The dusty flip-flops on his feet, the worn Kalashnikov on his shoulder and his mouth stuffed with khat leaves, a plant famous for its euphoric properties.
This is the image that has often been associated with the Houthis: that of ragged and crude guerrillas; fans coming from the mountains.
But the portrait does not entirely correspond to reality.
Gone are the times when the Supporters of God – Ansar Allah in Arabic, as the Houthis call themselves – constituted a small isolated Shiite faction in northwest Yemen. Today, the insurgent group is a powerful military force capable of shaking up the entire Middle East and putting the international community in check.
In recent weeks, the militia has made important territorial advances in its country through a lightning counteroffensive that has caught pro-government forces, backed by Riyadh, on the back foot. At the moment, one of the main sources of tension is in the Bab el Mandeb Strait: if the Houthis manage to control this strategic route, access to the Red Sea will be in danger.
At the same time, the group has dealt a formidable series of blows to Saudi Arabia, exposing the defensive gaps of one of the countries in the world that invests the most in weapons. Refineries, military bases, airports... No infrastructure in the kingdom is safe from Houthi drones and missiles: there have already been more than seventy attacks suffered by the petro-monarchy since last July, when hostilities began.
“The Houthis have been undervalued, their evolution has been incredible,” Leyla Hamad Zahonero, associate researcher at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, tells this newspaper, who emphasizes that behind these guerrillas in flip-flops “there is technology and many capabilities.”
Emerged in the 1990s around the cleric Hussein al Huti, the group began to accumulate military experience in the first two thousand years, in its various campaigns against the authoritarian government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, although its first qualitative leap came in 2014, when it managed to conquer the Yemeni capital, Sanaa – and, in the process, take over part of the national army's arsenal. That was the beginning of the civil war that, after a truce agreed in 2022, has just been reactivated. A conflict in which the Houthis have always shown themselves to be more cohesive than the pro-government side: the rebels are united by their sovereignty and their Zaydi faith, a minority Shiite branch in a Yemen where the majority of the population declares itself Sunni.
In parallel to this war learning, the Houthis have benefited from their close relationship with Iran. The Ayatollah regime has been providing weapons and training to the insurgents for years, as part of its strategy to undermine Saudi influence in the region. As a result of this collaboration, the group has also received support from Hizbullah, Tehran's Lebanese ally. Likewise, there is evidence of exchanges with various groups in the Horn of Africa. One of them, Al Shabab, a theoretical ideological enemy due to its affiliation with Al Qaeda.
Thanks to this network of connections, the Houthis have managed to develop their own war industry: for some time now, they have been manufacturing various models of drones and missiles in their territory, combining locally produced parts with others of foreign origin. Many components arrive from Iran clandestinely, evading the arms embargo imposed by the UN, while others are purchased on the conventional market.
A few days ago, the British organization Conflict Armament Research revealed that the Houthis are trying to produce their own version of the Iranian Kheibar Shekan missile with parts of Chinese origin. The planned projectile would have a range of about 1,900 kilometers, enough to reach the Gulf countries and Israel.
The Houthis' innovative desire is also reflected in the use of AI: they are using Claude to develop remote-controlled weapons.
And what do the Houthis want to do with all this?
“In the short term, their objective is to gain ground in Yemen, to take over the oil fields,” answers researcher Hamad Zahonero. "But they would love to conquer the entire country. And in the future they could have interests beyond the borders of Yemen, because their vocation is expansionist. We will see what they surprise us with."
