Understanding the heroism of Yemen – Part 3
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-UK-EU imperialism, this coalition launched ‘Operation Decisive Storm’ – a bloody campaign of terror 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 of schools and hospitals was still something that was supposed to be shocking, rather than something imperialism now defends openly and routinely as we now see in Gaza.
The south of Yemen effectively came under 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 to be effectively 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.
In turn, Yemen’s plight was largely ignored and dismissed by Trots 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 very typical for Trotskyite ideology. The same article claimed that Ansar Allah runs “concentration camps”, using only Emirati state media and The Economist (i.e., 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 anti-war per se and often espoused 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 therefore the US should be supporting Ansar Allah “to fight terrorism”. Of course, this well-meaning argument misses the whole point of the phoney ‘war on terror’ – that it was always a sham designed to justify imperialist war, occupation and looting of resource-rich Middle Eastern countries by slamming them with the ‘terrorist’ label.
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 seemed to have all fled to the southern regions at the start of the war. Such an incredible level of societal loyalty to the resistance leadership is a rare sight, 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 Saleh suddenly declared that he was ending his alliance with Ansar Allah and going over to the side of the aggression. Apparently, he had secretly been in touch with the coalition 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”. However, this time he would finally get 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 its 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 specifically towards the 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, 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 throughout 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 who were deeply embarrassed that their eye-wateringly expensive ‘state-of-the-art’ AD 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 for its own sake, but only if it is forced to out of fear of being given a bloody nose by an enemy powerful enough to hit back hard – 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 relevance today makes Juan Guaidó look like Vladimir Putin by comparison.
Despite the total isolation and embargo of the Ansar Allah government, recognised only by Iran and Syria, the living standards of 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, creating de-facto 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 new banknotes from entering their territory and successfully maintain a stable currency as a result.
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 who wants to see Yemen free of imperial control, such as the patriotic portion of the former ruling GPC for example.
Day-to-day governance is handled by the Supreme Political Council, whose leader is effectively president of Yemen (although of course not recognised by any country). 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, 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 into the true de-facto 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 does not appear in public since the 2014 Revolution for obvious security reasons, but he very regularly appears on the airwaves to give Islamic lectures and spiritual guidance as well as political speeches laying out Yemen’s positions and ideology in minute detail.
A notable aspect of Sayyid Abdul-Malik’s leadership style is that he makes it a point of always carefully explaining political and ideological issues to the population, in clear formal Arabic (aimed at the wider Arab world as well as the domestic population), in a very frank and honest manner. Even during heavy US-Israeli bombing in 2024, Sayyid Abdul Malik continued with his scheduled daily Ramadan lecture series without any interruption.
Such a leadership style, if analogies can be drawn, is perhaps somewhat similar to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, but 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.
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 them, or even to dislodge them from San’aa. However, the country still remained ignored by the Western media up 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, they 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 they did in fact have the capacity to follow through on their 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 it as mere piracy.
However, given the public disgust at the ongoing Final Solution being carried out on the people of Gaza, along with Ansar Allah’s clear and repeated statements (which the media did their best to obfuscate) that they are only targeting Israeli shipping and only as long as Gaza is besieged, this propaganda had only limited effect. The rise of TikTok, Telegram and other social media apps that the Zionists had only limited control over (as opposed to the near-total control over mainstream media, Facebook, Instagram, etc) also helped in this regard as a medium of information, particularly for 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.
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 previously received. Indeed, during the previous proxy phase of the war, Sayyid Abdul-Malik had openly challenged the US to fight Yemen directly rather than through proxies and said that he looked forward to it.
The blockade on the Eilat port did not stop the genocide but it created a massive wave of global sympathy for Yemen, even in Arab countries 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 the UK 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 ships being confiscated and even sunk by the resistance.
Following the renewed blockade, Israel and the US began a joint bombing campaign on Yemen (remember when they said Trump never started any wars?), which of course at this point was arguably more of a knee-jerk phenomenon by the imperialists than anything else. This campaign, like those before it, was called off after a short time after achieving absolutely nothing beyond killing a few 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 pro-Western liberal ideas, in contrast with the more liberal cosmopolitan feel of Tehran or Beirut that provides an easy recruiting ground for traitors and defectors. In addition, there was a thorough purge of internal fifth columns during the war with the Saudi-Emirati coalition, with nearly all traitors either fleeing to the south or to Saudi Arabia.
As a result, US and Israel for the first time found themselves blind and unable to target accurately owing to an acute lack of any ground intelligence. At one point, they were reportedly reduced to choosing targets to bomb based on random Twitter posts by Zionist activists claiming to be using ‘open-source information’ (i.e., looking at Google satellite view to see if you can spot something that looks like it might be a military base).
When one looks back, it is truly incredible how far the Yemenis have come since the days of Sayyid Hussain al-Houthi’s anti-imperialist activism. A solid activist base was built with strong links to the masses, that developed into a formidable paramilitary force that faced down years of war with the Saleh dictatorship, faced down the Salafis and the various al-Qaeda/ISIS mercenaries, seized power, faced down years of bombing and blockade by imperialism through its proxies and now have faced down direct intervention by the US and Israel. 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 now, but there can be absolutely no doubt that imperialism is planning something major against it; it is too powerful and dangerous to be left alone. Ansar Allah-aligned security forces are already involved in breaking up Mossad networks within the country.
Yemen will come under attack again, that is certain. This attack will be accompanied by a big propaganda campaign to demonise Ansar Allah, perhaps from a women’s rights angle or some kind of anti-Islam angle. At that time it will no longer be trendy to support Yemen. At that time, anti-imperialists and revolutionaries deserving of the name must remain steadfast in their support for Ansar Allah, regardless of the abuse heaped in their direction. The resistant people of Yemen have become a shining light for the oppressed all around the world and they will be victorious.
Long live anti-imperialist Yemen, under the leadership of Ansar Allah and Sayyid Abdul-Malik al-Houthi!