Understanding the heroism of Yemen – Part 1
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.
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 %) and Shi’as (around 15-20 %). This split fundamentally sprung 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 Shi’a, 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 Shi’as 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 Shi’a minorities. Centuries of savage persecution by Sunni authorities, and in particular the massacre of the third Shi’a 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 Shi’a 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 Shi’a minority themselves. The overwhelming majority of the world’s Shi’as 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 Shi’as of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and most Shi’as 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% of the population of modern Yemen.
Zaydi Shi’a Islam, a minority within a minority, accepts the first four Shi’a Imams but emerged from a dispute over the fifth Imam. Whilst the bulk of the Shi’a 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-Shi’a 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 Mutawwakilite 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 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 Saudi Arabia, whose own reactionary pro-Western monarchy 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 Abdul 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. It is an important reminder for revolutionary analysts always to keep 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’s 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, mostly notably that of the popular reformer President Ibrahim al-Hamdi in 1977. This instability came to an end by the end of the 70s 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 al-Assad in Syria, Saddam in Iraq and al-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 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 Shi’a 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.
TO BE CONTINUED