Houthi

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Areas in Yemen controlled by the Houthi (light green) as of 2015
Houthi slogan (see below ) on a house in Yafaa 2013: “ God is great ! Death to the USA! Death Israel! Damn the Jews! Victory to Islam! "

The Houthi (from Arabic الحوثيون, DMG al-Ḥūṯiyyūn ; Pronunciation of th as in English as the voiceless dental fricative [ θ ]) known politico-military movement, which is Ansar Allah ( Arabic أنصار الله, DMG anṣār allāh  'Helpers of God') is a civil war party in Yemen . It was founded primarily by the religious and political leader Hussein Badreddin al-Huthi (1956-2004), after whom it was named. The Houthi belong to the Zaidites , a Shiite group with its own school of law . They have been the de facto rulers in Yemen since 2015. The US accuses Iran of supporting the Houthi, which Iran rejects.

history

The Zaidites stand up for the preservation of the Zaidite faith. They form their own school of law and have ruled the southwestern region of the Arabian Peninsula since the 9th century, where their imams ruled Yemen, later " North Yemen ", with the capital Sanaa until the revolution in 1962 . They fought the Republican government in Sanaa until 1970.

1994 to 2000

The first Shiite combat groups formed in the course of the civil war in Yemen in 1994 , when the Wahhabi Saudi government supported the secession of the south (formerly the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen ). The Shiites, restricted on both sides by Sunnis , hardly intervened in the fighting at the time.

2001 to 2004

According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, the Houthi movement became radicalized very close to the Iraq invasion of the USA in 2003 . The movement - like many Arabs - viewed the invasion very critically. The Yemeni government, on the other hand, followed a pro-American course. Criticism of the USA was barely tolerated by the government, especially after the bomb attack by al-Qaida on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000 (exacerbated by a prison break of 10 suspects in April 2003).

In this environment, a slogan that has been known in the Houthi movement since around 2002 became more popular: “ God is great ! Death to the USA ! Death Israel! Damn the Jews! Victory for Islam ! ”The journalist Shahir Shahidsaless, who specializes in Iran, points out the foreign policy parallels between the Houthis and the Iranian government, the sentences Death to the USA! Death Israel! are copied from revolutionary Iran. The Brookings analysis sees the Shiite Hezbollah , who succeeded in liberating Lebanon from the Israeli army, as the most important model and inspiration for the Houthis, even before Iran ; for example, the Houthis replaced the Yemeni flag with a Hezbollah flag on at least one occasion on a government building.

Among other things, the slogan was sung in January 2003 in protest against the Yemeni president, after which 600 people were arrested; later he was also used in protests against the US ambassador and other occasions. In 2003 it became the official slogan of the Houthi movement. The government emphasized during these years that it did not tolerate the slogan, the Houthi movement adhered to it with reference to the right to freedom of expression. Houthis are said to have been jailed for using the slogan.

2004 to 2010

A new escalation in the conflict between the Houthi and the government took place in the summer of 2004. The government accused the movement of separatist aspirations and the aspiration of an imamate. Indeed, Yemen was ruled as (a form of) imamate until 1962, and the Houthis' core region was controlled by supporters of this imamate until 1967. Houthi leader Badr al-Din al-Huthi also spoke out in favor of an imamate in an interview with the Yemeni newspaper al-Wasat in 2005 and condemned democracy as a foreign concept. Subsequently, however, the Houthis argued that it was a matter of a “doctrinal interpretation”; H. not an imamate in the literal, political sense. Still, due to the doctrinal advocacy of an imamate and the uncertainty of what form it might take, doubts remain about its political goals.

The government took stronger action against the Houthi movement. Fierce fighting erupted when the government tried to arrest preacher and former MP Hussein al-Huthi . Hussein and his brothers Abdul-Malik and Yahia Badreddin were the most important representatives of the Zaidis in North Yemen at that time. In a large demonstration on June 18, 2004 in front of the main mosque in Sanaa , the police arrested 640 supporters of al-Houthi and on June 20 offered a bounty of $ 55,000 on him. After numerous murders and weeks of fighting, al-Houthi was killed on September 14 in a not entirely cleared way. The leadership of the Houthi was then taken over by the slain’s father, Imam Badr Addin Al-Huthi, who in turn succeeded him, his brother Abdul-Malik. They used a guerrilla tactic reminiscent of the Shiite Hezbollah in southern Lebanon , allegedly supported by Iran . Saudi Arabia also supported the government in its crackdown on the Houthis. However, al-Houthi's death and the military action also led to further polarization. The Houthis were very well organized, armed and repeatedly demonstrated superiority in direct confrontations with government troops.

In August 2009, Yemeni armed forces began a new offensive against the rebels in Sa'da province, which displaced over 100,000 people. The conflict, barely mentioned in Western media, took on an international dimension when clashes between the rebels and Saudi Arabia broke out on the border in November, with the United States intervening with air strikes. In early 2010, the Houthi rebels declared a unilateral ceasefire, which the central government confirmed for the country in February 2010.

2010 to 2014

During a protest by Houthis against air strikes by the Saudi-led military alliance, a participant shows a picture of Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, 2015.

After failed peace agreements, another civil war broke out in 2012, this time across the country . When President Salih , who had ruled for 34 years, resigned after the elections in February 2012 , his successor Mansur Hadi soon lost control of his power apparatus, and individual generals began to fight their troops on their own. Nevertheless, after the capital Sanaa, the Houthi militias coming from the north also conquered the important port metropolis of Hudeida and in the process clashed with the Al-Qaida fighters coming from the east . The fighting intensified in autumn 2014.

Despite the US drone attacks on the Yemeni al-Qaida offshoot, it managed to capture the provincial capital Ibb and areas to the west of it in 2014 .

Since 2015

In February 2015, the Houthi rulers, who call themselves Shabab Al Mu'mineen (translated as “believing youth”), dissolved Yemen’s parliament and declared that the “Revolutionary Committee” would now take power over the country. The deposed Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansur Hadi was under house arrest in the capital after the Houthi militia came to power. But he managed to flee to Aden or Saudi Arabia, which granted him asylum.

Since March 2015, the so-called Arab military alliance has carried out more than 2,000 attacks on the Houthi militias in a military intervention in Yemen and has accused Iran of providing military support for the Houthi. Whether Iran actually has any influence over the Houthi is controversial and is denied by Iran.

The attempt by the US-Saudi Arabian alliance to subsequently legitimize its attacks in Yemen from abroad through a UN mandate has so far not met with any response in the UN Security Council . The former UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Iran , however, called for an immediate cessation of the attacks and the resumption of peace negotiations.

On September 15, 2019, Houthi confessed to the attacks on the Abqaiq oil refinery and the Churais oil field in eastern Saudi Arabia the day before .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Benjamin Wiacek: In Pictures: The scars of North Yemen's wars. In: aljazeera.com. July 2, 2012, accessed April 16, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Slipping into anarchy , June 12, 2015, FAZ , accessed June 8, 2016
  3. ↑ TAZ.de "State crisis in Yemen - Houthi rebels seize power"
  4. ↑ welt.de "Tehran rejects the accusation"
  5. ↑ a b c Bruce Riedel: Who are the Houthis, and why are we at war with them? . In: Brookings . December 18, 2017. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  6. ^ A b c Lucas Winter: Conflict in Yemen: Simple People, Complicated Circumstances . In: Middle East Policy Council . Retrieved April 20, 2019.
  7. ↑ Shahir Shahidsaless: Does Iran really control Yemen . In: Al Monitor , March 30, 2015. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015. 
  8. ↑ Nashwannews, October 3, 2009, quoted in: Lucas Winter: Conflict in Yemen: Simple People, Complicated Circumstances . In: Middle East Policy Council . Retrieved April 20, 2019.
  9. ^ A. Barak Salmoni, Bryce Loidolt, Madleine Wells, Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen. The Houthi Phenomenon. Santa Monica, 2010
  10. ^ Sarah Phillips, Cracks in the Yemini System, in Middle East Report, July 28, 2005
  11. ↑ doctrinal interpretation according to Lucas Winter: Conflict in Yemen: Simple People, Complicated Circumstances . In: Middle East Policy Council . Retrieved April 20, 2019.
  12. ^ Profiles: Yemen's Houthi fighters . Al Jazeera, July 12, 2009
  13. ^ April Longley, Abdul Ghani al-Iryani: Fighting brushfires with Batons: An Analysis of the political crisis in Soth Yemen. In: The Middle East Institute Policy Brief, No. 7, February 2008, pp. 1-13
  14. ↑ Johannes Krug: An expression of the crisis . DW, April 27, 2009
  15. ↑ Olivier Guitta: Iran and Saudi Arabia drawn to Yemen , Asia Times Online, November 11, 2009
  16. ↑ Michael Schmölzer: Yemeni nightmare. The Arab Spring led directly to chaos: Al-Qaeda and Shiite rebels fight each other - hundreds dead . Wiener Zeitung October 22, 2014, p. 7
  17. ↑ Shiite rebels take power in Yemen , February 7, 2015.
  18. ↑ Deposed president fled Sanaa. Zeit Online, February 21, 2015.
  19. ↑ The fighting continues in Yemen ( memento of April 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), April 22, 2015.
  20. ↑ Spiegel online from April 6, 2015: Battles in Yemen - “Aden is a ghost town” .
  21. ↑ Yemen. Mandate to invade. Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 7, 2015.
  22. ↑ Iran calls for a ceasefire, Saudi Arabia refuses. Zeit Online, April 12, 2015.
  23. ^ Attack on an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia . Welt Online, September 17, 2019.