Aired in 2024, the documentary La Fureur des Houthis contains a striking sequence which illustrates the complex relationship which many Yemenis have with globalisation. The director, Charles Emptaz, follows two Yemeni influencers, both close to the Houthi authorities, through the streets of the capital, Sanaa, to visit the Galaxy Leader, a roll-on/roll-off cargo ship seized by the Houthis on 19 November 2023 in solidarity with the Palestinians and diverted to the port of Hudaydah under their control1.
The ship quickly became a tourist attraction. The two influencers film themselves on board. One of them, standing on the deck, comments upon their discovery: “This ship is really huge. It must represent an enormous loss for Israel.” This statement highlights the gap between this influencer’s perception and the realities of international trade, for the Galaxy Leader is only one ship among many in a commercial fleet linked to businessmen close to Israeli interests. Far more than a tourist attraction meant to celebrate the victory of the Houthi regime over the central Yemeni government and world trade, this episode illustrates Yemen’s tragic isolation on the international scene but also the effectiveness of Houthi propaganda concerning its operations in solidarity with the Gazans.
The Houthis : dominant nationally, ignored internationally
On 26 March 2015 the Saudis unleashed their operation “Decisive Storm” at the head of a coalition of Arab countries in support of the existing Yemeni regime. For the few news outlets that took any interest, this turned the country into a kind of victim of its richer Gulf neighbours, allied with the western powers. As the war dragged on and the Houthis showed a capacity to give as good as they got, observers were gradually led to rethink their simplistic interpretation focused on the regional nature of the conflict. Ten years of warfare have left Yemen and the other parties to the conflict in an ambivalent position in international relations.
Indeed, the intervention of the Saudis and their allies, aimed at finishing the Houthi rebels who had taken Sanaa in September 2014, did at first made it possible to push the latter back, liberating Aden and the territories bordering the Bab El-Mandeb straits, and slightly easing the blockage of the Red Sea route through which some 20 % of world shipping passes. However this operation was only partially successful.
After 25,000 air raids, a maritime blockade and, according to UN estimates, nearly 400,000 dead (direct, or indirect through famine and epidemics such as cholera), the Arab coalition remains bogged down and now in retreat. The loyalist Yemeni government finds itself in the grip of fragmentation with separatists in the south. The Houthis still control one-third of the country including Sanaa, and the majority of the population. Nationwide, they have managed to become the main political and military force while at the same time developing, since the autumn of 2023, an undeniable nuisance potential in the Red Sea and in the region.
Therein lies the contradiction, not to say the paradox of the war in Yemen. Despite its more than 2000 kilometres of coastline along the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a catastrophic humanitarian situation and the tangible effect the conflict has had on international shipping and regional security, Yemen remains quasi neglected. Since 2022, the Saudi desire for a military withdrawal, as well as the decrease in international aid, have favoured a deterioration of the situation while leaving the Houthis with the upper hand.
The latter are taking the country backwards, developing a conservative ideology, increasingly aligned with Iran, at odds with the hopes of many Yemenis and with the engagement of such a well-located country in exchanges, the flow of goods and people. During the summer of 2024, by arresting humanitarian actors and the personnel of UN agencies, the Houthis have further shown their wish to withdraw from the world - pretending to believe their country can again be self-sufficient, as at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Red Sea: strategic passage and political lever
In February 2025, Donald Trump’s decision to classify the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organisation was taken against the advice of humanitarian actors but also that of observers and Yemeni political actors who all say that the rebel movement thrives on its reputation as a pariah on the international stage.
For the last eighteen months, successive bombings by Israel, the US and the UK, after the long Saudi-Emirati campaign, have not substantially transformed the balance of military strength - and on the ground, the anti-Houthis, themselves quite divided, remain on the defensive. Moreover, these bombings have mostly hurt the civilian population, disrupting the economy and the delivery of aid, and preventing, for example, Sanaa airport from functioning normally.
The rebels’ rhetoric about self-sufficiency conceals another paradox: the territorial base of the Houthis - whose leaders come from the high central mountains and advocate an assertion of traditional identity - is possible only because it is articulated with globalisation. The country’s seaboard has become for them a strategic space of sovereignty and legitimacy to be conquered and defended. As early as the six years of the so-called Saada war (2004-2010), the Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, managed to seize territory in three different governorates: Saada, Hajjah (giving them access to the Red Sea) and Al-Jawf (containing petroleum deposits), while Ali Abdullah Saleh, then President of Yemen, claimed to anyone prepared to listen that the rebels were losing ground. During a series of clashes, Port Midi, located some ten kilometres south of the Saudi border, became a major strategic objective. Indeed, this port made it possible to receive arms and logistic support from Iran2.
After the revolution and Saleh’s departure in 2012, the Houthis took part in the transitional phase (2012-2014) but focused their demands on keeping control of the territories they had conquered and especially their access to the sea. In 2014, when a new territorial division was enacted by the National Dialogue Conference3 which deprived them of their access to the sea, they seized the capital.
From the very beginning of the war, the coast became the rebels’ major strategic concern. They took control of the port of Hudaydah as well as the coastal plain of Tihama, on the Red Sea. But they were unable to maintain their presence in Aden. And having lost several port towns, in particular Mokha, in the southern Tihama, where Emirati troops landed in 2018, the prospect of a deepening of the humanitarian crisis caused by the loss of Hudaydah (cutting the supply line of international aid for Houthi territories) prompted the organisation of peace talks. The Stockholm agreement established de facto control over Hudaydah by the Houthis, enabling, despite a declared blockade, the supply of Iranian materiel and their exploitation of humanitarian aid.
Support for Palestine, a “national cause” with international aims
Still in a position of strength although the military front remained at a standstill, the Houthis entered another set of negotiations in Riyadh in 2022. Saudi Arabia having agreed to most of their demands, they appeared to be about to sign an agreement when they developed a new strategy in the Red Sea, capturing the Galaxy Leader in response to the Gaza strip massacres in the autumn of 2023. From then on, the Houthis declared the defence of Palestine a national cause. Over a hundred ships, with links to Israel or the West, have since been attacked in the Red Sea. After a pause, the movement’s leader Abdel Malek Al-Houthi announced the resumption of the attacks on 12 March of this year, after Israel resumed blocking the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza,.
Although the Houthis’ support for the Palestinian cause should not be belittled, their attacks on shipping, and also targeting Israel, seem mostly meant to serve their political ambitions, both nationally and internationally. After ten years of civil war, the governance of the Houthi authorities can be assessed mainly as the imposition of a brutal and authoritarian emergency rule, justified by the all-out war effort. The pauperisation of the people, contained only thanks to international humanitarian aid, is getting worse, and the crisis of financing for the programmes of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) threatens to have drastic consequences for civilians.
Given this context, defending the Palestinians provides the Houthi administration with strategic relief, enabling it to increase its legitimacy in the eyes of the Yemeni population under its control. While demonstrations have been banned since 2014, the regime regularly holds big popular marches in Sanaa and all the cities under its authority. These displays of support for the Palestinian people are recycled by Houthi propaganda as proof of the national unity of the Yemeni people behind those who claim the role of armed defenders of a Palestine neglected by the Muslim world.
When the truce was declared between Hamas and Israel in January 2025, the Houthis stopped their attacks on Red Sea shipping, only to resume them on 12 March, ten days after Israel reimposed its blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza*. Then on 15 March, Donald Trump ordered massive bombing attacks on Yemen, opening a new phase in US military involvement; he promised the Houthis, and behind them Iran, that “hell will rain down” on them. This sequence has been a reminder of the extent to which Yemen, though forgotten by the rest of the world, remains a major factor in international relations.
Translated from French by Noël Burch
1This Bahaman-flagged ship, chartered by a Japanese company to carry a cargo of automobiles, belonged to a British company owned by an Israeli businessman. The crew were freed on 6 February 2024.
2This Iranian aid was able to cross from ports such as Berbera on the Somali coast, and notably from the port of Djibouti, where consignments of ammonium nitrate were hijacked throughout the previous decade.
3The body charged after the 2012 elections with drawing up a constitution for the new regime and organising a transitional justice process.