A Very Basic Primer On ‘Houthi Who What Now?’ So You Don’t Look Dumb At The Next Potluck Orgy
At this rate you're never getting invited again anyway.
If you’re like a lot of Americans, the full extent of your knowledge of the Houthis in Yemen, and their drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea shipping corridor, is that at some point during the holidays, you glanced up from your bucket of ham, saw something on TV about “Houthis,” assumed Joe Biden was either 1) handling it, or 2) history’s greatest monster, and re-descended your head into the ham bucket.
In the interest of giving us all a bit of information, and since the TikTok side of the American internet is being partikularly Tikky Tokky about this right now, here are a few facts about who, what, where, when, and whatever.
WHO-this?
The Houthis are a sect of Shia Muslims in Yemen, which has
Wait where?
OK, Yemen is on the Arabian peninsula on the southwest side, south of Saudi Arabia and west of Oman. Like so:
Google Maps is your friend.
Back to the Houthis!
Yemen has been a shitshow for a while, y’all.
Over the past few years, there’s been quite a civil war for control of Yemen, and Houthi leaders — who are either a terrorist sect or just some real stinkers, depending on what day you ask the American government and international bodies — have since 2014 controlled the capital Sana’a. (See on map.) The actual government of Yemen — which is majority Sunni Muslim — controls the large city of Aden (don’t see on map, but it’s due south of Sana’a, on the coast, on the Gulf of Aden), and much of the rest of the east, where there are far fewer people.
CBS News, which we are cheating off of for a good bit of our World Almanack Facts about this, says the Houthis are about a third of the population of Yemen.
The Houthis’ allies are Hamas and Hezbollah. Their sugardaddies are Iran. Additionally, per CBS News:
The Houthis, along with Hezbollah and Hamas, are part of a vaguely defined alliance that Iran refers to as "the axis of resistance" against Israel.
So that’s how this is all situated, geopolitically.
CBS News notes that the Biden administration doesn’t call the Houthis a terrorist organization, choosing to deal with the reality we have instead of the one we wish for, where the Houthis exist, and they control most of the important parts of Yemen.
"No one can wish them away or out of the conflict, so let's deal with realities that exist on the ground," said Tim Lenderking, the guy Biden put in charge of trying to solve Yemen, in 2021.
So what’s all this about then?
The Houthis have for several months been attacking the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, right there at the south side of the Red Sea, the part that looks like a strait. They have been doing these “naval operations,” by their own account, "to support the Palestinian people in confronting the aggression and siege on Gaza.”
Again, the Houthis control Sana’a, and also a very important port on the Red Sea called Al-Hudaydah. They’ve been doing these attacks, which they say are intended solely for Israeli ships and ships that sit with Israeli ships at lunchtime, in response to the events that started October 7.
And Joe Biden basically said, “Well look here, if you keep doing these attacks, then we’re gonna go to the land of Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes, population: YOU.” And he took them there indeed! The Navy’s been playing target practice ever since, with Houthi drones, rockets, and the occasional Houthi boat. (US helicopters recently sunk several Houthi boats after the boats launched an attack on the Maersk Hangzhou, a ship that flies the flag of Singapore.)
The full operation to patrol the shipping lanes is called Operation Prosperity Guardian, which sounds like some kind of fly-by-night life insurance outfit, and it’s not just America, but a “coalition of the willing” that includes Canada, Bahrain, some Europeans, etc. (Don’t forget Seychelles!)
All signs indicate that the Biden administration does not, good God, absolutely does not want a wider war here, which is why they’re not striking in Yemen. But again, fuck around and find out.
In response, Iran has sent a destroyer to the area for some reason.
The Atlantic has another good piece about why the US has to be involved here. At the end of the day, it’s about worldwide commerce.
You know, unless you want to argue that keeping the Suez Canal safe and open isn’t that big of a deal.
Does this involve oil?
Is the TikTokky internet bein’ just real TikTokky about this?
Oh God.
On the internet, the American internet, the TikTok internet, this is largely being viewed as a proxy for Hamas and Israel — and only that — where if you support Palestinians, you probably should definitely support the Houthis, even though they’re very much religious extremists. We are sure all of the people expertly commenting were familiar with the word “Houthi” two months ago.
Unfortunately, in the real world, there are many more shades of gray. Often, that’s just about all there are.
Here’s one: The Saudis — also an officially Sunni country — are on the side of the Yemeni government in its civil war. If you feel like you might have heard about this Yemen situation a few years ago in the context of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and his best slumber party buddy Jared Kushner selling the Saudis arms for the civil war in Yemen, well … YEP!
Does that mean that if you don’t support Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea that you are basically Jared Kushner?
Yes. How do you like being married to Ivanka, JARED?
Or perhaps we are back to those shades of gray, because of how the Saudis’ insertion of itself into that war has done little besides bring starvation to Yemeni civilians.
Sometimes there are garbage people on both sides.
This has been an internet article about a thing that is happening somewhere.
Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
@evanjosephhurst on Threads!
I have profiles those other places but I think I forgot how to log on.
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Good explainer.
One key thing to note about Middle East politics is that in a lot of ways, it functions as a power struggle between Sunni and Shia factions of Islam, and that conflict goes all the way back to when the prophet Mohammad died in 632 CE.
The original beef, if you can believe it, was over who would get to take over this budding Muslim movement when Mohammad died. Sunnis wanted Mo's father-in-law, named Abu Bakr, and the Shias wanted Mo's son-in-law, Ali ibn Talib. And they are all still bitching about it today, still, nearly 1400 years after the fact.
Middle East history over the last couple of centuries is about these two groups vying for power and undermining each other. Saudi Arabia is Sunni, and Iran is Shia. So of course Iran will support Shia rebels in a nation that just happens to be bordering Saudi Arabia; it's in their interests to leave a big pile of shit on that Sunni nation's doorstep.
This is also why Syria turned into a massive clusterfuck. The Assad regime there is Shia, so obviously Sunni nations wanted to get in on the action with overthrowing that. But that means Iran wants to keep Assad in power. And then further complicating things, there was this huge bunch of Sunni terrorists that took control of a large section of the country.
In conclusion if this was a Reddit post, then I would vote Everyone is the Asshole.
The Saudis are trash that have been bombing and killing civilians in Yemen for years now often with the specific blessing of our governments past both Democratic and Republican.
The Houthis are trash that are now fucking around and finding out.
Hamas is trash that butchers and rapes and murders innocents.
Likud is trash that bombs and maims and murders innocents too.
Our government is sometimes trash that sells the other trash people the means to kill innocent people or sometimes blows up innocent people for the benefit of corporations or trash kingdoms.
I wish a very specific divine pox on all of the guilty.
In the interim, OHJB protecting shipping and innocent sailors is probably one of the least trashy things the United States has done in the region so far.