Conflicted S4 E20: Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes

Speakers: Thomas Small, Aimen Dean, & Baraa Shiban

Thomas: Welcome back to Conflicted with me, Thomas Small.

Aimen: And me, Aimen Dean.

Thomas: This is the second episode of our Titanic series, exploring the history of Yemen and to help us on our way. I'm thrilled to say that back again, we have our very special guest and our very good friend, Baraa Shiban. Welcome back, Baraa.

Baraa: So glad to be back and can't wait to explain the rest of how the Titanic hit the iceberg.

Thomas: Yemen, the great Titanic of the Middle East. Now, last time we explored Yemen up to the year 1990, and we looked at, well, the many Yemens, or let's say the two Yemens, the traditionally Zaidi dominated north and the more recently communist dominated south.

When we left them, they had just been joined together under the rule of a man who will be playing a crucial role in today's story, Ali Abdullah Saleh. And this week we're going to see if Ali Abdullah Saleh can hold both Yemens together in the following decades.

How would he do it? Aimen, let’s let Ali Abdullah Saleh’s words speak for themselves. How did he say he was going to keep the two Yemens together?

Aimen: Well, he said he can keep the two Yemens together by perfecting the art of dancing on the heads of snakes.

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Thomas: Dancing on the heads of snakes. That's the art of governing Yemen. We're going to find out how he did it, how well he did it. Let's jump right back into it.

Baraa, nice to see you again. I'm doubly glad that you're with us on this second episode of our epic series, because now in this episode, we're going to begin to take advantage of your eyewitness experience of many of the important events that have occurred in Yemen over the last, well, 40 years, say.

We're building up a picture of Yemen. We're laying the pieces on the chess board as we sort of move ever closer to the Civil War there. And so, you will be able to provide us some firsthand accounts of things you witnessed in Yemen as the Houthi movement rose. And as the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh began to be rattled.

Baraa: Yeah, I mean, those are the years that I was in school, but I was pretty much aware of what was happening in the north of Yemen. Me coming from Sana’a and being a member of a Hashemite family, but also having a growing interest in politics and the details of the politics of Yemen.

Thomas: Well, when we last left Yemen, there had been a big political earthquake there when the two countries, North Yemen and South Yemen were finally united. They were unified in 1990.

No doubt it would last forever. I wonder, Baraa, do you think in 1990 that anyone who knew Yemen would've thought that this experiment of unification was going to last?

Baraa: The emotions were very high, mainly, of course, positive emotions. And people in jubilation literally went out to the street celebrating this unification, believing that this is only the beginning of really good times ahead.

So, for the first time, political parties were allowed to be formed. So, we no longer have just a one ruling party. Elections were set to happen in 1993. Newspapers, magazines of all the political stream were allowed to be sold in the street. So, the overall environment was basically an environment of celebration and happiness and people only seeing promising days ahead.

Thomas: Baraa, remind the listener who Ali Abdullah Saleh was, I mean, we know he was the president of Yemen. He, as you told us, kind of modelled himself a little bit on Saddam Hussein in his style, in his presentation.

But what about his personality as a young Yemeni yourself living there? What sort of person was Ali Abdullah Saleh for you? How did he strike you?

Baraa: Ali Abdullah Saleh was a military figure. This is how people remember him. But he also presents himself as the person who understands Yemen. So, he knows all of the tribes. He can bring competing forces together. He can go and meet rivalries at the same time.

And this legacy kind of accumulated with him being able to strike the unification deal. So, it kind of cemented the idea that actually this is the person who can bring all of those rivalries and competing forces together and will be able to hold the country for the future.

Now, in terms of his foreign policy, he wasn't appealing as very, I would say, convincing or very smart in how he was approaching foreign policy.

Thomas: I think that we saw that immediately Saddam Hussein, invades Kuwait, all that business in the first Gulf War. I mean, Aimen, how did you experience the initial unification of Yemen where you were in Saudi Arabia? Because Yemen played a certain role in events in the early 90s in the Gulf.

Aimen: Well, I mean, I celebrated the union of the two Yemens because most of my friends happened to be Hadharem in Khobar. Hadharem of course, I'm sure, Baraa will know they are the people of Hadhramaut from the south of Yemen.

So, they are the old emigres of South Yemen. So, when the two Yemens united, my Hadharem friends were elated, were very happy because now they will join their families in Southern Yemen. So, it was amazing emotions, but it all came crashing down so quickly.

Thomas: Yeah, I think that it's germane to this part of the story that at this time there were something like, was it almost like 2 million Yemeni expatriates living in Saudi Arabia?

Aimen: Four.

Thomas: 4 million. 4 million Yemeni expatriates.

Aimen: Yeah.

Thomas: And that was going to play a big role in what happened next.

Aimen: Well, it did because you see, sometime there are many Yemeni families in Saudi Arabia. They actually the most integrated immigrant community that really truly integrated into the Saudi society.

However, this harmonious integration between the 4 million Yemenis who were living in Saudi Arabia, visa free, freedom of movement, treated like Saudis and the rest of the Saudi community came crashing down in 2nd of August 1990 because the Arab world is full of stupid decisions, as we will see, around us all the time.

Thomas: Here we go. He's not pulling his punches, right away. Okay. Stupid decisions. What was the stupid decision, Aimen?

Aimen: Yeah. So, Ali Abdullah Saleh was torn between two things. His idol, Saddam Hussein, the one that he always aspired to imitate invaded Kuwait. And now he has a choice to make, either stand with Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC countries since they are the ones who are the financial backbone of Yemen. Or stand with Saddam, who is his idol, the idol of Arab nationalism, the second coming of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

So, basically, he was torn between his heart and his mind, between his pocket and his principles, and he chose to follow those empty principles over a full pocket and decided, no, I'm going to side with Saddam Hussein.

So, of course, if you side with Saddam Hussein, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia will consider your citizens to be a risk to the national security of the country. You can't have a quarter of the country belonging to a nation whose president is siding with a threatening belligerent nation, which is Iraq.

Thomas: Okay. I'm actually going to do the unthinkable and defend Ali Abdullah Saleh in a second.

Aimen: What?

Thomas: But before I do that, Baraa as a Yemeni yourself, when the Gulf War broke out, I suppose you can remember what were the feelings like on the ground, and were Yemenis broadly in favour of Ali Abdullah's stance to stand with Saddam Hussein.

Baraa: Ali Abdullah Saleh was able quickly, actually to rally the public around him saying that these GCC countries are inviting the Americans to invade the whole region. And we have no choice but to support Saddam.

Now, saying that, there were many, many wise voices, I would say in Yemen, and people don't know this, the biggest financial investor in terms of infrastructure in North Yemen was Kuwait. So, the backing of Saddam Hussein didn't make any sense.

Thomas: It didn't make sense. I mean, there's another dimension though, which I think is important to point out. So, Saleh was in a tricky position to some extent. Yemen, the newly United Yemen had joined this organisation called the Arab Cooperation Council the year before.

So, this was Saddam Hussein's, kind of like his GCC alternative, he was trying to put together something like that. Yemen joined it, and at the time, Ali Abdullah Saleh was locked in a dispute with Saudi Arabia about the border of where the empty quarter, about, basically there was a border dispute between the kingdom in Saudi Arabia that was ongoing.

And oil, which had been recently ish discovered in that part of the country, was involved in this dispute. And Saddam Hussein had guaranteed Saleh financial and diplomatic support in that dispute.

So, he kind of found himself, unfortunately, at the bad time, backed into a bad kind of cooperation corner. I guess he felt he had to do what he had to do. Because he wasn't a complete moron, he must have known it was a tremendous risk to back Saddam Hussein against the world, who had come to defend Saudi Arabia.

And yet, I guess he had to do that. What's interesting, I think, is that when he did that, he invoked Arab nationalist reasons, as you would expect, yay, we Arabs have to stick together. We can't allow America to divide us.

But also, religious reasons. So, early on, there's this sense that Ali Abdullah Saleh is trying to play all the different voices in Yemen at the same time, a bit of Arab nationalism here, a bit of religious revivalism here, trying to sprinkle the rhetoric around to keep everyone on side.

So anyway, Aimen sorry, I tried my best to defend Ali Abdullah Saleh a bit. Nonetheless, Aimen, the fallout was massive. Saudi Arabia expelled 800,000 Yemeni labourers.

Aimen: Oh, no more than that. The number was almost one and a half million Yemenis left.

Thomas: Well, with the loss of the money that was flowing in from Saudi because of all of the Yemeni workers there. And also, after the U.S. cut off all foreign aid to Yemen as a result of Yemen's stance with Saddam Hussein during the war, the Yemeni economy immediately cratered.

It is amazing to think that 20% of Yemen's economy at the time was remittance based, or based on USA, that is a lot of the economy. And so, when these Yemeni labourers were compelled to return home, the unemployment rate inside Yemen shot up to 35%.

It was a massive economic collapse, really, certainly a challenging time to start a new constitutional experiment, a unified Yemen. So, Saleh's decision to back Saddam Hussein immediately put the experiment in keeping Yemen together, keeping the two Yemens united under a lot of pressure.

And sadly, we don't have time to go into this in any great detail, but the upshot of that, a few years later, in 1994, Baraa was essentially a civil war.

Baraa: So, the 1994 Civil War was a result of two main things. The first thing is the dissatisfaction of the course of the unified government established after 1990, the creation of the plural party system in which the Socialist Party, which was the ruling party in the South, lost the 1993 to become third in parliament after the GPC and Islah.

Thomas: So, GPC which is an important sort of acronym, it's Ali Abdullah Saleh’s party. It was like the ruling party of Yemen for decades, the GPC. And then this other party, Islah, we're going to talk about it in a second. It was a newcomer to the political scene and surprised everyone, certainly surprised the socialists of the South for winning the second place in the elections.

So, the socialists, the Southern Yemenis were basically slapped across the face, and they had much less power than they expected.

Baraa: Exactly. And then started the hesitation into going into the unification of the army units between the North and South. The leaders of the Socialist Party started to say that Islah was playing with their internal rivalries.

Now, if the listener would remember in 1986, a faction, an important faction of the Socialist Party, flee from South Yemen and went into the North, the Socialist party accused Saleh that he was playing that rivalry to weaken them.

Thomas: They were right about that.

Baraa: I think in a sense they were right. Yeah.

Thomas: Of course, they were there. There will be many instances in this story that people accuse Saleh of playing sides against each other, and it's always true.

Baraa: The second thing, which provoked tensions was the assassination of a couple of Socialist Party leaders. And it accumulated into an assassination attempt on Ali Salem al-Beidh, who's now the vice president of the unified Yemen, in which al-Beidh accused directly Ali Abdullah Saleh of orchestrating.

Saleh denied that. But the tensions rise to a point where basically both parties can't agree anymore.

Thomas: And in April 1994, Civil War broke out, started with a massive tank battle outside the city of Amran, about 40 miles northwest of Sana’a. And it was a proper war like the South fired scud missiles into the North.

It involved the world, the U.S, supported the North and gave Ali Abdullah Saleh a lot of weapons. This was vital in the rehabilitation of Ali Abdalla Saleh’s relations with the United States following the Gulf War.

Saudi Arabia stood on the sidelines, actually didn't support the North as much as you might think, leading some observers to wonder if they were in fact not so in favour of a unified Yemen as much as they had been.

So, my point here, and we're going to move on, but the point is that there was a civil war in 1994 involving Amran capturing Aden, Southern separatism, the Islah Party, which we'll talk about in a second, and the Saudis and Americans, by which I mean a lot of echoes of the present.

And that's because Yemen is very complex beast. And now we're going to do the unthinkable, my friends, and we're going to try to explain, and I swear to God almighty, we have to do this succinctly, okay? But we are going to explain to the listener, Yemen's complexities, political complexities.

And I want to start by talking about the tribal makeup, specifically in Yemen. There is a family, the al-Ahmar family, who had a tribal confederation that is very important. And that in Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Yemen had an actual constitutional role more or less because a prominent member of that family, Abdullah al-Ahmar, was speaker of the parliament.

So, very briefly Baraa, the al-Ahmar family and this tribal confederation, how is it that there can be a country that's a republic with elections and stuff, but also have a tribal confederation with a semi constitutional role?

Baraa: The Hashid Confederation was very powerful due to the decision of Abdullah bin Husayn al-Ahmar to back the republic in the 1960s.

Thomas: So, back in the 1960s, remember there was the whole Nasserite thing leading to another civil war in the North, where it was a question really whether this tribal federation would continue to support the Imam or not. But Abdullah al-Ahmar was convinced no, to turn against the Imam and support the Republic.

Baraa: Exactly. But Abdullah al-Ahmar did one step further. He was the kind of key figure who convinced Saudi Arabia to recognize the New Republic. So, he had very, very strong ties with Saudi Arabia.

And Saudi Arabia were interested in its national interest to work closely with the Yemeni tribes, because that kind of gives them an ability to have a control over the situation, but also calm any tribal tensions that might occur in their southern border.

Thomas: I'm glad that you mentioned Abdullah al-Ahmar’s links to Saudi Arabia and the important role that Saudi Arabia in the 70s, 80s, 90s, noughties all the way up to now plays in being a party in that weird dance, negotiating dance between all the different factions, particularly in Northern Yemen.

And Aimen, what I'd like you to kind of tell the story of, if you could, is the rise in the 70s and 80s, culminating in the nineties, inside Yemen of a kind of Salafisation to some extent of the Northern tribesmen.

Aimen: First of all, you have to understand, Thomas, that the Salafisation that happened in Northern Yemen wasn't by design, is just an accident of history. Because why, many of these people, as I said to you, came to Saudi Arabia as labourers and professionals, and when they are there, they are going to pray in the mosques in Saudi Arabia.

They are going to study, their kids will study in Saudi schools, the curriculum is Salafi, the mosque preaching is Salafi, and therefore they will end up being converted into Salafi through slow integration.

So, Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi'i is a name that every scholar and researcher on modern history of Yemen should know, this name is important.

Thomas: I'm sorry, dear listener. It is a particularly tough Arabic name if you don't speak Arabic, Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi'i. This is the guy we're talking about, a Yemeni who was actually born as Zaidi, I think, is that right, Aimen?

Aimen: Indeed, he was Zaidi, most of the North were Zaidis, but many of the people from Dammaj, and in Sa’dah, and in Jawf.

Thomas: These are places in the very high north of Yemen.

Aimen: Yeah. Where Baraa come from. So, these areas started the slow converging towards Salafism because Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi'i got a scholarship into the Islamic University of Madinah and the Islamic University of Madinah was a hotbed of Salafism.

But anyway, he went back to Yemen and established with the funding and the blessings of none other than Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz, who would then later become the mufti of Saudi Arabia, the school of Dar al-Hadith. And this is how the Salafist school in Yemen started to appear.

Thomas: Well, what's interesting for the wider story, and I'm going to ask you Baraa, because the Dar al-Hadith School in Dammaj very close to Sa’dah, the capital of the high north of Yemen, the sort of Zaidi capital of Yemen began to implement some, let's call them Wahhabi tendencies, including destroying graves, which was a classic Wahhabi move.

So, there were incidents of the Salafi, let's say, these new Salafi, Yemeni Salafis destroying Zaidi graves in and around Sa’dah, which began to provoke the Zaidis of that area. This is an important dynamic because it will eventually be part of the story that leads to the Houthi movement about 20 years later.

But Baraa, as a young Northern Yemeni of Zaidi ancestry, I think your own personal life story reflects to some extent the switch from a Zaidi to let's say a neo-Salafi kind of orientation. Is that right?

Baraa: Well, two things I was taught when I was very young. The first thing is that my family were very, very afraid of me going to a Salafi Mosque.

The other thing is that the Zaidi scholars decided that they need to double down on their summer camps, their schools, their teachings, because of this new wave of Salafism that they feel is now a real threat to their kind of hardcore base in Sa’dah, in Hajjah, in all of that northern highlands, which have been traditionally Zaidi.

Now from another sense, also from another side, the Zaidi school of thought was being heavily challenged even in school curriculum because what you've been taught is the ideals of the Republic.

So, it's against the Imamate, it very much criticises and demonises the period of the Imamate. So, the Zaidis are feeling basically pressured from all sides. And I remember, like in my upbringings, they say it quietly in our families, is we're being scrutinised, we are being demonised. We are like the traditional Zaidi families. There is a war being waged against us.

And it kind of plays into the idea of actually we need to start sticking together to what we originally are. We are a Zaidi and we have to protect that.

Thomas: So as the Zaidis in the North are beginning to feel more and more set upon by a rising Salafi movement, there's another kind of development going on in the country. Also, Sunni in orientation and Salafi, I suppose, but associated specifically with the Muslim Brotherhood, which began to make big inroads in the country.

And it's extremely complicated because that guy, Abdullah al-Ahmar, the head of that tribal confederation and the speaker of the house, allied to Saudi, was also heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood and worked alongside clerics like Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, this guy who set up a university and Sana’a very much influenced by Muslim Brotherhood ideas to form in 1990, a new political party, a kind of Muslim brotherhood, kind of tribal kind of Salafi political party called Islah.

Now this is that party that in the 1993 elections won second place, surprising everyone. And Islah, the Muslim Brotherhood party, let's call it, of Yemen, will play a big role in the events of the Arab Spring.

And in fact, I don't want to talk about it more at this stage because we have to move on. And something else, Aimen, you particularly I'm sure could tell us all sorts of interesting things, is the rise of Salafi Jihadism in Yemen, at the same time, so many Yemeni fighters participating in the anti-Soviet Jihad coming back and in the 90s, participating in the nascent Al-Qaeda movement, the eventual emergence of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Terrorist attacks like the notorious attack on the USS coal in Aden Harbor in 2000, really the first big salvo. And what would become the war on terror. I mean, that is a big part of the Ali Abdullah Saleh era, the Salafi jihadist era in Yemen.

Aimen: The arrival of Salafism in the North ignited that sense of renewed pride in Zaydism. But in Sana’a and Taiz and the urban areas, there is a new kind of Salafism, it was more of a practical Salafism, a Salafism that has been merged with the Muslim Brotherhood and ironically led by Abdul Majeed al-Zindani.

Abdul Majeed al-Zindani is an interesting, absolutely interesting figure. So, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani who was a doctor of all things, he was a medical professional, but nonetheless, he came from a Zaidi family, and he started to delve first into the world of the science of the Qur’an.

And through his research started to get more and more close to Salafist ideals from Saudi Arabia, talking to many Salafist activists and people who were involved with the Muslim Brotherhood also.

So, in the end, he formed al-Islah, which was a big umbrella that was able to encompass the Muslim Brotherhood who were the majority of the followers of the Islah.

But also, it was big enough to have sizable minorities of Salafist activists, politically active Salafists, as well as Zaidis. There were Zaidis actually, who were part of al-Islah. Al-Islah is a bigger umbrella than we think. Whenever we always paint al-Islah as a purely religious Muslim Brotherhood. It is not, it is far more complicated than that.

Baraa: As you said, Aimen, the Islah Party means many different things to many different people in Yemen. So, if you are from the north of Yemen, it's the umbrella, which is basically the political tribal framework of Abdullah bin Husayn al-Ahmar.

If you are in the central part of Yemen, in Taiz and Ibb and that part, it's more of the ideology, the Muslim Brotherhood versus the Salafist versus the socialist ideologies competing in Central Yemen.

In the South, it is this party that is basically an ally of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who helped them to invade the south and get rid of the socialists. So, it depends where you are, it means something.

Thomas: So, yeah, so through figure like Zindani pre-eminently, Salafi jihadism flowed into Yemen. Muslim brotherhood inspired political ideas, flowed into Yemen, a general neo-Salafism spread throughout Yemen.

And I think the main takeaway, at least one of the main takeaways here is that the 80s and 90s and early noughties in Yemen, culturally speaking, were incredibly fervent. There was a lot of change going on.

I mean, the cultural fabric of the country was changing in response to all of these things. And in terms of our main character, Ali Abdullah Saleh, sitting at the top on the throne there, he found himself very deftly dancing on the heads of all these snakes.

And by 9/11, say, U.S. aid was flowing into Yemen because Saleh became a very important partner in the anti-terrorism, global war on terrorism, which increased his power more, even though as everyone knows now, and certainly probably even then knew he was playing all the sides.

And he had relations with Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and he would capture them in order to get some money from America and let them go to get more money from America. So, he was playing all the games, and this was making him feel more and more confident, more and more autocratic.

While at the same time all of this rising Salafism and Saleh's authoritarian approach was putting Yemen on a collision course with a new group of political actors rising in the far north, the Houthis.

And we are now going to take a break, and when we come back, we are going to talk about this new political player who, when it emerged on the scene in the early noughties, no one would've thought in 10 years’ time, they would take over the country and hold it nearly for a decade now.

So, after the break, we'll come back and we're going to hear all about the Houthis. Stay tuned.

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We are back. In the first half, we set out the Sunni stall of Yemen, if you like, the rise of Salm in, in that country, the way in which the president Ali Abdullah Saleh was able to capitalise on the new religious arrival on the scene to increase his power and stay sitting pretty there in Sana’a dancing on the heads of snakes.

Meanwhile, in the far north, a new movement arose. Now this movement is shrouded in mystery. It's early years are mysterious. I think we just need to admit this much is said about where the Houthis came from. Very little direct evidence is often proffered to support some of these things.

And so, we are going to have to work our way towards the best explanation that we can of where they come from. And I think we need to start Baraa, with this guy, Badruldeen al-Houthi.

He was from the North, he was involved in the early 90s in the formation of a minority Zaidi political party, the Party of Truth, Hizb al-Haqq. So, he was a politician, a Zaidi involved in this growing Zaidi consciousness, political consciousness at the time.

Baraa: So, Badruddin al-Houthi as an important figure amongst Zaidi scholars was against the core principle of the New Republic because he was against political pluralism in its essence.

Thomas: Yeah. So, the new constitution of the United Yemen introduced pluralistic democratic politics, political parties, you have elections, if you win the elections, you get power, et cetera.

The traditional Zaidi ideal was aristocratic, theocratic almost, that there was a kind of, as we discussed in the previous episode, there was that class of Hashemite aristocrats whom God really had granted the right to rule Northern Yemen.

So, the idea of democracy did not sit well with them, or as it happens with one of their number, Badruldeen al-Houthi.

Aimen: And it is important to point out here, Thomas and Baraa, that al-Houthi family comes from the most radical branch of Zaidi Islam which is al-Jarudi sect of Zaidi. They are far more closer to mainstream Shia Islam, rather than the other two prevalent branches of Zaydism in Yemen, which is the Hadawis and the Salehis. And they are far more closer to mainstream Sunni Islam.

Thomas: And even before the unification Baraa, if I'm not mistaken, Badruldeen's elder son Mohammed was involved already in this growing self-consciousness on the part of Zaidis who were feeling threatened on the one hand by rising Salafism, on the other hand, still resenting their loss of inherited power as a result of the Republican movement.

And he founded in probably the late 80s, all of my reading, it wasn't quite clear exactly when this was founded, a movement known in English as The Believing Youth.

Baraa: The Believing Youth started as a Zaidi revivalist movement dedicated to revive Zaidi School of Thought in North Yemen, mainly encouraging Zaidi families to send their children in summer breaks to their schools in North Yemen, mainly in Sa’dah up in the north to get Zaidi teachings.

So, there are a number of important founders, Mohammed al-Houthi and his father Badruldeen. In addition to Mohammed Azzan, this is a highly intellectual, respected religious scholar in North Yemen, and a couple of political figures who all combined to get together to actually say we can do something like this Salafi School in Dammaj.

We can do something which is similar to what the Islah are doing in their summer schools. We can create our own Zaidi revivalist summer camp that will revive the Zaidi School of Thought. Now, Thomas, maybe you don't know this, but Mohammed Azzan, the founder of The Believing Youth, was actually my teacher in high school.

Thomas: I did not know that, Baraa. Amazing. You must have disappointed him so much, in what happened after you graduated.

Baraa: Actually, not. So, Mohammed Azzan I was approached when I was in high school by my friends to say, let's go and in the summer to join the Believing Youth summer camp. And actually, Mohamed Azzan was the one who discouraged me from going, this was later years because there were tensions that are beyond the surface that are rising between him and another important figure who's Hussein al-Houthi?

Thomas: Hussein al-Houthi. So, this is Badruldeen's other son. Mohammed al-Houthi was the older son. And then Hussein al-Houthi, very, very, very important. And in fact, this is the main character, Hussein al-Houthi. He began to turn The Believing Youth movement and this growing Zaidi movement in a new direction really led by him. Is that right?

Baraa: So, what Hussein al-Houthi did is that he got inspired so much following his trips to Iran by the Iranian model and started to aspire more towards a Hezbollah militant model and saying, this is actually the solution to Yemen.

Now, amongst the Zaidi scholars, there's this divide from one side. There is those scholars who formed al-Haqq Party and have been forced to actually come out with a public statement saying that they recognized and you are republic, and they no longer believe in the divine right of rulers that should be tied to the descendants of Prophet Muhammad. In other words, the Hashemites.

Thomas: This is something that I think, I mean, Ali Abdullah Saleh more or less forced them to do this. I mean, he was involved to some extent in this decision to come out and say, no, no, no, no, we do believe in democracy. We are happy with pluralism. He was involved in forcing them to do this. But Hussein al-Houthi did not like that.

Baraa: So, Hussein al-Houthi and his father Badruldeen al-Houthi did not like that, and they kind of accused the Zaidi scholars of being hypocritical and not actually being true to their core beliefs.

Now at the same time, Ali Abdullah Saleh started funding the summer camps of the Believing Youth for one main reason is that after 1994, he started to be wary of the growing influence of Islah in the north of Yemen. So, what better to deter that is to have another religious rivalry that can be the counter or competitor of Islah in North Yemen.

Thomas: I mean, just to make this clear, Ali Abdullah Saleh in 1990 had supported the formation of Islah to help him crush southern separatism. And then four years later realising, Islah is now very popular, they threatened me. He then supported a Zaidi revivalist movement, the Believing Youth in order to counter Islah, which on the surface, he was still the ally of this is giving you a sense of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Baraa: Exactly, exactly. And then later on, Islah lost the 1997 parliamentary elections, which made Ali Abdullah Saleh’s party the dominant party in parliament. And that kind of created the drift between them even further.

Thomas: Let's stay with the Houthis now. Now you mentioned Iran, you mentioned that Hussein al-Houthi was inspired by the Iranian model. Now this is really where there's a lot of smoke, not a lot of fire, a lot of smoke.

When and how the Houthi family became enamoured or in any way involved with Iran. Some things that I've read in the academic history suggest that during the political squabbles in the mid-90s, Badruldeen al-Houthi and Hussein al-Houthi were sort of exiled by Ali Abdullah Saleh.

And they spent that period in Iran where a zawiyah for the Houthis, a kind of religious school for Houthis opened in Qom in 1994. Does that tally with your intelligence, Aimen?

Aimen: Yeah. Well, you said there is so much smoke and no fire, but I do have the fire, the fire of intelligence. This is where things will get interesting. First of all, there is a picture in which someone high enough in a certain government showed it to me of Hussein Badruldeen al-Houthi wearing a military uniform joining the Badr Brigade in 1988 on the front line, on the Iran Iraq War.

Thomas: As early as 1988 as, as early as 1988. So, during the Iran Iraq War, I mean, dear listener, the Badr Brigades were involved on the side of Iran in the Iran Iraq War. These were Arab Shiites, some of them even Iraqis, who were fighting for Iran against Iraq. It was quite a kind of controversial brigade because it involved a lot of Arabs fighting Arabs, which a lot of other Arabs found to be horrific.

Aimen: Exactly. So actually, the links between Hussein Badruldeen al-Houthi and Iran goes back to the late 1980s. In fact, the first signs that Iran was happy to integrate the Houthis and their followers and supporters, the al-zawiyah al-Jarudiyah of Yemen into the overall program for Iran in the region was in 1992 when actually the al was established in the Hawza. Hawza means the seminary in the holy city of Qom in Iran, just near Tehran.

And there they established scholarship for about 70, and then the scholarship started to rise and rise and rise. And this is when from 1994 onward under the supervision of Hussein and his father, Badruldeen al-Houthi, they started a program for military training.

They realised that there is no point whatsoever in establishing a group like shabāb al-muʾmin movement, the Believing Youth and it doesn't have a military wing. And of course, who is an expert in establishing a military wing for political movement, Iran, and specifically the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

So, they help them establish that slowly, gradually, just like they established Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hezbollah in Hijaz and Hezbollah in Kuwait and the Badr Brigade in Iraq, they started the formation.

And from 1994 onward, all the way until 2002, the movement grew steadily richer, bigger, and with far more confidence. And of course, it was arming itself to the teeth.

Thomas: A lot of analysts, a lot of journalists for sure, perhaps let's say more pro Houthi, they do doubt a lot of this narrative. I see no reason to doubt it at all. Aimen obviously, I trust you.

But also, it makes total sense, that the Houthis would realise that if they were to have political power in Yemen, they would need a paramilitary wing is just standard practice. Every political faction in the Middle East has a paramilitary wing by this point, including Islah, the Muslim Brotherhood Party that they considered to be their enemies, so that they should do this makes sense, that they should look towards Iran to help them do it, makes sense.

Iran had such great success with Hezbollah. They were having a new success with Hamas in Gaza. Of course, they would do this. It makes sense to me. Baraa, what do you think?

Baraa: There's a huge difference, though. So, with all of the other political parties, they would encourage their members to join the ranks of the military, and then slowly they become members of the either security apparatus or the military apparatus. And to a sense, they're kind of tied in the structure.

While with this, this was very specific training, a militant group outside the structure of the state. And the second thing, which is very important, which Hussein al-Houthi himself was a parliament member.

But then because he detest so much the ideals of the republic, he decided this actually no longer works for me. So, I'm going to start in this jour journey. And now I can tell you what I witnessed.

So, in high school, you would have active recruitment, people being recruited to go and join the summer camps. So, in 1998, a group of tribal figures, including members of Saleh’s own party, are warning him about the rise of this militant group.

Now, my witness statement is I have my own high school teacher who told me actually that he travelled to Iran. He met Khomeini, he met Khamenei, he travelled to Lebanon. He met Hassan Nasrallah.

But he was basically a collision course with Hussein al-Houthi. He didn't like how Hussein al-Houthi was turning what is supposed to be a summer teaching school into a militant group, until they finally parted away. Because Mohammed Badruddin, who's one of the main founders, sided with his brother.

And when the core ideal of the whole Zaidi School of Thought is that the descendants of Prophet Muhammad do have the upper say. So, eventually its sided with Mohammed al-Houthi and Hussein al-Houthi rather than Mohammed Azzan, because Mohammed Azzan is not a Hashemite.

Thomas: And that's your teacher?

Baraa: That's my teacher, exactly.

Thomas: Now this is straight from the horse's mouth, honestly, Baraa. So, you're saying your teacher, an ally of Mohammed and Hussein al-Houthis, who had helped them set up the Believing Youth Movement, told you that he himself had visited Iran, had met with the Ayatollah there, had visited Lebanon, had met with Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah.

So, this is facts. You know this already by ‘98, and they're not hiding it from you at least.

Baraa: No, these are facts that were known even to the security apparatus in Yemen. And that's why later on Mohammed Azzan was immediately arrested by the Yemeni Intelligence, when the war started with the Houthis.

Thomas: It's really interesting.

Baraa: The other thing is also the Houthis were operating in a very isolated region of Yemen. So actually, this is not a place where you would have international spectators, but if you talk to the people of Sa’dah, the sheiks, the tribal leaders, the security officials, all of them were raising warnings, were raising basically red flags to Ali Abdullah Saleh.

There is a militant group being trained and being sponsored by Iran, by Hezbollah and under the supervision of Hussein al-Houthi, under this umbrella called The Believing Youth. And this is, we're talking now about early two 2000s.

Thomas: Well, yes. I mean, I, my understanding is that, so having absorbed all of this Khomeinist Ideas through Iran and having transformed The Believing Youth movement into something more militant in an Iranian model.

Hussein al-Houthi in 1999 went to Sudan to do an MA in Qur’anic studies there, where ironically, he socialised a lot with Muslim Brotherhood members because Sudan at that time was a hotbed of Sunni radicalism. And so, that kind of added to the general mix of his radicalization.

Baraa: Yeah. And he later on even was reported that he got his master's degree from Sudan, but then he destroyed it. He tore its apart because he said he doesn't need master's degree. He's now embarking in this new holy journey of creating this movement that's going to elaborate Yemen and put it in the course where it should belong with the axis of resistance.

Thomas: So, really that sort of combination of Khomeinism and Muslim Brotherhood meant that when he returned to Yemen in 2001, he was poised to launch his new and improved Zaidi militant group in a big way.

And I think we can kind of say that the Houthis, as we know them today, began in January 2002 when, let's say for the first time the mountains of Northern Yemen rang with that notorious and sort of very famous chant of the Houthis, what is it, Baraa?

Baraa: It is “Allāhu ʾakbar, al-mawt li-ʾAmrīkā, al-mawt li-ʾIsrāʾīl, al-laʿnah ʿalā 'l-Yahūd, an-naṣr lil-ʾIslām.” So, this translates into Allāhu ʾakbar, Allah is great. Death to America, death to Israel, damn on the Jews, and victory to Islam, very similar to the Iranian chant.

Hussein al-Houthi actually then capitalised on the Iraq invasion to even encourage his followers to join his militant group and trying to spread the message using the 9/11 events, using what happened in Afghanistan, what happened in Iraq to encourage more and more followers to join him.

Thomas: And at the same time, his oral teaching. So, he basically delivered lectures. He wasn't a great writer, but those lectures were written down, were transcribed and collected into a collection known as the Malazim, is that right?

Baraa: Yeah, exactly. So, Hussein al-Houthi was not scholarly qualified even in according to Zaidi standards.

Aimen: Yeah.

Baraa: What his followers did is that they collected his sermons and put them together in those Malazim. And I mean, if anyone I've read them, they're basically-

Aimen: Ramblings.

Baraa: Exactly, I mean, there are poor words put together. Nothing intellectual, nothing smart, nothing charismatic, nothing similar to what we know about the other religious scholars who actually used to do teachings and sermons.

Thomas: Okay. So, now we've done the Houthis. People now understand what the Houthis are, 2002, 2003, this new movement up in the North, chanting death to America, death to Israel, et cetera.

Let's switch back to thinking about Ali Abdullah Saleh. Now, the funny thing about Ali Abdullah Saleh at this point is he is not opposed to the movement to the Houthis. He still thinks that they are a useful counterbalance to the growing Salafism in the countries and in the north.

He thinks that if he can keep the Houthis fighting the Salafis in the north by the logic of divide and conquer, it will help him control the situation. Now, this finally began to shift after 9/11 when the U.S. begins to put pressure on Saleh to act against the Houthis.

The U.S. government was aware of this movement. They knew it was going on. They certainly felt confident that Hezbollah and Iran were involved, and they were telling Ali Abdullah Saleh that it was extremely dangerous to have an armed Shi’a, essentially militant group on the border of Saudi Arabia causing problems.

And Ali Abdullah Saleh had to do something about this. It was made easier for Saleh when after he began putting pressure on the Houthis, the Houthis themselves kind of began withholding, sending taxes to Sana’a, and they cut off the highway that connected Sana’a the capital with their stronghold of Sa’dah.

So, they were being quite aggressive against the state. And Ali Abdullah Saleh was not the sort of dude to take that kind of behaviour lightly. And so, he basically immediately responded in classic wild west fashion by putting a bounty on the head of Hussein al-Houthi. He said, right, this dude, he's no longer in my favour, let's kill him.

And in the next episode, we're going to go into this in a little bit more detail because it plays out in what happens in the Arab Spring. But he sends his old friend and close political ally, a military commander called Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar to the North, and he tells him, put an end to the Houthi problem.

And this inaugurates six wars, which Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen, waged against the Houthis. That's six wars. It always happens, when war breaks out, like when war broke out in Yemen in 2014, 2015, everyone's like, oh, why is war breaking out in Yemen?

But actually, just like when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, everyone's like, why is war breaking out in Ukraine? War in Ukraine had broken out in 2014 and had been raging. War in Yemen between the Houthis and the country had been going on since 2004.

Baraa: Yeah, exactly. So, the first war happened due to a very literally small incident when a security unit tried to remove a Houthi checkpoint in Sa’dah. And Ali Abdullah Sala was actually at that time coming from Hajj from Saudi Arabia along with a big convoy.

And he saw after the prayer chants the flags of Hezbollah, the flags of Iran. And then he started to realize actually the warnings that he had been receiving from the tribal leaders, from the security officials are real, and he needs to do something.

And that small incident of removing a checkpoint quickly erupted into an open conflict in 2004. And that was the first one.

Thomas: And during that first war, a fairly momentous event occurred for the Houthis, at least when Hussein al-Houthi, who until now has been the big hero of the movement is killed.

Baraa: Yeah, exactly. And his remains were taken to Sana’a, and Saleh actually refused to hand back his remains. It was only after the Arab Spring that the Houthi family were able to get him back and give him burial. And that left a stain amongst the Houthis followers that they have the remains of their founder is being held by Saleh.

Thomas: Each wave of aggression from Sana’s against the Houthis. Each war in the series of six wars increased the fervour of the Houthis, increased their battle hardness, increased their capabilities, increased their appeal to a growing number of people in the North, especially who identified, or who were sympathetic to this Zaidi narrative, which narrative was becoming more and more apparent.

So, the second war was actually kicked off when the father of Hussein al-Houthi, Badreddin gave an interview. You must remember this Baraa, he gave an interview after his son's martyrdom, after Hussein's death very specifically saying that the Imamate was a better period than the present.

It was more Islamic compared to the republic, especially because the republic had ties with America, which meant that Ali Abdullah Saleh was compromised. This kind of thing publicly stated by the grandfather of the Houthi movement, totally enraged Ali Abdullah Saleh. So, he launched another war against them.

Baraa: Exactly. And not only that, he then demanded another public statement by the Zaidi scholars, and which they were very happy to give condemning the Houthis and saying that actually, I remember the saying of one famous one of them who later on joined the Houthis, he's saying, “Crush them, give them hell, burn them until the last one of them. Don't treat them like citizens because they desecrated the citizenship contract with the states.”

Thomas: Now in the midst of this back and forth and following Hussein al-Houthi’s death, a new leader rose to take the reins of power over the Houthi movement. And this was Hussein al-Houthi’s younger brother, and like much younger brother, 20 years younger than him, born in 1979, so the same age as me.

So, we're talking 2004. I was 25-years-old. So, this guy, age 25, becomes the new leader of the movement Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, who is now defacto on the ground, the president of North Yemen, really, if you like. He is controlling North Yemen today. This is the guy Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthi movement since 2004.

Now Aimen, what strikes me about Abdul-Malik al-Houthi is the similarities in his persona with Hassan Nasrallah. If we said earlier that Ali Abdullah Saleh modelled himself on Saddam Hussein and the way he carries himself and the way he talks, there's no question in my mind that Abdul-Malik al-Houthi models himself on Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

Do you see a resonance there between the two figures, Aimen?

Aimen: Indeed. I mean, he fancies himself to be the second coming of Hassan Nasrallah, and he emulate Hassan Nasrallah. But in reality, it's like comparing a small Fiat to a Bentley. There's a huge difference between the two.

Just because you come from the same ideology, from the same school of thought, from the same access of resistance. Yes, you try to imitate him, but you are a poor imitation. He is nowhere near Hasan Nasrallah in Hassan Nasrallah's appeal and clever play on words.

Thomas: But Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, it must be admitted, is at least something like a decent battle strategist, a decent political strategist. He has had a lot of success in Yemen, including in those initial years, when between 2004 and 2010, he led the movement as it fought war after war with the central government in Sana’a, and did not lose, was not crushed in the end.

What about you, Baraa? So, you're coming of age now during the Houthi Sana’a wars, you're a young man. What was your understanding of what was behind the Houthis?

Baraa: There were two things happening at the same time. There is this notion and feeling amongst many, I would say traditionally Hashemite families and Zaidi families, that we are now-

Thomas: Like yours.

Baraa: Like ours, we are the target. And that basically making people to being very sympathetic towards Houthi cause. And there's a growing dissent towards Ali Abdullah Saleh, and his regime being very authoritarian, crushing his opponents and so on.

But another important factor, the leadership of the Yemeni military started to have deep divisions. From one side, there is the newcomers into the military, the new big figures, which are Saleh, his sons and his nephews, and then the old establishment people like Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, and so on.

And actually, more than anything that contributed immensely into the rise of the Houthis, the leadership is divided. They're not actually encouraged to back each other in the battlefield. And to some extent, many, many military Yemeni experts saying, actually Saleh thought it would be a good thing to exhaust them because this was basically will pave the way for his son instead of facing a rivalry within the military.

Thomas: Let's just unpack that a little bit to make it clearer. So, what is often alleged, and I think it's accurate, is that Saleh, deep down was not interested in ending the Houthi movement, he wanted to take advantage of the Houthi militants to neutralize threats within his own military to his sons taking over the presidency of Yemen after him.

Especially this guy, and I mentioned him before, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and we will talk about him more in the next episode. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who had actually been a childhood friend of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s, was very, very prominent in the military, had been his ally all along.

But who began to indicate that he was turning against Saleh when Saleh was making it plain, that he hoped that his son would succeed him as president. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar did not like that idea because maybe he wanted to be president because he had different ideas in general.

It's understood that he was a bit Muslim Brotherhood affiliated at times. So, maybe he had different ideas in general. The point being that Al Abdullah Saleh sent Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, his ally up to the north to fight the Houthis in order maybe to just get him killed, to neutralise his power so that he would fail and that he would've egg on his face.

And this is what really underlay Al Abdullah Saleh’s strategy there. And as we reach the end of this episode, we have to, in a way, leave it there. So, by 2009, 2010, Ali Abdullah Saleh reached the final war against the Houthis, a war, in fact, Aimen. In which the Saudis intervened with a bombing campaign because the Houthis had begun to attack them. Isn't that right?

Aimen: Indeed. I mean, the Houthis started to shell the mountains of Al Khobar and Jazan, and that angered the Saudis so much that they started intervening on the side of the Yemeni forces. But it was a short-lived conflict.

Baraa: And this last round of conflict with the Houthis is what basically broke the relationship between Ali Abdullah Saleh and Ali Mohsen. When the Saudis informed Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, that they received intelligence from Sana’a to bomb several Houthi locations in Sa’dah. And actually, one of the locations they received via Ali Abdullah Saleh was the location of Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar.

Thomas: That is a plot twist that would rival any Hollywood screenplay. Honestly, because Ali Mohsen had close relations with the Saudis, so that's probably why they told him. Because Saleh was like, “Guys, I think yeah, the Houthis are here and here. Oh, and could you also bomb this location here, don't look too closely at what's happening there.”

And they look and it's Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. So, they call him, “Ali Mohsen, you know that your boss and old buddy, the President Saleh in the Yemen, in Sana’a, he's just told us to kill you.”

And so, the fractures within Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime and his ability to dance on the heads of snakes, to keep the military factions, the tribal factions, the sectarian factions, the geographical factions, and the geopolitical factions all happy, was about to come dramatically unstuck.

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And that's where we're going to leave it here. We'll be back with our dear friend Baraa, whose eyewitness testimony will only go up in the next episode, I promise.

And of course, as always, my friend, our friend, Aimen Dean, intelligence master extraordinaire, to move the story onwards when Yemen experiences the earthquake known as the Arab Spring, leading really directly to the terrible civil war, which still is rocking that sad country. So, stay with us. We'll be back next time.

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.