The Houthis Are Winning — Here’s Why

CONFLICTED

This episode features analyst Mohammed al-Basha discussing the rapid military expansion of the Houthi movement in Yemen, specifically their recent

Key takeaways

• The Houthis executed a lightning offensive on Yemen's West Coast, capturing key command centers and infrastructure in just days.
• The movement has leveraged the Gaza conflict to boost recruitment, reaching an estimated 1.3 million people through religious indoctrination.

Main topics

• Houthi military offensives in Yemen
• Impact of October 7th on Houthi recruitment

Notable quotes

The Houthis are winning because the other side is divided.

Conclusion

The Houthi movement represents a significant shift from a ragtag milit

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello, dear listeners. Welcome back to Conflicted. I'm Thomas Small. Eamon cannot be with us today. He's traveling for work. No doubt he'll come back with lots of interesting information to share. But he told me, Thomas, don't worry. I've got the best guy to replace me for this week. He knows everything about Yemen. And, of course, that is what we're all interested in understanding more of, Yemen, given everything that's going on there and the geostrategic, geopolitical, global economic consequences of that conflict. His name, dear listeners, is Mohamed al-Basha, a Yemeni-American, the founder of the Basha Report, a risk advisory firm in D.C. Basha, thanks for coming on Conflicted. Thank you for hosting me. Now, Bashir, you've had a pretty remarkable vantage point on Yemen over the last 20 years. You were the director of the Yemen Media Center in D.C. and a correspondent for the Saba News Agency. So you have been right there throughout the war on terror years and then through the Arab Spring and the unraveling of Ali Abdullah Saleh's political order. Since then you have spent years working as a Yemen and regional security analyst. You followed the Houthis very closely. You followed the anti-Houthi forces very closely. Given all that experience, you really are the perfect person to help us understand not just what has happened over the last few weeks, but the much wider story of what is going on in Yemen. First, Basha, in the most general terms, how do you make sense of the past 25 years of Yemeni history? Let's say since 9-11, we've just passed that remarkable anniversary. So in the most general terms, what's the headline? What have those 25 years been like for Yemen? Speaker 2 (1:49) instability that will be the one word to define the past two decades um but i always tell share this story of how one of my most viral comments was in september 21st uh 2014 during the houthi takeover which the 12th anniversary was yesterday actually and when that takeover happened I was just confused about what was the situation on the ground, completely confused. And a newswire asked me, what was my comment? And I said, I have no idea what's going on. And that went viral. And people appreciated that, you know, I, even though I was a Yemen subject matter expert, that sometimes you don't know what's going on. Right now, the situation in Yemen sometimes also puts me in a position where I was like, I'm not sure what's going on, where we're headed, where we're going. I started my career in D.C. talking about, you know, the post-coal bombing. Then you had the formation of... the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, then you had the Houthi rebellion, the six wars, then the Arab Spring, then the collapse of the government, then a new government, then things were stable, then the Houthi takeover, and the 12-year war. So it's just Speaker 1 (3:07) been a lot of conflict. Absolutely. Eamon and I, last week, took listeners through the details of what happened on Yemen's west coast earlier this month. So I don't want to spend too long reconstructing the battle itself. Just in summary, beginning on the 4th of September, the Houthis launched a lightning offensive down the western coast, and roughly by a week later, government-aligned forces had abandoned Mocha, and the Houthis had returned to that sort of immediate Bab al-Mandeb hinterland. They had reversed in a matter of days what had taken the Saudi and in that part of Yemen, especially the Emirati-backed coalition, years to build. The territorial loss was bad enough, but also the anti-Houthi forces suffered a collapse of like the whole military infrastructure around Mocha. They lost bases to the Houthis, the command and control facilities were taken, tons of weapons, communication systems, etc. So these had all been constructed and purchased at huge expense, mainly paid for by the Emiratis, precisely to keep the Houthis away from the straits. So losing all of this... is a major failure. So, Basha, why did this happen? Given your expertise, since you spent years studying the Houthis, you know, and you know that, like, we can't think of them as some ragtag militia anymore. They are a watertight organization. They know what they're doing. So what happened on the West Coast? So on June 25th, I Speaker 2 (4:42) started forecasting that by September 21st, during the Houthis 12th anniversary of their takeover and their revolution that they will capture Bab al-Mandab. So I was not surprised. And the shaping operations actually started on the 9th of August. So it took them one month of shaping operations where they used ballistic missiles to take out C2 Nods. They used drones to take out artillery guns. Katyusha launchers to take out other drone teams. And they've used a combination of drones and ballistic missiles to even target battalion level commanders. So after a couple of weeks of shaping operations, the forces on the West Coast didn't have an air defense system. They did not have the correct setup to protect. their forces from the shaping operations that the Houthis did. And when the Houthis attacked, the Houthis attacked from multiple fronts using small teams, wave after wave. There's footage that the Houthis released this week of that operation, and you could see the hilltop, which was commanded by the National Resistance Forces, and the Houthis were sending multiple 10-man team that were climbing up the sides of the mountain while... raining down mortars on them while shooting ballistic missiles and targeting with drones. And a lot of these bases and hilltops and peaks collapsed very quickly. And there are many reasons for why we reached that point where at the end, the last 72 hours were dramatic. The forces were redeployed down south from Khokha to Mokka to Bab al-Mandab. And, you know, right now, how... half of the national resistance forces is still sort of intact and maybe redeployed to other fronts. So it's not like the whole force disappeared. But I think if you look at Yemen's history from 1962, if you look at the role that the British SAS were doing, supporting the Royalists against the Republicans from 62 to 65, and then from 65 to 70, you always see that it's the Yemenis infighting. that weakens them against an adversary. And the Houthis since, you know, from 2004, I think they are who they are today because the anti-Houthi coalition and the government are just knee deep in fighting, in political infighting, and the forces that formed the West Coast, they were not from one geographical region. You had local Tehami resistance who identified more with the West Coast. You had the guards of the Republic, which had mainly northern forces. And then you had the giants and southerners who were from the south. So this cohesion of, you know, when you look at Taiz and Marib and other fronts, why is it holding up? It appears that homeland defenders, that's a term I use to describe the local resistance in specific areas, do a better job of fighting for their homes versus... forces that were formed and sort of set up in a way. The other thing that these forces collapsed quickly is since the withdrawal of the UAE forces in January of 2026, the Saudis and the government of Yemen started this deep process of restructuring under a joint Supreme Military Committee. The Houthis made a move. before the Saudi and the government were able to fully restructure the forces to replace the Emirati component and just moved for the kill. And they went for West Coast because the number one territory that the Houthis didn't want to lose is north of this area. And so it's Hodeidah's port. And if they lost Hodeidah's port, they lose the lung that they breathe with. So that's why they moved down the south. And I saw the fighting, infighting as the main reason why they will collapse. Speaker 1 (8:53) As Eamon says, it was a shit show. And as you've made it clear, this shit show was in fact long in coming. The Houthis had carefully planned this attack and it so far has succeeded for them. You mentioned a lot of things there, Basha. I'd like to kind of unspool it a bit and go through all of those dimensions, including that historical dimension. You mentioned Yemen's revolution in 1962. I think a lot of people do not know enough about that and its legacy for the country. But let's keep talking about the Houthis. You told me yesterday they are not a ragtag militia. They are more than what people say. They aren't just cut-chewing, sandal-wearing, mountain cave dwellers. Clearly they're not. I think people, including me, struggle really to conceptualize what these people are like. The degree to which people who 15 years ago would have had nothing to do with the Houthis, like maybe... high-ranking members of the old Ali Abdullah Saleh army are now working for them in a highly professional manner. Obviously, we know IRGC and Hezbollah operatives help them as well. But the Houthis are a serious organization now. I mean, they are functioning very competently, like an oppressive, but still a competent revolutionary state, aren't they? Yes, and that starts from the background of Speaker 2 (10:14) how they were formed. So the Houthi family lived on top of one of the peaks of Marran mountain. And in Marran mountain, it's very isolated, very remote. The Houthis started first controlling the mosques and the schools. And then they started organizing politically and arming. And this area was sort of outside the control of the government. You know, think Tora Bora in Afghanistan mountains regions. And this is one of the peaks of it. So you didn't have much of a government presence in those areas. And those tribal families or religious families, you know, sort of ran their own. villages and towns and you know they will come and submit to the government and come to meetings in the capital and then the Houthi Hussain al-Houthi who was one of the founding fathers of the movement the young believers which eventually became the Houthis or Ansar Allah their official name the young believers and Hussain al-Houthi he ran for parliament in the 90s the former president government Ali Abdullah Saleh's government actually supported that political movement, like he supported many other political movements to create this balance and counterbalance. But Hussein Al-Houthi, you know, from my readings and my studies, he in Sudan, when he was doing his graduate Islamic studies, I think picked up on the Islamic Revolution writings of the Khamenei and Ayatollahs and saw that, you know, this is the way forward. And he started what They called the Quranic revolution, think Iranian revolution 2.0. And so it started from the hilltops. The insurgency became officially, the outbreak of the insurgency was 2004 when late President Saleh was going to Mecca and he stopped by Sa'dah. And in the mosque, the Houthi followers started chanting death to America and death to Israel and victory to Islam. And that was an eye-opening experience for Saleh. He was like, Who are these? What's this group? What's going on? And when he tried to have a discussion with them, clearly they were like, nope, this is our belief. We're going to push with this ideology and we're ready to pick up the arms. And so the Houthis, a lot of people label them as Shias or Zaydis. I see it as a new sect. It's just the Houthi, I call it Houthism. It's a mix of Zaydis. It has embraced some of the symbolism of Shias. It has the secrecy of the Muslim Brotherhood. And it has the jihadi militant aspect of fighting and Speaker 1 (13:03) sacrificing your Speaker 2 (13:04) soul Speaker 1 (13:05) for the cause. It's great to ground it in the past, but I'm kind of more interested in the now. What are they like now? We know they started on mountaintops. And they started, I guess, kind of wearing sandals, maybe relatively impoverished. And if you went back to some believing youth summer camp in 1998, you may never have been able to guess that these people would eventually dominate the most heavily populous, the most historically important region of Yemen, functioning very much like a state, unified and in alliance with Iran and other actors, holding the whole global economy to ransom. So, what is it like now? I mean, let's talk about... Abdulmalik al-Houthi, the head of the Houthis. People always say the guy lives in caves. But how are we to imagine that? What do you think these caves are like? I don't think Speaker 2 (13:59) Abdulmalik lives in the cave. I think he moves around in multiple properties. However, the last documented video or footage that I saw of him meeting people in person was probably around 2017-18. So Abdul Malik is sort of, this is why in the Financial Times recently I called him a megalomaniac. He's untouchable, like you don't touch him. All the meetings with his lieutenants, all the meetings with his supporters that we are aware of are done in local area network VTCs. So you will go to Saada, they will take you to a house, you will sit down in that house. and then they will start a VTC with you and you'll sit down here and talk to him. So you don't meet him face to face and that's something you don't see with Nasrallah. You never saw it with Nasrallah, you never saw it with the Khameneis. I mean now Mushtaq is hiding, probably following the same MO as Abdul Malik. And Abdul Malik's way of communicating with his supporters and public, there's a lot of incidents where I wasn't sure which direction was the movement going. and their followers were literally waiting for him to come out and speak. So think like the Pope, he will come out, give the directions where we're headed. And that's why I always took his speeches, even though they're, you know, long and sometimes honestly boring, very religious, heavy scripture. It's like Friday prayers. But he will be very clear about where we're headed. More than the members of the political bureau who speak actively on social media and appear on TV, more than their newspapers and their official TV, more than their even public messaging from their appointed officials. It's Abdul Malik who tells the movement in these Thursday night or Friday night speeches, what are we going to be doing next? very clear messages and that what sets the direction. And so his upsec is very sophisticated. You don't see it with any other leader from the movement. What made them who they are today was the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring brought them down to Sana'a, to the capital from the mountains and the competing political groups in the Arab Spring were using the Houthis. The GMP, the