Harpreet Pannu | Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
The Yemeni ‘Houthi’ Ansar Allah movement shot to prominence in late 2023 when, following the beginning of the US-Israeli genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza, the movement’s forces announced that they were shutting down access to the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait for all Israeli-linked shipping―a threat that they quickly proved they were totally capable of enforcing.
Despite this sudden worldwide prominence, the ‘Houthi’ movement’s origins and ideological underpinnings remain largely unknown and under-studied―primarily because this suits the interests of western imperialism, which fears the movement becoming an example for other oppressed nations to follow.
Based on a presentation delivered at Saklatvala Hall in London in June 2025, this in-depth article attempts to tear through the imperialist lies and explain the real origins of Yemen’s dominant national-liberation movement.
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The term ‘Houthi’ comes from the surname of the family that founded and leads the movement and is not inherently derogatory, but the name that the movement uses to refer to itself is ‘Ansar Allah’ and this is the term that will be used in this article going forward.
Of course, imperialist-controlled media invariably refer to the movement as ‘Iran-backed Houthi rebels’, in such a blanket copy-paste manner that it can be a real eye-opener as to the level of uniformity and control that western imperialist governments truly have over their so-called ‘independent’ media.
Even the BBC, which famously refused government directives to refer to Isis as ‘Daesh’ and insists on calling the terrorist group “the so-called Islamic State” in the name of ‘impartiality’ (in reality the goal was almost certainly to tacitly encourage islamophobia among the masses), refuses to apply the same impartiality to Ansar Allah by using its real name.
In fact, despite both having a background in the Shi’a side of Islam, the leaders of the Iranian revolution and Yemen’s resistance leaders come from quite different origins.
Zaydi Islam and the Yemeni resistance
As many will know, the muslim world is divided primarily into sunnis (around 80-85 percent) and shias (around 15-20 percent). This split fundamentally sprang from a difference in belief regarding who should have succeeded the Prophet in leading the muslims following his death in 632 AD. The sunnis were those who believed that the Prophet did not appoint anyone in particular as his successor, and that the field was effectively free for anyone who could win the loyalty of the muslim masses.
This is often portrayed as an early version of a ‘democratic’ outlook; in reality, this system quickly descended into a series of absolute monarchies where the sole criterion of legitimacy was whoever was brutal enough and cunning enough to manoeuvre themselves into power. In tandem, a theology was built up which preached the idea that absolute loyalty to the ruler was mandated by God under all circumstances―even if the ruler was someone who was tyrannical or a serial violator of islamic law.
The shia, by contrast, were a minority who firmly rejected the above principles. They argued through textual evidence that the Prophet had explicitly designated his close companion Ali as his successor to lead the muslims after him as per God’s direct order, and following Ali there was to be a fixed chain of imams leading by divine decree. The shias argued that for anyone other than these imams to obtain rulership over the muslims would be unlawful, and that rejection of such rulers’ legitimacy was obligatory for muslims.
The theological differences described above shine some light onto a question frequently asked by westerners: why most anti-imperialist movements in the muslim world are led by shia minorities. Centuries of savage persecution by sunni authorities, and in particular the massacre of the third shia imam, al-Husayn, along with most of his family, when he decided to make a public stand against the corrupt ruler of his time, gradually created a culture of martyrdom and resistance to tyranny among the shia in a way that does not exist in the sunni branch of Islam.
In order fully to understand the origins of Ansar Allah, we need to look deeper, into the schisms within the shia minority themselves. The overwhelming majority of the world’s shias follow the Ithna Ashari (Twelver) sect, which believes in 12 divinely-appointed imams after the Prophet, the last of them being an awaited messiah who is believed to be alive to this day. These are the shias of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and most shias in the Indian subcontinent.
The other two, much smaller branches are Ismailis (believing in seven imams) and Zaydis (believing in five imams). Although the numbers of adherents of these two sects are roughly similar, their geographical distribution and resulting political influence are dramatically different. Whilst Ismailis are far too dispersed amongst dozens of countries around the world to have any political relevance to speak of, the Zaydi sect quickly concentrated itself almost entirely in an area that is now northern Yemen/southwestern Saudi Arabia, forming approximately 40 percent of the population of modern Yemen.
Zaydi Shia Islam, a minority within a minority, accepts the first four shia imams but emerged from a dispute over the fifth imam. Whilst the bulk of the shia accepted Muhammad al-Baqir as the fifth imam, a significant minority opposed al-Baqir’s seemingly passive and underground opposition to the sunni ruler of the time. This minority group argued that the legitimate imam by definition must openly rise up against the illegitimate ruler, and they gathered around al-Baqir’s brother Zayd, who led an armed uprising against the Ummayad emperor/caliph of the time.
Although the uprising was crushed and Zayd was murdered, his followers held on to the new theology based on the obligation of waging armed struggle against tyrannical leadership, and set up a Zaydi kingdom/imamate in what is now northern Yemen. Ironically, aside from the stark difference in political outlook, the Zaydis are actually considered to be theologically close to Sunni Islam and are often considered as a halfway house’ between sunnis and twelvers, to the extent that historically many anti-shia sunni chauvinist scholars would exempt Zaydis from sunni persecution―although this has changed in recent years to suit political ends, as will be mentioned later in this article.
The remote and rugged geography of northern Yemen, situated at the far end of the Arabian Peninsula, made it fertile land for a heterodox non-sunni sect of Islam to flourish largely undisturbed. For several hundred years, the Zaydi territory was nominally under the control of Ottoman and other empires, but these were never able to establish effective control and the Zaydis fiercely defended their sovereignty from all outside encroachment.
WW1 and the collapse of the Ottoman empire
Following the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1918, the Zaydi imamate finally won formal independence as the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen. This kingdom consisted of the northwestern portion of today’s Yemen, including the major cities of San’aa, Sa’dah, Ta’izz and the Red Sea port of Hudaydah. It initially spanned well into what is now Saudi Arabia, although a war in 1934 forced the kingdom to cede three northern provinces to Saudi Arabia. For brevity’s sake, what remains to Yemen of its northwestern geographical region will henceforth be referred to as northern Yemen.
The rest of what is now modern Yemen was seized by the British empire in the early 19th century and made into the so-called ‘Aden Crown Colony’, which lasted up until the 1960s. This part of Yemen, henceforth referred to as southern Yemen, was overwhelmingly sunni and much larger geographically but very sparsely populated, with the majority of its population concentrated around the major port city of Aden.
The Kingdom of Yemen, under the leadership of Imam Yahya Hamid-ud-Dine, became known internationally for its extreme isolationism and backwardness. A reactionary par excellence, Imam Yahya fiercely opposed the introduction of any kind of modern technology into his kingdom. Reportedly, only a single photograph of him exists, taken from a distance without his knowledge, as he rejected cameras as modern technology and insisted he be portrayed in paintings only.
Whilst gargantuan battles between decadent capitalism and advancing socialism raged outside, Imam Yahya was determined to maintain his kingdom as an island of 13th-century feudalism with medieval-style living conditions.
Naturally, the local bourgeoisie grew increasingly frustrated with this regime, culminating in a botched coup attempt in 1948 in which Imam Yahya was killed. He was succeeded by his son Ahmed bin Yahya, who was initially viewed as more liberal-minded than his father (allowing photos of himself for instance). However, very little meaningful reform took place and the bourgeois opposition was soon forced to flee underground.
Rise of Arab nationalism
Imam Ahmed ruled for 14 years, during which time Arab nationalist movements peaked across the region and nationalist-inspired military coups overthrew reactionary monarchs in Libya, Iraq and Egypt. Yemeni military officers began plotting their own coup, which they launched a few days after Imam Ahmed’s death in 1962. Initially successful, the military officers under Second Lieutenant Abdullah as-Sallal declared an end to the thousand-year-old Zaydi imamate and proclaimed the Yemeni Arab Republic.
Unfortunately for the revolution, the thousand-year-old Zaydi imamate was much more resilient than the weak, colonialist-installed monarchs in Libya, Iraq or Egypt. Iman Ahmed’s son, the crown prince Muhammad al-Badr, escaped to Saudi Arabia, where he quickly gained official support from the reactionary pro-western monarchy there, which did not want another revolutionary Arab nationalist republic on its border. With Saudi, British and Israeli support, al-Badr began recruiting an army from amongst the conservative Zaydi tribes in the remote northern regions of the country, sparking off the North Yemen civil war.
Egypt, then ruled by Arab nationalist icon Gamal Abdel Nasser, immediately emerged as the strongest supporter of the new republic, which also obtained support from the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc. This war raged for eight years, during which Egypt sent large numbers of ground troops to fight alongside the republican forces. The war ultimately ended in 1970 with a republican victory and Imam al-Badr left into exile in London, never to return.
An interesting side-note about this pivotal cold war struggle, largely relegated to obscurity today, is that the same Zaydi tribal forces who in 1962 were massing on the side of reaction and feudal despotism are today the main social base for the Ansar Allah revolutionaries, who largely emerged from their ranks. This is an important reminder for revolutionary analysts always to stay aware of changes in material conditions, as today’s revolutionaries can easily become tomorrow’s reactionaries and vice-versa.
PDR Yemen―British Aden
Whilst this was going on, a simultaneous liberation struggle had broken out in British-controlled southern Yemen, which forced the British to grant independence in 1967. Initially Arab nationalist in orientation, in 1969 an internal coup brought a Marxist-Leninist faction to power, proclaiming the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen―the Arab world’s only socialist state.
The Yemeni Arab Republic (northern Yemen) went through a number of coups and changes of government in the late 60s and 70s, often resulting in the sitting president’s assassination―most notably that of the popular reformer president Ibrahim al-Hamdi in 1977. This instability came to an end by the end of the 1970s with the consolidation in power of president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who would ultimately rule uninterrupted from 1978 all the way up to the Arab Spring uprising of 2011.
President Saleh was in many respects the archetypal ‘Arab dictator’, particularly popularised in the western mind following the 2011 uprisings. He ruled with a mixture of iron-fisted repression and a massive elaborate network of corruption and tribal patronage that made him reportedly one of the richest men in the world by the end of his rule, despite ruling over the poorest of all the Arab countries. Whilst other contemporary ‘dictatorships’ in the region―for example the rule of Hafez al-Assad in Syria, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya―attempted at least for portions of their rule to follow a sovereigntist, anti-western and Arab nationalist line, Saleh almost never bothered with such nationalist window-dressing and openly embraced a role as a comprador whose fidelity to US imperialism (among the Arab republics) was exceeded perhaps only by president Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
Saudi wahhabism
Whilst all this was going on, major cultural and ideological battles were being waged on Yemeni soil. The 1970s oil boom had enticed large numbers of impoverished Yemenis to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates to seek relatively well-paid employment in the oil industry.
Sensing an opportunity, the Saudis began efforts to promote and proselytise the salafi-wahhabi version of Islam amongst migrant workers from other muslim countries, hoping to gain ideological soft power influence throughout the muslim world. This process heated up considerably following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, which deeply threatened the Saudi and Gulf kingdoms and whose twelver shia sect was traditionally seen as a sworn enemy by salafi-wahhabis.
Many Yemenis were accepted into religious schools and universities in Saudi Arabia, where they were indoctrinated and equipped to return to their own country to act as missionaries of the new salafi-wahhabi creed. The most notable of these was Shaykh Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi’i, who set up a salafi-wahhabi seminary in the town of Dammaj in northern Yemen. This onslaught by well-funded missionaries preaching a foreign faith soon instigated a backlash amongst the fiercely independent Zaydis, who began to organise and reassert their own identity.
There is a common misconception amongst westerners, that salafi-wahhabism is solely a movement of violent extremist muslims who are defined by their hatred of America and Europe and want to wage violent jihad against westerners, exemplified in the 9/11 attacks and in Isis-claimed terrorist atrocities in Europe.
In actual fact, salafi-wahhabism has always been an ideology promoted and encouraged by imperialism. Amongst the core values of the Saudi-sponsored movement is the medieval sunni concept of total loyalty to the ruler no matter how tyrannical he may be, alongside a very harsh interpretation of sharia law that creates large-scale resentment (for imperialism to exploit), fierce persecution of muslims following minority non-sunni sects (causing division in society that benefits imperialism) and a general indifference towards foreign colonialism.
Shaykh Muqbil al-Wadi’i famously stated that in his view it was better to have British colonialists in charge in southern Yemen than ‘godless socialists’. Even amongst the ‘jihadist’ salafis of Isis and al-Qaeda, whilst they may have shed the blind loyalty to the ruler they still invariably act to fracture and shatter the societies they operate in for the benefit of imperialism.
Naturally, these values contrast starkly with traditional Zaydi values of religious tolerance, speaking out against unjust rulers, and resisting colonial incursion into their lands.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting loss of foreign support, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south, already deeply weakened following a violent civil conflict in 1986, voted for reunification with the Yemeni Arab Republic in the north. This took place in 1990, creating a united Yemen (officially the Republic of Yemen) for the first time in more than 150 years, with the northern Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh becoming united Yemen’s first president and southern Yemeni leader Ali Salem al-Beidh the vice-president.
As part of the reunification, rules on opposition political parties were eased and the first multiparty elections were scheduled to take place in 1993. As part of the move to combat the spread of wahhabism, the Zaydis formed the al-Haq party, primarily to oppose the powerful pro-Saudi al-Islah party that had been established at around the same time with President Saleh’s blessing.
In 1994, the south under al-Beidh’s leadership attempted to re-secede, citing discrimination and broken promises by Saleh. Saleh immediately mobilised support from influential salafi-wahhabi tribes, who duly announced a ‘jihad’ in defence of Saleh’s rule.
The southern uprising was brutally crushed, leading to longlasting resentment amongst the population that would later be weaponised by imperialism. In contrast to the trigger-happiness of the salafi-wahhabis, the Zaydis of al-Haq, whilst not supporting secessionism, opposed shedding the blood of fellow Yemenis and argued for a peaceful resolution of the matter, angering the Saleh regime.
Lacking any powerful sponsors or foreign donors, al-Haq’s electoral performance was consistently poor, winning at its height in 1993 only two MPs and 0.8 percent of the vote―as opposed to 123 MPs for Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC) and 62 MPs for al-Islah. In addition, the party was dominated by cautious elders who generally limited themselves to promoting Zaydi interests and pushing back against salafi-wahhabi encroachment.
A younger and more radical faction of the party argued for a shift in focus, towards calling out the total subservience of the Saleh regime to US imperialism and opposing the USA and Israel as the ultimate sponsors of the salafi-wahhabi threat and the real enemies of the Yemeni people. This faction came to be embodied and led by Sayyid Hussain Badreddine al-Houthi, one of al-Haq’s two MPs and the son of a highly-respected Zaydi elder.
During his time in parliament and beyond, al-Houthi became well-known for his vehement denunciations of US influence over the country, much to the embarrassment of the Saleh regime. Contrary to his contemporaries, who won election campaigns through bribery and patronage, al-Houthi campaigned with the slogan: “I won’t promise you anything, but I promise I will not represent you dishonestly.”
He had a reputation for repeatedly voting against foreign loans that the government wanted to take out, astutely pointing out that whilst the money received would only enrich those favoured by the regime, the crushing service payments would fall squarely on the backs of ordinary folk.
Following the loss of his seat in 1997, al-Houthi abandoned the parliamentary route and began laying the foundations for a mass grassroots organisation in the Zaydi heartlands. He had already helped to establish a youth organisation called Shabab-ul-Mo’mineen (The Believing Youth), which organised popular school clubs and summer camps promoting Zaydi culture.
Under al-Houthi’s guidance, these clubs began to take an increasingly anti-imperialist direction. Al-Houthi helped to establish clinics and hospitals and worked hard to improve electricity infrastructure in neglected rural areas, conscious that people fleeing to the cities to escape poverty were at a high risk of becoming torn from their roots and thus easy prey for pro-western ideologies.
After the 9/11 attacks, President Saleh quickly became one of the most enthusiastic allies of Bush’s phoney ‘War on Terror’. From 2001-04, al-Houthi gave a series of lectures in which he railed against the US presence in Yemen and warned of US-controlled NGO attempts to colonise the country’s education system.
He correctly linked the various conflicts and troubles in the region back to their source: US imperialism and zionist Israel. His lectures chimed deeply with the masses and he became a constant source of worry to the Saleh regime.
Al-Houthi’s rhetoric and worldview was fundamentally based in a return to the values of Zaydi Islam, and a consistent feature of his lectures was his call for muslims to uphold the Qur’an, particularly paying attention to verses calling for muslims to be vigilant against jewish and christian plots, which he linked to the modern-day actions of the USA and Israel. As such, he would very often frame his discussion in terms of “muslims” versus an alliance of “jews” and “christians”.
This is where it is crucially important to judge a movement’s revolutionary potential by objective, not arbitrary, criteria―ie, it’s not about what sounds nice to us or what hurts our feelings, but rather which movement is objectively weakening imperialism and which is objectively helping it.
Apologists for zionism and imperialism will often spread the idea that any individual or movement which paints jews in a negative light is ‘like the Nazis’, as if the sole defining trait of nazism was dislike of jews. Even amongst socialists, particularly in western countries, there is often a tendency to treat anti-jewish prejudice as the ultimate evil, a uniquely evil form of racism worse than all others, because of the atrocities committed by the German Nazis in the 1940s.
Fundamentally this is a reactionary and Eurocentric argument that implies a static, unchanging view of history. Of course, it barely needs saying that for workers to blame all the world’s wrongs on ‘the jews’ is obviously a wrong and silly idea, which is as wrong and silly today as it was 100 years ago. However (and here comes the big ‘but’), 100 years ago, the objective situation internationally was that the main reactionary racist ideology being promoted amongst workers and serving the interests of imperialism was antisemitism. Today, however, the equally racist ideology of zionism serves this divide-and-rule purpose, while antisemitism has taken a back seat.
One hundred years ago, the racist ideology of antisemitism was used to justify genocide, but today it is the racist ideology of zionism that is being used to justify genocide. And in that sense, in today’s context, the racist ideology of zionism is a much greater threat than antisemitism. Therefore, to obstruct the fight against zionism by scaremongering about the supposed danger of ‘slipping into antisemitism’―as if that is somehow worse than being an apologist for zionist butchery―is objectively a reactionary, pro-imperialist position.
Certainly, to try and attack an organisation like Ansar Allah that plays a leading role in combating zionism, on the basis of concern-trolling about antisemitism―particularly in a country like Yemen that has virtually no jewish population anyway―is an argument that should be dismissed out of hand, regardless of certain people’s ‘feelings’.
One hundred years ago, imperialism was promoting antisemitic ideology everywhere because that suited its agenda. Those promoting antisemitic arguments were the most banal dupes and tools of imperialism. This is not the case today.
Today, imperialism aggressively scaremongers about the danger of antisemitism, not because the system really cares about jewish people’s security but because it needs to justify the existence of the zionist settler-colony, which it needs to keep in place in order to continue to destabilise and dominate west Asia, the region with by far the largest oil reserves on the planet, and geographically crucial for transnational trade and shipping.
If any group today can be compared to the antisemites of 100 years ago, it is the anti-Islam crusaders, as fearmongering about muslim immigration is now the primary racist discourse of the bourgeoisie.
Of course, those few who do still promote antisemitic theories about the world are not suddenly right; their ideas are still wrong and misguided, but they cannot be equated to the antisemites of 100 years ago. In the changed context of today, irrespective of their ideas being wrong or right, it has to be admitted that they have broken out of the propaganda straitjacket of imperialism, and have adopted a position directly challenging the one promoted by imperialism.
That shows they have developed the ability to think for themselves. That means despite their current wrong and misguided ideas they have the potential to become revolutionary if provided with the guidance that only a scientific understanding of imperialism can bring.
Certainly you can contrast this with the countless ‘progressive’ identity politics-obsessed, Pride flag Ukraine flag-waving ‘socialists’ who, despite their loud claims to represent and support all things ‘progressive’, have never allowed a thought that was not sanctioned by imperialism to enter their brains.
Perhaps Sayyid Hussain al-Houthi’s most well-known innovation appeared during his January 2002 lecture entitled As-Sarkhatu fi Wajhil-Mustakbireen (The Shout in the Face of the Arrogant), where he coined his famous sarkha (slogan): “God is greater! Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse be on the jews! Victory to Islam!”
These slogans quickly became the rallying cry of the movement and are emblazoned on its official flag to this day, much to the disgust of ‘respectable’ bourgeois commentators who decry the apparent antisemitism on display.
The fact of the matter is that it is not the apparent meaning of the slogan that is important, but the deeper context and reality that it represents. On the one hand, it is perfectly possible for photogenic young European students to chant slogans of “freedom”, “democracy” and even “socialism”, and yet be mere footsoldiers of the most reactionary elements of international finance capital. We saw this during the so-called ‘Velvet revolutions’ (counter-revolutions) of 1989, when all the fine slogans about workers’ rights and ‘socialism with a human face’ merely masked a pro-US, imperialist-controlled movement bankrolled by the likes of George Soros and assorted billionaires.
On the other hand, whilst al-Houthi’s sarkha may sound offensive to European sensibilities, in the context of Yemen’s very conservative islamic society it undoubtedly contained the nucleus of a blossoming anti-imperialist consciousness, since it identifies Yemen’s main enemies as the USA, Israel and zionism, and calls for a victory to the islamic world (ie, the entire middle east) against these foes.
As always, pro-imperialist commentators will always try to focus on the surface dressing, whilst it is the job of serious revolutionaries to dig beyond that and understand the substance beneath.
As it turns out, US imperialism understood this very well, and US officials in Yemen were deeply disturbed by the rapid spread of the sarkha and of al-Houthi’s soaring popularity amongst the masses. They put pressure on the Saleh regime to crack down on the movement, and hundreds of people were arrested and imprisoned on various trumped-up charges, merely for chanting the sarkha at prayers and other public occasions.
However, al-Houthi refused to back down, pointing out that he had no interest in challenging President Saleh’s rule and that he was only challenging what he saw as the US-Israeli infiltration of Yemen’s institutions.
In June 2004, President Saleh travelled to the US state of Georgia to attend the G8 summit, where he held back-door discussions with US officials. Following his return to Yemen, he immediately launched a large-scale military action with covert US support against al-Houthi’s stronghold in the rural northern regions, bombarding civilian areas with air strikes and killing and maiming hundreds of people.
Al-Houthi and his followers fought back fiercely, but ultimately he was killed by the army in a firefight in August 2004. The army seized his body and refused to return it to his family for almost a decade.
If President Saleh had been hoping that the budding national-liberation movement in the north would die out with the killing of its founding leader, this hope did not last long. Under the leadership of Sayyid Hussain al-Houthi’s father, Sayyid Badreddine al-Houthi, the movement developed quickly into a disciplined paramilitary force and began an insurgency that led to a total of six wars between 2004-10.
The Saudi monarchy, which 40 years earlier had supported Zaydi fighters (owing to their being a reactionary force at that time), once again intervened on behalf of imperialism and began bombing the liberation fighters on behalf of the Saleh regime, whilst the USA and Britain provided logistical support and the international media turned a blind eye to the brutal, scorched-earth campaign.
However, the rebels, who now began to adopt the name Ansar Allah, remained steadfast and secured the support of the masses, allowing them to weather all the attacks.
The inhabitants of the remote northern regions of Yemen are well-known for their rugged hardiness and warrior spirit, and their men are rarely seen outside without a dagger―known as a jambiya―tucked into their waistband. It was in this period that Sayyid Hussain al-Houthi’s younger brother, Sayyid Abdul-Malik, came into prominence and began to take a leadership role, particularly after Sayyid Badreddine’s death in 2010.
The situation in the north remained at a stalemate until 2011, when the so-called ‘Arab spring’ wave of uprisings hit Yemen―one of the few countries where a really popular revolutionary movement took hold of the masses. Following months of relentless huge anti-government demonstrations, Saleh’s powerful tribal backers began defecting to the opposition one after the other, culminating in an assassination attempt on the president that reportedly left him critically injured.
Not long after this incident, Saleh finally agreed to resign and hand over the country to his vice-president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, bringing an end to his 33-year reign.
Ansar Allah played little direct role in the 2011 revolution, in which the opposition was dominated by pro-western liberals and the Saudi-aligned salafist-leaning al-Islah party. However, it used the power vacuum created during the turmoil to its full advantage by seizing control of large parts of the north, including the key city of Saada.
The movement continued to recruit and organise, pointing out that the regime had not fundamentally changed in any way. A supposed ‘presidential election’ was held in 2012 in which President Hadi was the only candidate allowed on the ballot paper (which did not stop western media outlets later referring to him as the ‘democratically-elected’ leader of Yemen!)
At this time, Sayyid Abdul-Malik al-Houthi was routinely attracting tens of thousands of people to hear his public sermons, in stark contrast to the unpopularity of the distant and technocratic new president. In particular, the Houthi movement became known for its vibrant celebrations of the prophet Muhammad’s birthday―a symbolic rebuke to the influence of salafi-wahhabism which forbids this popular festival as supposed ‘heresy’ (in much the same way that the extreme puritans wanted to ban Christmas in revolutionary England, although the puritans were at least on the right side of the revolution!)
Additionally, in 2013, Sayyid Hussain al-Houthi’s body was finally returned to his family, to be buried with full honours amidst huge crowds of supporters.
One incident that deserves attention in this period is the events at Dammaj. Dammaj was the symbolic stronghold of salafi-wahhabism in the north of Yemen, the home of a salafist seminary founded by Shaykh Muqbil al-Wadi’i in the 1980s. From the USA to Indonesia, ‘students’ would come to ‘study’ salafi-wahhabi ideology at this seminary, located awkwardly in the heartland of the Zaydis.
Matters came to a head when ‘students’ at the seminary reportedly began violently attacking Ansar Allah supporters. The seminary refused point-blank to cooperate with Ansar Allah’s attempts to capture the perpetrators, sparking a conflict that culminated in the destruction of the seditious institute and the fleeing of its extremist occupants―a huge symbolic victory for the Zaydi Yemenis in their national-liberation struggle.
As a response, the local branch of al-Qaeda declared “holy war” against Ansar Allah, once again showcasing that supposedly ‘anti-American’ organisation’s hypocrisy and fealty to imperialism. Saudi salafist propagandists began to spread long-winded claims that Ansar Allah supposedly followed a fringe sect of Zaydism that they claimed was close to Iran’s Twelver shias, thereby making them ‘infidels’ (ie, acceptable targets for annihilation in the eyes of ‘God’)―in reality demonstrating nothing more than the ease with which supposedly ‘religious’ goalposts can be moved by these puppets when it suits imperialist interests.
In late 2014, a fresh wave of mass popular protest broke out against President Hadi following his decision to implement a hike in fuel prices to meet the conditions of an IMF bailout. This was the October moment for Ansar Allah, as the resistance organisation made the fateful decision to order a full-scale march of its supporters and fighters to descend on the capital, Sanaa (which is situated in the north of the country).
Supporters of the controlled-opposition al-Islah party and other government loyalists attempted to halt the advance, but the masses sided with Ansar Allah and they were routed. At the same time, patriotic members of the military defected to support what became known as the 21 September Revolution. Despite the name, Ansar Allah did not immediately seize power, merely stationing its fighters at key positions in the capital whilst President Hadi remained formally in charge.
This uneasy truce broke down in January 2015, following a proposal by President Hadi to divide the country into six federal regions, which Ansar Allah rejected as an ill-disguised attempt at balkanisation.
President Hadi was placed under house arrest and forced to resign. He was replaced by a supreme revolutionary committee set up by Ansar Allah and led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s brother Muhammad, marking the formal victory of what had seemed unthinkable just a few years earlier―Ansar Allah coming to power as part of a national government of Yemen.
As expected, condemnations began pouring in from imperialist governments and their institutions and stooge regimes in the region, all of which refused to recognise the new government. Hadi escaped to Aden, where he declared himself to be the ‘legitimate president’ and was quickly recognised as such by the United Nations, under imperialist pressure.
As the revolutionaries marched southwards from Sanaa, Hadi fled the country entirely and settled in Riyadh, where he would go on to serve as ‘president’ of the so-called ‘internationally-recognised government of Yemen’―a powerless group of Saudi (ie, Anglo-American)-controlled stooges.
In case the reader has not already realised, the Yemenis are a proud people who do not take kindly to attempts at intimidation. In response to the imperialist pressure campaign, massive demonstrations took place in support of Ansar Allah and the national government across the northern part of the country, and huge crowds (described in the west as “tens of thousands”, but more likely closer to a million) filled the streets of Sanaa as far as the eye could see.
With a major showdown appearing imminent, Yemen’s political parties began choosing their side. As was to be expected, the salafist al-Islah sided with the reaction, as did al-Qaeda, Isis and virtually all salafi-wahhabi figures. Most liberal parties and figures also sided with the imperialist campaign, including at least one Nobel peace prize-winning ‘pro-democracy’ activist (shock horror!)
The leaders of the Yemeni Socialist party (YSP―the former ruling party of the socialist People’s Democratic Republic, now a social-democratic party) also fled to Riyadh to join the stooges.
On the other hand, the General People’s Congress (GPC)―the former ruling party of presidents Saleh and Hadi―despite being an obvious symbol of the old regime, split into patriotic and comprador wings, with the former joining the new government set up by Ansar Allah.
A large grassroots section of the YSP also denounced their leadership’s treachery and pledged loyalty to the revolution under the banner of ‘Socialists Against the Aggression’. And number of small communist parties declared their support for Ansar Allah’s revolution, the most notable of which was the National Democratic Front party, which had previously led a Marxist-Leninist insurgency in the 1970s.
Ansar Allah and associated revolutionary forces continued to advance into southern Yemen at lightning speed, reaching as far as Aden on the south coast. However, the movement had few roots in the southern regions of the country and lacked the mass support it enjoyed in the capital. In these regions, the masses were heavily influenced by the bourgeois-nationalist rhetoric of the so-called ‘Southern Movement’―a separatist movement that advocated the repartition of Yemen into two separate countries.
Much like their counterparts above a certain age in Germany’s eastern regions, large numbers of people in the south of Yemen remain nostalgic for the old socialist system and the security it provided. The separatists have been exploiting this sentiment to the hilt, despite the fact that their programme and rhetoric makes no mention of socialism or Marxism of any kind; rather, it is built almost entirely on inciting division and tribal prejudice against the ‘northerners’, in whom Ansar Allah are included.
Indeed, one website affiliated with the separatists has openly clamoured for imperialist intervention against Ansar Allah, citing Nato’s “humanitarian bombing” of Yugoslavia in the 1990s as a shining example of what they are seeking for Yemen!
As a result, Ansar Allah faced heavy resistance in Aden and much local hostility. Wisely, they did not persevere in trying to subjugate hostile regions. The national-liberation forces withdrew to roughly where the former north/south Yemen border had been―where they dug in and prepared to face down the inevitable imperialist intervention.
It was around this time that Ansar Allah found support in the most unexpected place imaginable: from former president/tyrant Ali Abdullah Saleh. Despite having murdered the movement’s founder and hundreds of its followers on behalf of US imperialism, Saleh and his significant band of battle-hardened tribal loyalists were apparently hoping to forget the past in their quest for political revenge against those who Saleh saw as having ‘betrayed’ him back in 2011.
This was not an unusual stance in heavily-tribal Yemen. When Saleh had waged war against the southern secession attempt in 1994, some of his main supporters had been former communist leaders whose political grudges eclipsed any concerns about principles or morals.
Given the new government’s total international isolation and the gathering storm clouds of imperialist war, Ansar Allah reluctantly agreed to this alliance. This strengthened the resistance significantly, but at the cost of granting a huge propaganda gift to imperialist-aligned Arab media, which began a massive demonisation campaign to condition their populations in accepting and even supporting a war against Ansar Allah and the national government.
Meanwhile, western media preferred to ignore the situation entirely, focusing instead on promoting Ukraine’s new protofascist regime and its war on the Donbass peoples.
It was also at this time that Isis, until then virtually absent from the country, suddenly decided to announce its presence and declare its ‘jihad’ in typical fashion―not against the US presence of course, but rather against those who dared to resist said presence. A number of devastating terrorist attacks on Ansar Allah supporters followed, killing hundreds of people.
Imperialist proxies launch war on Yemen
In March 2015, a ‘coalition of the willing’ was formed of a number of Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia. With the full blessing of US-British-EU imperialism, this coalition launched ‘Operation Decisive Storm’―a bloody campaign of terror waged against the people of Yemen in which a near-total blockade and massive indiscriminate bombing led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians over the following three years, mostly from disease and famine. Amongst other civilian targets, the coalition warplanes deliberately bombed sewage treatment plants to poison the water supply, leading to a huge outbreak of cholera in the country.
Of course, it must be borne in mind that this was in the days when bombing schools and hospitals was still something that was supposed to be shocking, rather than something imperialism perpetrates and defends openly and routinely, as we have been seeing in Gaza for the last two years.
The south of Yemen effectively came under the joint control of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two principal countries in the imperialist-backed coalition. In addition, huge numbers of mercenaries were brought in from Sudan, effectively to be used as cannon fodder.
Western media generally avoided reporting on the war in any meaningful way. Virtually no attempt was made by any mainstream journalist to go to Yemen and investigate what was actually happening. Articles and news segments related to the war were essentially identical copy-pastes, invariably using the same buzzwords and clunky phraseology (‘Iran-backed Houthi rebels’, ‘internationally-recognised government’, etc) that told the reader/listener virtually nothing.
Failure of the ‘antiwar’ movement
In turn, Yemen’s plight was largely ignored and dismissed by Trotskyists and other assorted western leftists. For example, the Socialist Party of England and Wales ran an article claiming that because Ansar Allah supposedly “fired on striking workers” in a single obscure incident, they were just as bad as the imperialist coalition carpet bombing the country―a ludicrous analogy that is unfortunately a typical example of Trotskyite ideology. The same article claimed that Ansar Allah runs “concentration camps”, relying on Emirati state media and the British Economist (ie, the paper that Lenin himself famously denounced) as its only sources.
A handful of left-liberals attempted to raise awareness of the human tragedy and expose British and US complicity in the crimes. However, they invariably portrayed imperialism as merely ‘helping the Saudis’ rather than being the ultimate directing force behind the war, and they carefully avoided expressing any sympathy for the resistance. Notably, many of these figures, such as the Democratic senator Chris Murphy, who spoke against the Yemen war, were not even consist in taking antiwar positions, often espousing fanatically hawkish positions towards Russia and other supposed ‘enemy states’.
Additionally, there was some opposition to the war from the libertarian isolationist right, exemplified by the former third-party US presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who argued correctly that Ansar Allah was the main enemy of al-Qaeda and Isis and that the USA should therefore be supporting it “to fight terrorism”. Of course, this well-meaning argument misses the whole point of the phoney ‘war on terror’―which is that it was always a sham, designed to justify imperialist war, occupation and looting of resource-rich middle-eastern countries by slapping the ‘terrorist’ label onto them.
Triumph of the resistance
Despite the horrific violence against their people, their total isolation on the global stage (with the notable exception of Iran), and the odds stacked overwhelmingly against them, the Yemeni people under the brilliant leadership of Sayyid Abdul Malik al-Houthi fought the invaders heroically and refused to surrender.
Northern Yemen’s rugged geography helped to protect it, in addition to solid public support and a remarkable lack of collaborators and informants, who all seemed to have fled south at the start of the war. Such an incredible level of societal loyalty to the resistance leadership is a rare phenomenon, perhaps comparable only to Gaza or to DPR Korea.
The only serious internal challenge to Ansar Allah’s leadership occurred in late 2017, when former president Ali Abdullah Saleh suddenly declared that he was ending his alliance with Ansar Allah and joining the side of the aggressors. It seems he had been secretly in touch with the invaders for a long time, plotting to launch an internal uprising that would catch the resistance off guard.
Saleh once famously said that he had remained in power all those years by “dancing on the heads of snakes”. This time, however, he was finally bitten―fatally.
The counter-revolutionary uprising by Saleh’s supporters was a total failure and was crushed within a few days, culminating in the dramatic capture and summary execution of Saleh by Ansar Allah fighters. Thus was the ignominious end of imperialism’s most loyal servant in Yemen. Saleh’s son Tareq fled to the south with his remaining loyalists and officially joined the pro-imperialist coalition forces, depriving the imperialists of their last significant fifth column within the ranks of the Yemeni resistance.
As the stalemate situation on the ground continued, the motley coalition that had been cobbled together in the south, consisting of al-Qaeda/Isis elements, southern separatists, salafists and various tribes affiliated with the Hadi government-in-exile, started to fall apart and fight amongst themselves.
The UAE rather cleverly focused its support on southern separatists, who still retained significant popularity, whilst Saudi Arabia continued to hold onto Hadi and his dwindling band of loyalists as the ‘constitutional’ president. Tensions between the two erupted into a war within a war in 2019, which ended with the UAE-backed separatists seizing control of Aden and much of the south coast and kicking out Hadi’s loyalists―a further blow to the so-called ‘internationally-recognised government’. The UAE also seized and effectively annexed the Yemeni island of Socotra, with virtually no media attention.
Meanwhile, Ansar Allah continued to improve its technological and military capabilities in leaps and bounds. This became apparent when, in late 2019, the resistance used drones to launch a spectacular attack on the Abqaiq-Khurais oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, temporarily crippling Saudi oil production and sending shivers through global markets.
Imperialist media outlets and politicians rushed to blame Iran for the attack, providing no evidence other than “the impact looks like it came from the north”. In reality, blaming Iran was a face-saving exercise for western weapons-manufacturing monopolies, which were deeply embarrassed that their eye-wateringly expensive ‘state-of-the-art’ area denial systems were outsmarted so easily by cheap Yemeni drones.
Notably, mass terror bombing by the coalition largely ceased following this strike and blockade relief began to be allowed through, bringing an end to the worst of the humanitarian crisis. This clearly shows that imperialism does not show mercy or respite until it is forced to do so―usually out of fear of being given a bloody nose by an enemy powerful enough to hit back hard. This is a crucial lesson that all oppressed peoples must never lose sight of.
The exiled so-called ‘internationally recognised government’ was now in a weak position, having lost control of virtually all population centres in Yemen to either Ansar Allah or UAE-backed bourgeois separatists, whilst the successful Abqaiq-Khurais operation had put the fear of God into its Saudi allies. In 2022, the much-hallowed ‘constitutional’, ‘legitimate’, ‘democratically-elected president’ Hadi was finally forced into retirement by the Saudis, who chose a new puppet to lead the pretend government-in-exile whose legitimacy and relevance today makes Juan Guaidó look like Vladimir Putin.
Despite the total isolation and embargo of the Ansar Allah government, recognised only by Iran and Syria, living standards of ordinary Yemenis in the liberated areas remained relatively stable, whilst those in coalition-held areas began to freefall. The Yemeni central bank was effectively split in two by the war, leading to the de facto creation of two currencies. The coalition authorities in the south had engaged in mass money printing, which led to hyperinflation and impoverished the masses. Ansar Allah’s government in the north, by contrast, enforced a strict ban on the entry of the new banknotes from their territory and successfully maintained a stable currency as a result.
Role of the Ansar Allah leadership
Ansar Allah functions somewhat like a vanguard movement; it provides leadership and spiritual guidance but it is happy to engage in governmental alliances with any patriotic party or individual that wants to help free Yemen from imperial control―such as the patriotic portion of the former ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) for example.
Day-to-day governance is handled by the supreme political council, whose leader is effectively president of Yemen (although not recognised by any country, of course). The first president of the council was Muhammad Ali al-Houthi (another of Sayyid Hussain al-Houthi’s sons), who was soon replaced by Saleh Ali al-Sammad, perhaps to avoid the appearance of having too many al-Houthi family members in key positions. Al-Sammad was killed in a Saudi airstrike in 2018, to be succeeded by Mahdi al-Mashat who remains in the position to this day.
However, the ultimate power in the country lies in the hands of Sayyid Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the long-time leader of Ansar Allah. He holds no official position in the government, but his charisma and immense prestige earned through years of struggle has made him the real leader of the country, and he is generally recognised as such.
Sayyid Abdul Malik acts primarily as a spiritual leader, roughly analogous to the role of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran. He has not appeared in public since the 2014 revolution for obvious security reasons, but he regularly appears on the airwaves to give islamic lectures and spiritual guidance, as well as political speeches which lay out Yemen’s positions and ideology in minute detail.
A notable aspect of Sayyid Abdul-Malik’s leadership style is that he makes a point of carefully explaining important political and ideological issues to the population in clear formal Arabic (aimed at the wider Arab world as well as the domestic population), and in a very frank and honest manner. Even during heavy US-Israeli bombing in 2024, Sayyid Abdul Malik’s daily Ramadan lecture series continued without interruption.
Such a leadership style, if analogies can be drawn, is perhaps somewhat similar to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin or Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. It is certainly in total contrast to western politicians, who typically avoid making major speeches to the public, preferring soundbites and PR spin. The decadent imperialist bourgeois would never dream of going on telly and clearly explaining his/her real agenda to the general public.
Red Sea blockade gives tangible solidarity to Palestine
By this stage, despite the continuing division of the country, Ansar Allah had effectively won the war, in the sense that the coalition had all but given up its campaign to destroy it, or even to dislodge it from San’aa. However, the country was still ignored by western media until the autumn of 2023, when Israel began its campaign of genocide against the Gaza strip.
Ansar Allah’s leadership publicly declared that, in response to the zionist refusal to allow food or medicine into Gaza, it would impose a reciprocal blockade on Israel by physically stopping/intercepting all Israel-bound commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Friend and foe laughed, but the laughter turned to shock when Yemeni naval forces intercepted and impounded the Galaxy Leader in November 2023, proving that the government in San’aa did, in fact, have the capacity to follow through on its promises.
For the first time, the mass media began to pay real attention to ‘the Houthis’. Imperialist talking heads spat venom on TV and in the newspapers, demanding military action to stop the ‘Houthi-led attacks on commercial shipping’, characterising them as mere piracy.
However, given the public disgust at the Final Solution being implemented by the Israeli fascsists in Gaza, along with Ansar Allah’s clear and repeated statements (which the media did their best to obfuscate) that it was only targeting Israeli shipping and only for as long as Gaza remained besieged, this propaganda had limited effect. The rise of TikTok, Telegram and other social media apps that the zionists had a limited ability to influence (as opposed to the near-total imperialist control over mainstream media, Facebook, Instagram, etc) also helped to spread myth-busting information, particularly to members of the younger generations.
Commercial shipping to the Eilat port in southern Israel trickled to a minimum, to the point that the company operating the port ultimately filed for bankruptcy.
US air strikes fail to crush Yemeni solidarity
The US regime launched a military operation to intimidate Ansar Allah into ending the blockade and, for the first time, began direct air strikes on their forces. This campaign quickly fizzled out, as very few other countries involved themselves, and the Gulf States in particular refused to have anything to do with it, perhaps still suffering PTSD from the thrashing they had so recently received. Indeed, during the previous proxy phase of the war, Sayyid Abdul-Malik had openly challenged the USA to fight Yemen directly rather than through proxies and said that he was looking forward to that confrontation.
The blockade on the Eilat port did not stop the genocide, but it did create huge economic difficulties for the zionists, and it did result in a massive wave of global sympathy for Yemen―even in Arab countries that had been subjected to non-stop anti-Houthi propaganda for years. For the first time, supporting Ansar Allah became a popular position, and pro-Yemen flags and slogans began to appear at Palestine protests in Britain and other western countries.
In early 2025, the blockade was temporarily paused when Israel agreed to a ceasefire and allowed aid into Gaza. The blockade quickly snapped back into action when the genocide resumed a few weeks later, with more zionist-linked ships being confiscated and even sunk by the resistance.
Following the renewed blockade, Israel and the USA began a joint bombing campaign on Yemen (remember when they said Donald Trump had never started any wars?). At this point, however, this was arguably more of a knee-jerk and impotent response by the imperialists than anything else. The bombing campaign, like all those before it, was called off after a short time after achieving absolutely nothing beyond the murder of several hundred innocent people.
Unlike Iran and Lebanon, Yemen is quite homogenous and remote, with very few foreigners able to enter the Ansar Allah-controlled part of the country. Its people are largely rural and very conservative, with very little influence of western liberal ideas, This is in contrast with the more liberal cosmopolitan feel of Tehran (Iran) or Beirut (Lebanon), which provides a far better recruiting ground for western intelligence operatives in search of potential traitors and defectors. Moreover, there was a thorough purge of fifth columnists during the war with the Saudi-Emirati coalition, with nearly all traitors either fleeing to the south or to Saudi Arabia.
As a result, the USA and Israel for the first time found themselves blind and unable to target accurately owing to an acute lack of ground-level intelligence. At one point, they were reportedly reduced to choosing bombing targets based on random Twitter posts by zionist activists claiming to be using ‘open-source information’ (ie, looking at a Google satellite view to see if you can spot something that looks like it might be a military base).
The calm before the storm
Looking back, it is truly incredible to see how far the Yemenis have come since the days of Sayyid Hussain al-Houthi’s early anti-imperialist activism. A solid activist base was built with strong links to the masses, which then developed into a formidable paramilitary force that fought through years of war with the Saleh dictatorship, faced down the west-backed salafis and various al-Qaeda/Isis mercenaries, seized power, endured years of genocidal bombing and blockade by imperialism’s regional proxies, and has most recently triumphed against a direct intervention by the USA and Israel combined.
At the time of Sayyid Hussain’s murder, no one could have guessed that his blood would end up watering such a blossoming tree of resistance.
Yemen now faces the calm before the storm. The situation may be relatively peaceful today, but there can be absolutely no doubt that imperialism is planning something major against the liberated government of the north; it is simply too powerful and too dangerous to be left alone. Northern Yemeni security forces are already involved in breaking up Mossad networks that have been sent to infiltrate the country.
Yemen will come under attack again, that is certain. And we can also be sure that the next attack will be accompanied by a huge propaganda campaign aimed at demonising Ansar Allah―maybe on a ‘women’s rights’, ‘anti-terror’ or ‘anti-islamic’ pretext.
When that onslaught comes, it will stop being trendy to support Yemen. That is when anti-imperialists and revolutionaries deserving of the name will need to remain steadfast in their support for Ansar Allah, regardless of the abuse that will undoubtedly be heaped on the Yemeni branch of the regional Axis of Resistance.
The resistant people of Yemen have become a shining light for oppressed people all around the world, and it is in all our interests that they should continue to be victorious in their life-and-death struggle with the dark forces of zionism and Anglo-American imperialism.
Long live anti-imperialist Yemen, under the leadership of Ansar Allah and Sayyid Abdul-Malik al-Houthi!
Imperialism out of the middle east!