‘Growing ambitions’: Dr. Kendall on Houthis’ quest to be recognised as Yemen’s ‘legitimate' leaders

Well, the escalation has also significantly deepened the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Intensified fighting has cut off aid to some 800,000 people, according to humanitarian organizations, leaving hospitals across the country struggling to cope with the sharp increase in casualties. Frontline hospitals in Yemen's Red Sea coast, Marib and Taiz, all reported seeing unprecedented numbers of patients with war-related injuries. But few cities face a more dire situation than Taiz, which is Yemen's third largest city, already hosting the largest number of internally displaced people. Houthi rebels are currently surrounding the town, residents then increasingly concerned about an incoming catastrophe. Emily Boyle. Heavy gunfire rips through the Yemeni mountains of Jabal Habshi district. This footage shows the Houthis claiming another city as the rebel forces continue their offensive and hope to capture the strategic city of Taiz. After cutting off a main road linking Taiz to Aden, government forces and the local population are now encircled. Humanitarian goods can no longer get into Taiz. As basic supplies slowly run out, prices have drastically increased for the thousands of people stuck in the city. What we want is for inspectors from the military police and the relevant authorities to monitor prices. The Houthis are fighting us on one side and the traders are fighting us from the other. Some traders, meanwhile, say they are having to fight against stockpiling. Now things are fine and stocks are full, but some residents are hoarding goods themselves. Instead of buying one or two sacks, they want to take five or six. Humanitarian organizations have said that the situation in Taiz had significantly deteriorated in recent days. Current wheat and flour supplies could run out in less than three weeks. Petrol prices have tripled and cooking gas is largely unavailable to the population in Taiz city. Food prices have reportedly risen about 50%. The United Nations has said there is no military solution to the conflict and called for a rapid distribution of humanitarian aid wherever needed. For more on the latest, then, we'll speak to Elizabeth Kendall, Middle East expert and president of Cambridge University's Girton College. Dr. Kendall, thank you very much for joining us today. So, as we've been covering here on France 24, we've really seen Houthi attacks get increasingly brazen in recent weeks and also seen Saudi Arabia kind of struggle to contain them. What exactly are Houthis trying to achieve? The Houthis ultimately would like to be considered the legitimate political leaders in Yemen. That's what they actually want. And as a way to get that, they need leverage. They also need money and they need influence. And so by exporting their fight now more dramatically towards Saudi Arabia, they are increasing their leverage not just in Saudi but in the broader Gulf that is looking on with increasing concern and also distracting the international community from what they're doing inside Yemen which is expanding their territory so that's really what they want we are going to get to the internal situation hopefully but before we do i do want to ask i mean do the Houthis really stand a chance at those objectives that you just mentioned there do they not run the risk of biting off more than they can chew, especially given the disconnect in terms of the unequal distribution of resources between the two and also Saudi Arabia's very powerful allies. Yes, it does seem as though the Houthis technically and on paper shouldn't stand a chance. But their experience in the past is that threats pay. Previously, in 2022, when they ramped up their attacks on Saudi Arabia, they managed to negotiate themselves into a truce with Saudi where they kept control of the territories that they had already occupied and similarly in 2024 when they published coordinates of Saudi airports and ports and threatened to attack them they managed to extract another concession which was the lifting of sanctions on their banking sector so it may be that they're hoping for similar concessions and similar power from this escalation however I think you may be right, that this could be a push too far and it might just result in Saudi Arabia managing to mobilize regional allies to once and for all focus on defeating the Houthis. Now, how would you characterize the conflict between the Saudis and the Houthi rebels? I mean, is it mostly political, ideological in nature? Is it territorial? Is it religious? I mean, what defines the the the the enemy the nature of being enemies between them it's hard to unravel the different strands of this conflict but ultimately it was a conflict that was domestically generated inside Yemen because of the Houthis' claims to marginalization religiously economically politically and then Saudi came into the civil war in 2015 on the side of the internationally recognized government of Yemen. So they were pitted against each other. Now, however, it seems to have escalated beyond that. And the Houthis have increasingly supremacist beliefs, where they believe that their lineage, their descent, which they claim they can trace back to the Prophet Muhammad himself through his grandson Hussein, makes them the legitimate leaders of Yemen and possibly a broader region within the Islamic world too. So it's now also about religion as well as power and money. And speaking to those religious elements, Dr. Kendall, how instrumental has Iran been in the success, so to speak, of their recent offensive? How has it, and also similarly, how has the war with Israel and the U.S. affected ties between Houthi rebels and Iran? Iran has been very influential in the rise of the Houthis. The Houthis would not be where they are today without Iran's help. Iran has backed them militarily, it's sent them trainers, it's helped them with targeting, and it also looks like they have commanders on the ground with the Houthis. So there's definitely a sense that despite the Houthis' individual agenda, they have their own agenda, they are also serving the broader agenda of Iran. And the Houthis have become increasingly important. They are now Iran's ace card, because Iran's direct proxies, groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi'i militias in Syria, who declined when the Assad regime fell, these are no longer so useful to Iran. So the Houthis have been wheeled out and mobilized by Iran to ramp up the pressure on the region, put it in a better position for some kind of settlement in the Straits of Hormuz. So in short, the two groups, Iran and the Houthis, are working together. Their agendas are aligned, but they both also have their own individual reasons for continuing this conflict. Now, I do want to turn to the situation in Yemen. We've seen the humanitarian crisis there really deteriorate. Houthis control, of course, about one third of Yemeni territory. Can you speak a little bit to what life is like under their rule and how much domestic support they appear to have in this war with Saudi Arabia? Yes, the Houthis are now in control of territory in Yemen in which roughly 28 to 30 million people live. So they have considerable control over Yemen's population. That's about two-thirds, perhaps just more, of its population. And they rule not so much by consensus, but by fear and by oppression. And the more they come under pressure, the more oppressive they become. we know that they have campaigns of arrests, of rounding people up, of controlling the media, and also quite sophisticated propaganda and indoctrination campaigns. So it's a miserable time living under Houthi rule. And of course, we're seeing that in the increasing number of people who are being internally displaced. It's over the course of the last 12 years, since the civil war began we know that about 500 internally displaced persons have been counted now not all of them at the same time but we're also seeing hunger poverty and violence i just leave you with one statistic which is that around 22 million people in Houthi in Yemen now need aid and that's largely in the Houthi areas and about 18 million are facing severe food shortages so it's very, very severe. We just have a little bit of time left, Dr. Kendall, but I do want to ask you one more thing, which is Houthi rebels, of course, emerged in the 90s. They fought fiercely against Yemen's former authoritarian president, Saleh, and they've long pushed, of course, for greater autonomy for their homeland in northern Yemen. How have you seen their political objectives, their ideology, even their international clout evolve over time, especially, of course, given that you've spent some time in Yemen yourself? Yes, their clout has evolved very significantly over the past decade especially. They are being talked to directly by international powers. We heard just last week, I believe, that the Trump administration seemed to have some kind of direct communication with the Houthis, that the Houthis had said to America, if you do not enter the war kinetically on the side of Saudi Arabia, then you'll be safe. They don't want to hit us he said so you know this is some quite significant recognition that they're getting now as for their own objectives they have become increasingly close to Iran their religious nature has become increasingly close to the kind of Shiism that is in Iran the leader of the Houthis Abdul Malik al-Houthi he is becoming a bit more like the mouthpiece of God himself you can feel that he has that he is now projecting those supremacist beliefs and it's quite important to point out here though that although they talk about restoring their rightful state in reality the Zaydi Imamate that they refer back to was a very on and off structure for a thousand years sometimes it was on sometimes it was off and it was only a formal state for around about 40 years from the fall of the Ottoman Empire until 1962. And of course, it was a much smaller bit of Yemen. It was a tiny corner of Yemen in the northwest, and now they hold much more land. So clearly, their ambitions are growing. And because of the territory they hold on the Red Sea and the threat that they can pose, not just to Saudi Arabia, but to international maritime trade, they are a force to be reckoned with and have much greater international attention than they did. Dr. Elizabeth Kendall, Middle East expert and president of Cambridge University's Girton College. Thank you so very much for your time today. Well, that's all we have for you for this edition. Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned. There's more coming up in under three minutes if you missed anything at all.