions and military networks became part of the struggle for control. The Houthis could now exercise authority in the capital while drawing on an alliance with elements of the old regime.⁴

In early 2015 Hadi and his government were forced from power in Sanaa. Hadi escaped to Aden; the Houthi-led advance continued south. He sought outside military assistance as the struggle over Yemen's transition became a struggle over who could govern the country at all.¹²

Saudi Arabia began its coalition intervention in March 2015. Its stated aim was to restore the internationally recognised government. The Houthis' advance had brought an armed movement aligned with Iran into control of the capital of Saudi Arabia's southern neighbour.²

In April, UN Security Council Resolution 2216 demanded that the Houthis withdraw from areas they had seized, including Sanaa, and relinquish weapons taken from state institutions. It imposed a targeted arms embargo and also called for renewed political negotiations. The resolution specified demands; it did not provide a mechanism that could make the forces controlling the capital carry them out.¹²

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The intervention widened the war without quickly resolving it. The coalition used air power, while Yemeni forces fought on the ground. Battles continued around population centres and economically important territory. By 2021, the Houthi offensive around Marib threatened a government stronghold, energy infrastructure and a governorate sheltering many people already displaced by the war.²

Outside support deepened. A 2026 Congressional Research Service account describes growing Iranian assistance alongside the development of Houthi cross-border attacks. It also records US logistical, intelligence and advisory support to the Saudi-led coalition, with aerial refuelling ending in 2018.⁵

The local struggle and the regional confrontation had become inseparable. Yet the alliances inside Yemen remained unstable: sharing an external sponsor or an enemy did not settle who would exercise power after the fighting.¹³

The Houthi–Saleh partnership collapsed in December 2017. Fighting broke out between the former allies, and Saleh was killed on 4 December. A UN sanctions-monitoring report documented the rupture and his death. The alliance that had helped the Houthis reach Sanaa had ended with the removal of their most important domestic partner.¹⁴

The Houthis also developed a system for governing the territory they held. Sana'a Center research describes supervisors placed alongside formal ministries and local institutions, with authority running through the movement's own hierarchy. Existing government offices continued to exist, but holding an official post did not necessarily mean controlling the decisions made within it.⁴

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The opposing camp had its own divisions. Southern separatists and the internationally recognised government fought over authority in the south. Saudi Arabia brokered the Riyadh Agreement in November 2019 between the government and the Southern Transitional Council, but the UN records that implementation was limited.¹³

In April 2022 Hadi transferred his powers to a Presidential Leadership Council intended to encompass a broader set of political actors. The UN welcomed the change as a possible step towards an inclusive settlement. It was a reorganisation of the internationally recognised leadership, not an agreement with the Houthis.¹⁵

Those divisions persisted. A February 2026 Congressional Research Service report records Saudi intervention against the Southern Transitional Council after its late-2025 offensive, the reversal of its gains, and the council's dissolution. Yemen's anti-Houthi forces were themselves being reorganised while the larger conflict remained unresolved.⁵

Yemen's civilian losses cannot be understood solely by counting people killed in attacks. War damaged the economy and the systems through which people obtained food, water and medical care. A household could be far from the front and still lose the means to survive.¹⁶

In a study published in November 2021, the United Nations Development Programme estimated that, if conflict continued through that year's end, it would have caused 377,000 deaths. Around 60 per cent were attributed to indirect effects such as hunger and disease. This was a modelled estimate of conflict-attributable mortality, not a register of individually confirmed deaths or a current casualty total.¹⁶

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The distinction explains the scale of recovery required. Stopping combat would save lives, but rebuilding livelihoods, health services and access to basic necessities would remain essential. The same report examined recovery as a long-term development task rather than an automatic consequence of a ceasefire.¹⁶

Responsibility for abuses was also broader than one front line. In 2021 UN-appointed experts reported serious violations by parties to the conflict, including arbitrary detention, disappearance and torture. They highlighted the vulnerability of journalists, human-rights defenders and people perceived as opponents of whichever authority controlled their area.¹⁷

Their findings came with access limitations: the experts said they had been denied permission to visit Yemen and coalition countries for a third consecutive year. Their report was evidence to assess, not a substitute for individual investigations and accountability. Yemen's government rejected the group's approach as biased.¹⁷

Hodeidah, also spelt Hudaydah, became a focus of diplomacy in 2018 as a military offensive threatened the Red Sea port area. The UN describes the Stockholm Agreement as an effort to avert a wider attack there. A monitoring mission followed in January 2019.¹³

The December 2018 agreement had three distinct parts: arrangements for Hodeidah and the ports of Salif and Ras Issa, a mechanism for prisoner exchanges, and an understanding concerning Taiz. The parties committed to implementation and to avoiding actions that would undermine the agreement.¹⁸

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Its scope was deliberately limited. It addressed specified places and humanitarian problems while leaving the national contest for power unresolved. Saving a port area from further fighting could be important without amounting to peace throughout Yemen.¹⁸

The episode established a pattern that returned in later diplomacy: negotiate measures capable of reducing immediate harm, then try to build a political process around them. The UN's subsequent work on a nationwide settlement continued because those local arrangements had not resolved the country's competing claims to authority.¹⁹

On 2 April 2022 a UN-brokered nationwide truce began. Over the following six months, the UN reported a substantial reduction in violence and civilian casualties, increased fuel deliveries through Hodeidah and the return of international commercial flights from Sanaa after almost six years.²⁰

For Yemenis, those changes concerned journeys, supplies and the possibility of daily life becoming less dangerous. The truce was renewed twice. It formally expired in October 2022, but its collapse on paper did not immediately produce a return to the previous level of war.²⁰¹⁹

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Writing in April 2023, UN envoy Hans Grundberg said the truce was broadly holding and many provisions continued to operate. He also warned that its gains needed a political foundation. The unresolved work concerned security, resources, institutions and a process including Yemenis beyond the armed parties.¹⁹

In December 2023 his office announced commitments towards a UN roadmap. Proposed measures included a nationwide ceasefire, payment of public-sector salaries, resumed oil exports, reopened roads and further easing of restrictions on the airport and ports. Each addressed part of the way military and economic division shaped ordinary life.²¹

The announcement concerned commitments and work towards a roadmap, rather than a completed national settlement. That distinction became increasingly consequential as a new regional confrontation reached Yemen's coastline.²¹

The Gaza war drew the Houthis into a wider campaign against Israel and shipping. Beginning in late 2023, attacks threatened vessels approaching the Red Sea and the Suez route. This connected an armed movement based in Yemen to commercial voyages linking Asia, Europe and Africa.³

The effect extended beyond ships that were actually struck. Shipping companies diverted vessels around southern Africa, increasing voyage distances and costs. UN Trade and Development reported major disruption to Suez traffic in early 2024. These were consequences for a transport network: a threat at one point altered decisions made across entire routes.³

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Bab el-Mandeb is the southern entrance to that network, linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. It is separate from the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. A vessel or company facing insecurity in one passage may therefore encounter a different conflict along an alternative route.²²

US strikes expanded during March–May 2025. On 6 May, Oman announced an agreement between Washington and the authorities in Sanaa to stop targeting one another, including American vessels in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb. Its wording concerned those parties and that confrontation; it did not settle Yemen's internal war.²³

A bilateral ceasefire could reduce one danger while leaving others intact. The earlier national truce, the port agreement and the US–Houthi arrangement each had different participants and terms. None established a common government for Yemen.²³¹⁸

By autumn 2026, renewed fighting was displacing people on a large scale again. Reuters reported, citing the International Organization for Migration, that more than 200,000 people had fled, nearly all since fighting began in early September. The report described displacement across ten governorates and people escaping by sea to Djibouti.²⁴

The fighting reached Saudi civilian infrastructure. Reuters' 10 October report recorded an attack on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport that Saudi authorities said killed at least 12 people and injured more than 300. The Saudi-led coalition blamed the Houthis; that initial report distinguished its attribution from a separate Houthi claim of responsibility.²⁵

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Subsequent reporting changed that record. On 11 October, Associated Press reported that the Houthis had claimed the airport attacks and that another strike had killed a person at the terminal. It also reported India's announcement that a citizen wounded in Saturday's attack had died, bringing that attack's reported toll to 13.²⁶

The humanitarian emergency inside Yemen continued beneath those international headlines. In an October Reuters interview, the migration agency's country chief described new displacement adding to an already large displaced population, while available humanitarian resources were shrinking. The latest fighting was arriving on top of unresolved losses from earlier rounds.²⁷

Yemen's history contains several different negotiations: over the distribution of power after Saleh, control of ports, relief for civilians, relations between rival anti-Houthi groups, and attacks beyond Yemen's borders. Their differing terms explain why progress in one negotiation could coexist with continuing insecurity elsewhere.¹¹¹³²³

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The movement that emerged from Saada's religious revival became a force able to seize state institutions and influence international shipping. Its growth took place through Yemeni political conflicts, changing alliances and foreign intervention. The unresolved question is how the people living under those competing authorities can obtain lasting security and accountable government.⁴¹⁹