Op-Ed: Yemen's Houthis Won't Break Easily

 

Yemen’s dominant but unrecognized Houthi government has been a target since the rebel movement took over the Yemeni capital Sana’a in 2014 - and provoked Emirati and Saudi intervention in 2015 to support the legitimate government, which had been displaced.

During this civil war, air power was an important element in preventing further Houthi advances. But it was never able to turn the tide, neutralize the Houthi ability to launch ballistic and cruise missiles, or push the Houthis back into their traditional homeland, the province of Saada in the northwest of Yemen. 

The ineffectiveness of the coalition’s airpower, matched by an inability of its ground forces to make progress over the toughest of terrain, was in part a consequence of a lack of accurate intelligence. American and other foreign governments also restricted the sale of weapons that would be accurate and powerful enough to destroy a dispersed and well-protected arsenal of Houthi drones and missiles.

The Houthi drone and missile capability was based on a surprisingly powerful arsenal of such weapons built up during the period prior to the civil war, when the Yemeni Armed Forces boasted three surface-to-surface missile brigades based in cave complexes around Sana’a, fielding both Scud derivatives and SS-21s mobile missiles. Moreover, the Yemenis had developed an infrastructure and technical capability to support this force, which was self-sustaining but also leveraged the technical capability of the Iranians - who in turn had learnt the missile business during the Iran-Iraq war and who had taken careful note of lessons learned from the Coalition Scud-hunting campaign of the First Gulf War. This capability was not beaten down by Saudi and Emirati air attacks from 2015 onwards, but rather grew in strength.

The target set facing the United States when the Houthis began their attacks on shipping had long been allowed to multiply and grow out of control.  The difficulty of dealing with the Houthi threat is compounded by the character of the adversary. Waging war is a national pastime in Yemen, where life is extremely tough even in peace. Yemenis have historically devoted an inordinate amount of effort to fighting each other, from the pre-1967 British era; the struggle for independence in the South, and between Royalist and Republican factions in the North; then unification in 1990, followed by various coups; and finally the effective division of the country once again in 2014. By repute there are three AK-47s per capita in Yemen, and they are put to frequent use. Tribal and factional loyalties can switch overnight, often encouraged by subsidies from external parties. As Washington Institute fellow Michael Knights has described it, the environment has created a nation of warriors who “are very pain tolerant .... they're the worst people to try and publicly coerce”[1].

It is unlikely that any attempt to destroy the Houthi ballistic and cruise missile capability will wholly succeed.  The protection and dispersal of inventory - as much as the depth of technical expertise within Houthi ranks - suggests that even if stocks are highly degraded, some capability will remain, capable of being launched in defiant albeit perhaps ineffective gestures.  To halt Houthi missile and drone attacks requires a dismantling of Houthi political authority and the effective control mechanisms that the Houthis have developed to keep themselves at the top of the pile.  Attacks need to be focused on this core Houthi cadre in order to avoid alienating the wider population.  If this can be achieved - notwithstanding the group’s high pain thresholds - there will come a time when peripheral tribes and wavering General Political Congress factions begin to peel away. The Houthi diehards will then be tempted to retreat to their Saada heartlands and lie low - until the next opportunity arises to start yet another battle for advantage in Yemen’s austere landscape.

Unfortunately for Yemen’s suffering civilian population, this means that the route to ending the threat to the global maritime community presented by the Houthis means maintenance of a high-tempo, focused assault on the Houthi political and internal security infrastucture - until rock-hard Houthi resolve and control begins to splinter. This will entail maintaining a high US naval carrier-borne presence in the region until the job is done, a task that may be difficult to carry through to successful conclusion without the assistance of allies.