In recent weeks, the intensification of attacks from Yemen against commercial ships in the Red Sea has led the international media to talk and write a lot about the Houthis, the armed group that controls a large part of Yemen and is responsible for the attacks: this has created some definition problems.
The Houthis are a group with a particular status and operate in a conflict – the one in Yemen – which is one of the longest and most complicated in recent decades. Many international media and the vast majority of Western governments define the Houthis as “rebels”, because between 2014 and 2015 they conquered a large portion of Yemeni territory, including the capital Sanaa, after rising against the country’s government. But as Houthi control over Yemen has strengthened, this definition has become increasingly problematic and controversial. Today the word “rebels” is close to the Houthis.
Brief history of the Houthis
The Houthi movement (pronounced with a small aspiration of the second H) emerged between the 1980s and 1990s in northern Yemen, where the majority of the population belongs to a current of Shiite Islam called Zaydism, which exists only in Yemen and is practiced by approximately 35 percent of the population (65 percent of the population is Sunni). The Houthis are the main tribe of Yemeni Zaydism, which has always expressed the leaders of the group and therefore gave its name to the entire movement.
In 2004 the Houthis organized a first armed rebellion against the government, which was repressed by force. But in 2011 the Arab Spring protests in Yemen created a power vacuum: after months of protests, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had governed the country since 1990, was forced to resign and the Houthis took advantage of the situation.
They called themselves Ansar Allah, meaning “defenders of God”, and in 2014 they organized a large insurrection against the government. In a short time they reached the capital Sanaa, occupied the entire north-west part of the country and forced President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to the southern city of Aden.
A very harsh civil war ensued, in which Hadi’s government was supported by a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia, all determined to eliminate the Houthis from Yemen. The war caused 350 thousand deaths, there were ferocious war crimes on both sides and one of the most serious humanitarian crises in recent history opened up, but it did not have the effect hoped for by the government: in 2022 there was a ceasefire which recognized in fact (but not formally) that the Houthis controlled an important part of Yemeni territory and its capital. They’ve been doing it for ten years now. The government recognized by the international community, however, is based in Aden.
In these circumstances, for a long time it was appropriate to define the Houthis as “rebels”. The Houthis were effectively an armed rebellion in which the group rose up against the internationally recognized government with the intent to overthrow and take its place.
The complication arises from the fact that in 2015 this rebellion was successful and the Houthis established their power over Sanaa and much of Yemen. The fundamental point, therefore, is to try to understand whether a radical armed group that has controlled a territory and its institutions for almost ten years can still be defined as rebellious.
Spoiler: the answer is no, but there are still some considerations to do.
Rebels
The definition of “rebel” is already quite complicated in itself. International humanitarian law, that is, that complex of treaties and rules on which states have agreed among themselves to regulate war and the use of violence, almost never uses the word “rebel”. It distinguishes between “international armed conflicts”, i.e. wars between states, and “non-international armed conflicts”, i.e. wars between states and non-state groups.
In the documents on which international law is based, these non-state groups are defined in various ways: “armed groups”, “armed non-state actors”, but almost never “rebels”. For example, the Third Geneva Convention, which together with the other Geneva Conventions (there are four in total) is by far the most important document of international law, speaks at various points of “militias,” “volunteer corps,” or “organized resistance movements,” but never of “rebels.”
Applying these definitions to the war that has been going on in Yemen for ten years is rather complex. In the eyes of international law, the war in Yemen is still a “non-international armed conflict”, which pits the internationally recognized Yemeni government on one side and the Houthis on the other. In this context, the Houthis are seen as a non-state group. This is because, although it no longer controls the capital and the institutions, the government that is today in the city of Aden (the one ousted by the Houthis) is still considered the legitimate government of the country by the international community.
The best word
Although the Houthis are therefore unanimously considered to be a non-state group, and therefore cannot be considered the legitimate government of Yemen, finding a word that defines them remains complicated.
“Rebels,” the word used by many Western media and governments, has various merits. It allows us to concisely describe the fact that the Houthis are a group that rose up against the power of the government and is still considered a non-state entity, which is not the legitimate representative of Yemen. The problem, we were saying, is that the rebellion is effectively over, because the Houthis have ousted the government for almost ten years and control a large part of the country.
This control is not only military, but also civil, economic and institutional. In Sanaa, the capital, the Houthis control the government (which would formally be a government of national unity, although in fact it is a creature of the group) and the ministries. They control the central bank (the Aden government has established another, alternative one) and the army.
Andrea Carboni, who is chief analyst of the American study center ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project) says for example that even the website of the Yemeni state news agency, Sabais controlled by the Houthis, and that the Aden government had to make a clone site to have its own news agency.
«At ACLED we no longer consider the Houthis as rebels starting from 2015», says Carboni (2015 is the year in which the Houthis overthrew the government and dissolved the parliament), «and when necessary we define them as “an armed group which controls part of Yemen”. Carboni points out that both the special envoys and the UN resolutions that have dealt with Yemen in recent years (for example the resolution 2216 of 2015, which paved the way for the intervention of the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis) never speak of “rebels”, but always mention the Houthis directly, speaking at most of a “group”.
Recently this attitude has also been adopted by some international media. The New York Times and the Washington Post, for example, during this latest crisis they almost never used the word “rebels” to talk about the Houthis. The Wall Street Journal Instead he continues to use it. Also the Post so far he has chosen to continue using it.
Western governments such as those of the United States and the United Kingdom, but also the Italian government, continue to talk about rebels. A few months ago it seemed that things would change: the Houthis, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region, according to various rumors, were negotiating a peace agreement that would somehow recognize Houthi rule. The war in Gaza and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have interrupted the negotiations.