Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, potent images of Yemen’s Houthis firing rockets at Israel and targeting shipping in the Gulf of Aden have catapulted the movement onto a new, global stage. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the spiritual, social and political leader of the eponymous group, has vowed to continue his attacks on ships heading toward Israel despite the ceasefire that came into effect on Jan. 19.
His statement was a reminder that conflict in Yemen continues. Despite being overshadowed by ongoing conflicts in Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Ukraine and other regions, Yemen has been enduring one of the bloodiest and most destructive wars in the world since 2014. It has resulted in the death, injury or severe starvation of hundreds of thousands of people over more than a decade, in addition to thousands of persons missing or unaccounted for.
The Houthis are at the heart of this war, having emerged from the northern mountains of Saada to dominate the country, with increasing support from Iran. Since their coup in 2014, which resulted in their capture of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, the Houthis have gained control over most of northern Yemen and more than 60% of Yemen’s population. They have maintained this power through a combination of military force and societal influence.
Since rising to prominence, the Houthis have fought not only against Yemenis but also against neighboring Saudi Arabia and, more recently, Israel. Yet, despite their significant role in the conflict, the Houthis remain one of the most misunderstood groups in the world. While they are often incorrectly compared to Lebanon’s Hezbollah by their Yemeni foes or dismissed as merely another Iranian proxy by regional actors, such comparisons fail to grasp the true nature of the group, while analyses by Western researchers tend to focus on understanding the Houthis’ bureaucratic model.
These views miss a critical, though simple, point: The Houthis are a constantly evolving entity that does not function like a traditional hierarchical organization. And despite its significance since the days of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled the country for more than three decades, very little has been written about the informal nature of Yemeni politics, aside from Sarah Phillips’ “Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis.” As the group itself keeps evolving, so does the nature of the threat it poses. Yet international and regional diplomacy and pressure have not evolved in response, and as a result all efforts to rein in the group have failed so far.
To understand the group’s dynamics, one can examine three key aspects of its evolution. The rise and fall of its most famous negotiators up until 2014, such as Saleh Habra, show that no one in the group, with the exception of its leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, is there indefinitely, regardless of their influence or longevity. This is the reality behind the dramatic changes of leadership within the group and why international diplomats always complain they don’t know who really calls the shots among those they usually negotiate with. In addition, the establishment and dissolution of various governmental structures created by the Houthis, such as the Supreme Council for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (SCMCHA), show that organizations and structures also appear and disappear in an instant, based on their relevance to the group and whether or not they serve its purposes.
Taken together, this means we are dealing with one of the most complicated — and yet, paradoxically, simplest — organizations and groups in the world. This has allowed it not just to survive but also thrive and project power, ultimately becoming a serious international cross-border threat. It also explains why all the traditional wars that have been launched against the group since 2004 have consistently failed and the Houthis have emerged stronger every time.
This analysis also illustrates how the Houthis are a product of their environment, operating within the bounds of the Yemeni political playbook, rather than conforming to a Western view of state versus nonstate or formal versus informal structures. Overall, since the Saleh era, state power in Yemen has been exercised through personal relationships, informal networks and shifting alliances. This system, in which individuals, organizations and institutions serve personal agendas while surviving outside formal structures, remains at the heart of the Houthi approach to governance and power.
The first aspect of the group to consider is the importance of its negotiators, who act as proxies for the leader.
In 2013, the National Dialogue Conference, a United Nations-sponsored national dialogue and transition period that brought together most Yemeni parties, including the Houthis, to discuss and agree on the future of the country, was taking place in the capital, Sanaa. It was widely celebrated as a rare successful example of an Arab Spring country transitioning slowly, without the kind of wars seen in Syria and Libya, toward the possibility of democracy.
At the time, Saleh Habra was negotiating with actors from across the Yemeni political spectrum on behalf of the Houthis. The influence he wielded was such that he sometimes even signed key documents and agreements with the words, “Saleh Habra, on behalf of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.”
Habra represented the entire Houthi movement at the talks and was the personal representative of the Houthi leader. He was well practiced at negotiating on behalf of the movement, having done so over the course of six conflicts since 2004. For the most part, over those years, he had not even had to contact Abdul-Malik al-Houthi over the phone. He was able to make his own decisions.
This time was different, however, as Habra was increasingly facing competition from others seeking to represent the Houthi movement. When the Houthis rolled into Sanaa in 2014, it was another person who signed on their behalf. Within 18 months of signing the papers at the National Dialogue, Habra was out. He has since resorted to criticizing the Houthi leader on Twitter and Facebook, where he remains a vocal critic.
So what was behind Habra’s fall from the Houthi leader’s graces?
Over time, it has become clear that Habra had become a casualty of the Houthis’ developing political machine, which was growing in strength, in the form of the Houthi Political Bureau and multiple other structures.
When Abdul-Malik al-Houthi assumed the leadership of the group, he inherited an organization that was largely dependent on the tribal ties of his family in Saada and a small base of Hashemite supporters across Yemen and the Gulf. Hashemite rulers have historically gained legitimacy from their clan’s kinship to the Prophet Muhammad, and some sympathize with the Houthis’ Zaydi brand of Shiite Islam that requires Imams to be Muhammad’s descendants. Yet unlike in countries such as Jordan and Morocco, the Hashemites are not particularly popular in Yemen because they are connected to one of the cruelest dynasties in the country’s history, which ruled for many centuries.
It was originally Abdul-Malik’s brother Hussein who led the group, but Saleh ordered his arrest and he was killed by the military in 2004. Abdul-Malik took command, including or excluding individuals based on their proximity to his hometown in Saada and their early support for the movement. Habra checked all the boxes: He was from the same village as Abdul-Malik, a man with tribal status, and an early supporter of the group. As a result, he enjoyed an uncontested level of trust and power. Habra also had something even Abdul-Malik didn’t: He was a skilled politician who understood the power dynamics in the capital Sanaa and knew how to navigate them. He was approximately twice the age of Abdul-Malik.
Two significant changes altered the situation: The Houthi movement grew dramatically and, as it did so, amid developing ties with Iran, the Houthis sometimes sought to replicate the organizational model of Hezbollah.
Then the 2011 uprising happened. It toppled Saleh’s regime and allowed the Houthis to publicly expand and become more visible to the wider Yemeni population. In practical terms, the Houthis began installing their own protest tents inside the Change Square in Sanaa, next to the tents of other opposition political parties and change movements. Their activities led to a wide range of Yemenis from across Yemen joining their coalition, known as “Shabab al-Sumud” (“Steadfast Youth”). They also quickly seized the entire province of Saada by force and appointed the U.N.-sanctioned arms dealer Fares Manaa as governor, to be the face of the province on their behalf.
The fact that the Houthis were no longer a hidden criminalized faction in the mountains also brought hundreds of new mid-level leaders to the surface inside the group. Those who had been hiding their support suddenly emerged. To build its power base and manage its political aims, the group quickly formed new organizational structures. These included a social department that was in charge of recruiting tribes. The Houthis organized events, such as holding Ramadan iftars across Sanaa and various public rallies in Saada and across the north.
But the critical new structure was the Political Bureau. It is this department that has continued to grow. The bureau shows the fusion of hierarchical structures and the continuing importance of interpersonal relationships within the Houthi movement. Ultimately, while Habra was in fact the first head of the Political Bureau, its members were all appointed by Abdul-Malik and directly loyal to him.
The bureau has grown so big that today no one knows how many members it has, or even whether they number in the dozens or hundreds. Today, the bureau publishes all statements and positions on behalf of the Houthis. Despite its unknown membership, it is the most prominent political organ of the group. Before the 2015 war, it used to hold its meetings regularly in the only known headquarters of the movement, in Sanaa’s al-Juraf district.
The Political Bureau was the forum into which the Houthis absorbed senior social and political leaders from across Yemen. It played the role of both projection and outreach on behalf of the group. Membership reflected prestige for powerful individuals. While traditional political parties were led by old elites and had no internal elections or recruitment, the Houthis were actively recruiting new supporters across Yemen. The bureau started to quickly absorb men of social, tribal or religious prominence, as long as they demonstrated an unquestionable level of loyalty to the group and, specifically, its leader. Criteria might include, for example, how many times they attended Houthi religious cultural camps or rallies, or, even more importantly, how many of their close relatives (sons or brothers) they sent to fight with the group.
As a result of the development of the Houthis’ political apparatus, the role and influence of individuals like Habra began to wane in favor of the expanding organization and its new structures, in which individuals became subsumed within the collective. As more centers of power emerged within the group, figures like Habra became increasingly irrelevant. Once granted unfettered access to Abdul-Malik and trusted on any issue, Habra suddenly faced new competitors. Furthermore, no matter who was on the ground dealing with any issue, they had to go back to Abdul-Malik’s “office,” as decision-making became more centralized.
What Habra’s story also tells us is that merit within the group ignores seniority as long as loyalty to its vision and leader is demonstrated. In addition, those who came to prominence later were not empowered as decision-makers in the way Habra had once been. Counterintuitively, the development of a large Political Bureau appeared to institutionalize Abdul-Malik’s direct rule.
Another factor contributing to Habra’s fall from grace was the rise of Hezbollah and Iran’s influence within the group. Iran’s involvement in capacity-building and internal restructuring further displaced figures like Habra in favor of the larger military umbrella of the group. As the war continued post-2015, Iran’s role within the group only increased and more local leaders like Habra fell from grace.
Today, the Houthi internal structure includes the Jihadist Council, the Political Bureau and a formal spokesperson (previously an anonymous figure, until 2011), filling roles once all occupied by Habra.
Now, Habra frequently changes his Facebook accounts, complaining in his posts that he is being hacked by Houthi intelligence. Even some of his former assistants are now in Houthi custody in Sanaa. Despite being increasingly sidelined by Abdul-Malik and the group at large, Habra retains significant respect among the group’s members and supporters. His past role as a mediator has earned him a level of reverence that few others can match. The fact that Saudi Arabia bombed his house and killed his two sons in 2015, even after he had stepped down from the leadership, further cemented his legitimacy — albeit outside of the group’s decision-making circles.
Regardless, none of that allowed him to remain in the group’s leadership. However, if the situation on the ground were to change and the Houthis, in order to survive, needed to go back to familiar faces like Habra and reconcile with other Yemeni factions, few would be surprised by his comeback.
On Dec. 3, 2017, the long-awaited battle between Saleh and the Houthis in Sanaa finally erupted. Since the first, unofficial alliance between the two in 2014, and their more formal coalition in 2015 after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began bombing them, observers had long viewed their partnership as a “marriage of convenience” — a temporary alliance bound to collapse as soon as one side could afford to turn on the other.
What surprised many, however, was the speed with which Saleh’s forces crumbled in the face of the Houthis, despite air support from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Within days, the battle was over and Saleh was brutally killed outside his village of Sanhan while attempting to flee Sanaa. The once-mighty Republican Guard, Central Security Forces and other military units allied with Saleh — many of which had been trained and equipped by the United States — disintegrated perhaps more rapidly than Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria in December 2024.
For those following closely, these events did not come as a surprise. For years, the Houthis had been quietly co-opting Saleh’s forces, gradually integrating them into their own ranks, all while building a parallel military and weapons empire outside of Yemen’s official state structure. When Saudi Arabia and the UAE began bombing Yemen, it was largely Saleh’s military bases and units that were targeted, while the Houthi forces, units and even their leadership remained largely unscathed and unknown.
When the Houthis began marching toward Sanaa in 2014, army units not loyal to Saleh quickly collapsed. By Sept. 21, 2014, the city had fallen into Houthi hands. During this period, the relationship between the Houthis and Saleh’s forces was informal and simple: The two sides agreed to remain passive or neutral, refraining from engaging in battles against one another. On the eve of Sept. 21, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi sent a confidential agreement to Saleh, which both men signed, formally committing to neither engage in hostilities nor form an alliance against one another.
In 2015, however, Saleh and the Houthis entered into a formal military alliance, when Saudi Arabia and UAE started their military strikes on Yemen. Saleh’s military units and generals, which had long been under his control, aligned with the Houthis. The power-sharing arrangement was clear, though unequal: The Houthis maintained control over the forces they had built over the years, while, with Saleh’s loyalists, they co-managed the traditional military forces.
The conventional military forces, largely concentrated in five military districts, were commanded by high-ranking military generals. By 2018, all of these districts were firmly under Houthi control. The formal nature of Saleh’s forces allowed the Houthis to absorb and co-opt them easily: The Houthis had payrolls, units and data about all of Saleh’s forces. By contrast, Saleh had zero information on the Houthis, as the latter remained closed off and organized via personal relationships. The purely Houthi forces, which included both pre-2014 and post-2014 units, remained largely separate from Yemen’s Ministry of Defense and from the partnership with Saleh.
These forces have remained largely invisible to the outside world. They include newly specialized units like drone forces, ballistic missile units, special forces, a growing domestic weapons manufacturing industry and the so-called “Alternative Forces” based in Sanaa.
This is also why the comparison of the Houthis to Lebanon’s Hezbollah is somewhat misleading. Yes, the Houthis have a similar structure to Hezbollah — a “jihad council” and network operating outside the state — but they also resemble Iran, in that they also have a more traditional army structure as well as informal military structures. In addition, contrary to Hezbollah, the Houthis continue even today to maintain a certain level of independence from Iran.
According to various Houthi leaders and officials I interviewed, Iran was not initially in favor of the Houthis’ recent attacks in the Red Sea. Nonetheless, the Houthis went ahead with them, calculating that this would expand their influence and local capture of power and that it didn’t matter what their primary ally thought or wanted. It was a purely Yemeni, Houthi calculation. It didn’t matter that it was discarding or, at best, delaying the peace road map they were just about to sign with their Yemeni counterparts and Saudi Arabia.
Saleh Habra’s replacement by the Political Bureau and the Houthi takeover of the Yemeni military show how the Houthi movement has expanded and adjusted to its environment, without fully abandoning its personality-based and informal structures. Even when the Houthis do seem to place key authorities in the hands of formal structures, power ultimately remains outside them and the structures are subject to change. They exist or disappear based on their relevance and their ability to respond to the group’s growth and ever-changing dynamics.
In November 2024, Julien Harnes, the U.N. Resident Coordinator in Yemen, was giving a talk in London. For years, he and all of his predecessors had dealt with one major entity within the Houthis — a seemingly powerful central body through which they coordinated the delivery of billions of dollars in aid to Houthi-controlled areas. Just weeks before his talk, however, he woke up in Sanaa to a memo from the Houthis officially informing him that SCMCHA had been dissolved. The memo stated that, from now on, he would need to coordinate directly with a unit within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As the U.N. official sat on stage, skeptics in the room and online repeatedly asked in disbelief whether SCMCHA had truly been dissolved. For years, SCMCHA had been managed by hard-line ideological Houthis, with two primary functions: channeling aid and diverting it as much as possible to Houthi-allied organizations and beneficiaries, while also controlling the movement of aid agencies to prevent real independent oversight or monitoring of aid.
The Houthis’ decision to dismantle the organization must be seen in context. Aid to the areas under their control had decreased significantly, especially after the U.N. halted non-life-saving operations, and major donors like Germany, the U.S. and the United Kingdom reduced funding following the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. The Houthis also discovered considerable internal corruption within the organization, with some of its leaders now in prison. Additionally, and perhaps most crucially, the regulation and control the Houthis had already imposed on organizations operating in their areas were strong. In the end, like Habra, SCMCHA was no longer necessary for the Houthis’ growth or day-to-day life. In fact, it was becoming a hindrance, due to its tarnished reputation among donors and civil society organizations.
There was also a personal and more important element in the decision: The newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jamal Amer, who had taken office only weeks earlier, was a trusted ally of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and a key figure within the group’s security agencies. All of these factors gave Abdul-Malik and the Houthis reason to dissolve the organization as soon as they saw the time was right. Having a more trusted figure in the ministry served its purpose.
Thus, in a departure from the region’s usual bureaucratic norms — whereby organizations persist indefinitely once created — the Houthis dismantled the very institution that had appeared on every Western researcher’s organogram, simply because they no longer saw it as useful or necessary.
There is no fixed playbook for how the Houthis project power; it constantly changes and evolves alongside the group itself. While their approach may sometimes shift into more formal structures or organizations, power is still primarily projected on a day-to-day basis through trusted individuals, especially when the group has not yet fully consolidated control over the state.
When the Houthis first took over Sanaa in 2014, they did not appoint their allies to ministerial positions. Instead, they accepted a technocratic government led by the Yemeni ambassador to Canada and were content to exercise power behind the scenes. However, when the war broke out in January 2015 and the technocratic Cabinet resigned in protest at the Houthis’ attack on then-President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Houthis began formalizing their direct control over the government. They established the so-called “Popular Committees,” led by one of Abdul-Malik’s cousins, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi. These committees took over the functioning of government ministries, effectively dismantling the roles of senior officials within those institutions.
In July 2016, the Houthis reached a deal with Saleh and his party, at which point they dissolved the Popular Committees and entered into a new alliance with Saleh. According to many insiders, the move was actually an attempt by Abdul-Malik not just to formalize a partnership with Saleh but more importantly to take power away from his cousin Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, who was the head of those committees and already becoming too powerful. However, after Saleh’s eventual killing in 2017, the Houthis moved decisively to consolidate their power, taking full and direct control over state institutions and diminishing any remaining opposition. They directly started appointing all the relatives of Abdul-Malik and Saada tribe members into ministerial posts and senior positions.
The reasons for dismantling SCMSHA were thus the same as the reasons for creating it: adapting to consolidate power and sideline uncontrolled institutions. Originally, SCMCHA had had no presence in Yemen and even no legal basis. It was basically doing the job of the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MOPIC). But when Saleh and the Houthis had a power-sharing Cabinet in 2016-2017, MOPIC was in Saleh’s party’s “share” of the Cabinet. The Houthis never trusted MOPIC, as it was well connected to the world and filled with technocratic Yemenis instead of unqualified but loyal Houthi tribal warriors. As such, it was to totally sideline Saleh while remaining committed to the theoretical partnership that they originally created SCMSHA.
If one subscribes to Ibn Khaldun’s theory of the cyclical rise and fall of empires, then the Houthis may well be in the final stages of their rise, with the inevitable decline to follow. Over time, through various phases and under different circumstances, the group has passed through all the initial stages of state formation — most notably, the transition from mountain strongholds to palaces in the capital.
Remarkably, this transformation has occurred within an incredibly short timeline, considering the Houthis launched their first war less than 20 years ago. Only time will reveal how much longer they will persist in this final phase and whether their trajectory will follow the pattern of previous cycles.
One thing, however, is certain: The group is evolving beyond the control of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s network and loyalties — no matter how much he may try to maintain that control. It has survived wars and regional disorder, and now faces new challenges that threaten its survival and growth. Its recent elevated importance in the “Axis of Resistance” following the fall of Assad and the weakening of Hezbollah will provide another challenge. Will it be able to remain a local, Yemeni movement or will it take the same path as Hezbollah — growing regionally and globally until its own explosion?
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