Empire: World History - 125. The Origin of the Houthis

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Since November 2023, the Houthis have been attacking international shipping lanes in the Red Sea. They set off from the Yemeni coastline on speedboats, armed with guns and unmanned drones, often supplied by Iran, and cause havoc. Such has been the chaos of these attacks that Britain, the USA, and other western nations have launched retaliatory airstrikes. But where did this group come from and what do they want? Emerging in the 1990s as a Shia religious movement that rejected the repressive and corrupt rule Yemen faced at the time, the Houthis grew in power and influence. This culminated in a coup in 2014 that made them the de facto ruler of Yemen and started a civil war that has since drawn in Sunni Saudi Arabia, Iran, and many other powers in the region. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Orwell Prize-winning journalist and Yemen specialist Iona Craig to discuss the rise of the Houthis. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Drimple. So excited today, so excited today, so excited today. You know I love me, some girl power on this here. podcast. You know I do. We have seen some evidence of that over the last year. No, I'm not

hide it well. Okay. We have an extraordinary woman on this podcast today who I am so delighted, has agreed, deigned to be on our little podcast. Iona Craig, award-winning investigative journalist, who is with us to discuss the hooties, but that's not enough. We need to know more about Iona Craig. So just so you know, she has been the Yemeni correspondent for the Times. She has been, She was the recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for reporting on, do you remember the US drone strikes in Yemen that included that bombing of a wedding convoy? A great woman Martha Gellhorn was. What a lovely prize to win. Well, I mean, you know, from a hand to extraordinary hand, she survived an assassination attempt in 2013, which we'll talk about a bit more, which was just outside Sana. Not many people could say that.

No, no. And was the last accredited Western journalist living in Yemen? when she left in 2014, but not forever. Because just when the little chat while your internet was having a hiccup, we were chatting, how many times have you been back to Yemen since 2014? I've actually lost count, to be honest with you, but I've probably spent at least the equivalent to another year and a half in Yemen since having not actually lived there.

Which we should say is not an easy thing to do at the moment. No, although I did get stuck there on a couple of occasions. I got stuck there during COVID when the airports were shut down. In 2015, when I first went back, I had to go back by boat. And I did the crossing between the Babel-Mendab into southern Yemen three times by boat because of the control of the airspace being in the hands of Saudi Arabia and then preventing journalists from getting in. So, yeah, you have to be pretty determined to get back.

But once I did, I had a bit of a reputation for turning up at friends' houses, Yemeni friend's houses, saying, I'll be here for two or three days or a week and still being there a month or two months later. And that happened repeatedly in 2015. Can I ask you this? In many people's minds, when they think of Yemen, what is conjured up is this sort of dust bowl, almost a landscape from a Star Wars movie, which is rubble, dust, sand, yellowness, poverty, starvation, going back almost, you know, sort of, I don't know, a thousand years.

And there's extraordinary primeval tower houses on the top of rocks reaching out with those wonderful designs. What is Yemen to you? And what does the world need to understand about Yemen? Oh, I get very nostalgic when I think of Yemen and whenever I'm here, I want to be there. But yes, in the most densely populated part of the country, in the highlands, in the west of the country, it couldn't be further removed from that sort of image. You've got the tower houses that you mentioned, William, on the top of mountains. I lived in one of those tower houses for four years in the middle of the old city of Sana, which was five stories high. I had this amazing view to the edges of Sunar up into the mountains. But actually, the highlands of Yemen, the western part of Yemen,

which is the most density populated area, is beautiful and green when the rains come, sort of two or three times a year. And there's terracing, sort of as you'd imagine, maybe around the Mediterranean or something like that, terraced farming, it's very green. There are no permanent rivers, but you do with this heavy rainfall, then get rivers forming in the rainy season.

And the east of the country is desert, and it's less densely populated. So you have this huge contrast when you can drive from the west to the east through the kind of mountainous areas and Highland Mountains. I mean, Sonara is one of the highest capital cities in the world. So you actually have an almost perfect climate there where it never really gets above 30 degrees. It can freeze at night in the winter, but rarely. Normally during the day it doesn't really get below 16 degrees in the winter.

So you've got this sort of lovely climate up in the mountains there. And it's extremely beautiful. Yeah. And so in those old tower houses, you have the traditional architecture, which are these beautiful half-moon windows, which is stained glass. And so you wake up in your ancient powerhouse in the morning with white walls, with geometric patterns on them, with this filtering of light from the stained glass coming through your window. And it is very idyllic in that respect. And, you know, I had a mafrage on the top floor, which is like a sitting-room, a traditional sitting-room where I could just see for my miles and you'd sit there and have your gait choose, Gap being the kind of alternative to, really, to alcohol in Yemen, which is not consumed, but this is the kind of local drug, really. It's a plant. It's a bit like drinking too many expressos or red bull. It gives you that kind of high, but it's very much a social thing in northern Yemen in particular. And that's where you gather in an afternoon to sit and chew gait. Chills you out rather than revs you up, though, doesn't it?

It's sort of... Not for me. actually. You go through a cycle. So for me, it actually made me really anxious. So for me, because I'm very caffeine sensitive, it actually made me quite jittery. And I, if you, depending a bit like wine, depending on where you get your gap from, it can sometimes would literally stop me from sleeping for two nights. Really? But, but yeah, in a gatt chew, you do go through a cycle. So you don't want to turn up to a gat chew late because everybody will be a different part in the cycle to why you're at. It's a bit like drinking. Are you saying gat chew as in chewing? C-H-E-W. That's a lot. It's a thing called a Gat chew, yeah.

You chew the herb and it has this effect. You don't smoke it or inhale it or snort it. You chew it. It's not a particularly present experience, I have to say. It's like taking the leaves off a plant, sticking in your mouth. You don't swallow them. You chew them and you get this great big sort of bulging cheek. That's like parn, like beetle, beetle leaf in India.

Yeah, yeah. I spent a little time in the Yemeni community in South Shields in Tynan Weir, Newcastle, and they are the oldest, along with the Yemeni community of Cardiff, they're the oldest Muslim community in the country. And in order to spend time with them, I had to go and chew Gat too in their little mosque. Which is highly illegal, by the way, in the UK now. It's now illegal to chew Gat in the UK. That's very tragic. It is completely illegal and we are no, thank you. No way are we suggesting that anyone should be doing this. Okay, so let's just move for long, nothing to see here.

This was a long time ago, I should say. Yeah, no, a long, long time ago, and he won't do it again because he'll be in trouble. Just on the other, you know, sort of perhaps misconception about Yemen. I mean, there is this idea that, because when we hear about Yemen in the news and what we have for the last 15, 20 years, it's been in relation to either, you know, attacks from the sky or more latterly, the Houthis in the sea, but also starvation and terrible famine. This, though, was, and anyone who's listened to our Ottoman Empire series will know this, was once one of the richest places in the world. It was a great coffee exporter.

You know, the city of Mokka was built on the fortunes of coffee. I think one of our all-time most wonderful episodes of that coffee episode where we had, Jamal Kaffedar giving us the history of coffee. And it was all about Mokka and Yemeni goat herds spotting their goats frisking around after eating coffee meat. But I mean, do the people of Yemen claim that as heritage? Do they think of themselves as that from that lineage? I mean, if the people, is that terrible way to say? But, I mean, if you have a characterization of a people, how would you describe them?

That's actually really hard in Yemen because Yemen, as we now call it, was only one state from 1990. So really, actually culturally inside Yemen, many people in the South do not see themselves as culturally aligned to people from the north. and even sort of the national dish of the north, some people in the south have never eaten it. So, yeah, I think it's kind of trying to see it as one monolithic like that. But yeah, I mean, if you go back to obviously the times of the incense trail, gold frankincense and myr, you know, at least one of the three wide men, it's claimed to have come from Yemen. And the frankincense of mer certainly would have come probably from Yemen because that's what it became so famous for and traded on. You know, in modern times, though unfortunately, Yemen then became sort of famous for being the poorest country in the Middle East because it didn't have the oil of its neighbours.

And that's really where, I suppose, it's kind of over time has really been depleted from this very sort of famous country in terms of trade routes and trading. Yeah, Aden was one of the richest ports in the whole of the history of British imperialism and trade. East Indic company used Aden as a major base. Yeah, I mean, that's why they took Aden really as a British protectorate was because of where it was conveniently located. Halfway between Bombay and Suez. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I think in terms of identifying with that heritage, unfortunately, in some respects, it's become a little bit politicised through the conflict because of this, in some circles,

this kind of debate over who has the right to rule. and the terms of genealogy and ancient family history in Yemen. And some people are trying to kind of claim that history all the way back to the kind of, you know, 3,000 years ago of a family lineage, i.e. way beyond the sort of Prophet Muhammad kind of lineage. And so it becomes a bit politicized in that respect. Now, we hear about Yemen and the Houthis now an awful lot and the Red Sea. And we should first of all just describe why this stretch of sea. is so very, very important. This is a stretch of water that divides Africa and Asia. It is the most

important shortcut for all trade in the world for ships to reach the Mediterranean without having to go around the horn of Africa, which is a dangerous and long voyage to take, stretching from the gate of tears in the south between Eritrea and Yemen, up to Israel and Egypt, the Suez Canal. And since November But 2023, the Houthis in Yemen have attacked cargo ships in the area. They've launched missiles and they've used armed drones to strike at shipping as well in the area. This is going to be unusual because normally we start at the beginning and we come through to the modern era. But can we just deal with what people will find familiar and then find the roots of what goes on? Who are the Houthis and where did they come from and have they always been there?

The Houthis, as we now know them, really grew out of an organisation or a movement. called the Believing Youth in northern Yemen, which was a Zadhi revivalist movement. Who are the Zadis? Exactly. Well, the Zadis are a Shia Islamic group that is really kind of almost unique to Yemen. And in fact, religiously, they have more in common with Sunnis in Yemen than they do with the 12 Ashahs of Iran. But yeah, Zadis are pretty much unique to Yemen, Shia branch of Islam. And the believing youth group was a Zadi revivalist religious group that was formed. in the 1990s, in really in a response to the spread of Saudi Salafism into Yemen that began in the late

1970s, early 1980s. So we had last week Kim Gattos telling us about the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and how after 1979, both of these Islamic countries were pushing their different brands of Islam around the world. How far is it true? Because in every news report, they and just say Iran-backed Houthis. Is that a description that you recognize? They are certainly now backed by Iran. They wouldn't be where they are today if it wasn't for Iran, but it also became slightly self-fulfilling. So, you know, one of the reasons Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen back in 2015, they said was because of the Iranian support for the Houthis. At that point, it was minimal, it was political, maybe some small arms, but really as a result, ironically, of the Saudis getting

involved in Yemen since 2015. The Iranians actually did become involved. Exactly. So then you had training and weapons provided to the Houthis and not just small arms. You've got now all of these anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles that you've been seen fired at vessels in the Red Sea have all come from Iran. And these are Iranian armaments. Yes. I mean, what happens to a lot of them is they get shipped in in parts, and then the Houthis have been trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to rebuild them and put them back together again once they've been smuggled in in different parts. And what is the attitude to the Houthis, you know, from the general public, you know, sort of mates of yours who you would, you know, go and sleep on their

floor for a couple of days, stroke, four months? I mean, well, you know, what do they make of this presence and the armaments that are building up in their country? Well, actually, that's changed a lot because of what's happened since October 7th. So the Houthis, since they took the Capital Sunar in 2014, they've kind of always ruled with an iron fist. And there is zero tolerance for any opposition, for whether that be in the form of criticism from journalists or civil society or political activists. And, you know, even before the war, they infiltrated the education system, the religious teachings, and absolutely everything. But since October 7th, their reason for attacking, ships in the Red Sea has been to support the Palestinian cause, to challenge Israel and their

war on Gaza, and to disrupt shipments initially to Israel. Should we interpret that as orders given to them by Iran, or is it a genuine, popular Arab move against Israel? It's genuine and popular. I mean, the Palestinian cause was always heavily supported in Yemen, had been historically for a long, long time, and it had also been part of the kind of Houthi ideology, if you like. And even their slogan, which they adopted way back in 2003, is this very anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, even, anti-Israel, anti-American slogan, which is death to America, death to

Israel, damn the Jews, victory to Islam. And that was adopted by the Houthis in 2003 really is a reaction to the American invasion of Iraq. But yeah, just going back to the popularity of the Houthis, really now, this has been massively popular for them. And that's even in the anti-Houthis side of the civil war in Yemen. I've now, you know, most of the French I speak to in southern Yemen, which is not under Houthi control, are supporting what the Houthis are doing, despite them being against everything else the Houthis have done over the last 10 years, because they're seen as the only actors in the whole region, arguably the world, of doing anything to support the Palestinians or to stand up to Israel's war in Gaza. Well, we've already

talked about, you know, a divide between Houthi controlled and not Houthi controlled Yemen. Can we go back to 1990, though, when Yemen became what we would recognize as a modern state. So this is under Ali Abdullah Saleh, first president of modern Yemen. Tell me a little more about him. I've seen pictures of him. He looks, I mean, he looks like an accountant, sort of dark mustache, you know, sort of steel-rimmed glasses. He looks like a bureaucrat. Who was he? What's his origin story? And not Fernando from accounts, your old friend from... No, not Fernando from accounts, yeah. There's a long-running gag on this where I comment on the hotness. Well, I don't, but people think I do.

People say I comment on the hotness of certain historical figures. But anyway, yes, tell us about Ali Abdullah Saleh. Well, he was a lot more intimidating and scary than any accountant that I've ever met. I did meet Solai. I was the first one to interview him after he stepped down from power after 33 years in power sort of more than 10 years ago now. We should describe him. Thick, dark moustache, frowning eyebrows, often see.

wearing tinted glasses? Yes, not terribly tall, but had a massive presence. He wore those tinted glasses a lot later on because he suffered a huge amount of physical damage. He was nearly, very nearly killed during the Arab Spring uprising in 2011 when the mosque he was attending for Friday prayers was bombed. And it's a miracle that he survived that, but it did a lot of damage to him physically. Badly burnt? Very badly burnt. I mean, when I went to interview him, his age showed me a picture of him of what he looked like immediately after the bombing. And he had a gash the whole way across his left lung. I mean, he looked like he was dead.

And I remember when he did eventually die in 2017 and I saw pictures of him dead, I said, I've seen Salle looking more dead than he is now. I'm not sure that he is actually. Because, you know, ironically, the Saudis shipped him off to Saudi Arabia and spent many months literally putting him back together again. But yeah, he had a lot of damage, damage to his hearing. to his face and everything else. But yeah, he was a massive presence in Yemen for 33 years. Nobody thought he would last more than a year in the job when he got the presidency because his two

predecessors had been assassinated, although Sali certainly supported one of those assassinations, if not being directly involved in it. But he went on to rule Yemen through this kind of system of patronage networks, of playing tribes and groups off against each other. He was a very Maccabellian character. I just want to go back. He does something in 1990, which is, you know, the unification, as you say, with patronage and everything, but he creates an entity that he calls Yemen. So, if you're trying to unify, you're going to have to bring together, you know, Salas North and also the Marxist, Lenist, underpinned South. What did he want for the economy? What was he thinking of building this new country on? And how do you build a country in 1990?

Well, yeah, the socialist side came from the south, really, after the Brits had left. It became the only sort of socialist slash communist state in the region. And that's what Southern Yemen was until 1990. And it had a very strong anti-imperial identity, isn't it? It saw itself as having thrown the British out. Absolutely. And they did really. There's always the joke about it. It took the British too long to leave because they announced when they were leaving and then it took them, you know, a couple of years to pack. And in that time, they were having a lot of pot shots taken at them by the locals. But yeah, so in 1990, in no small part because of the collapse of the USSR, a lot of the support that was coming for southern Yemen and for the socialists there was lost.

And so, yeah, it happened very quickly unification in 1990. And it was quite an important year that really, overall politically in Yemen, because it started with unification on the 22nd of May in 1990. Then you had sort of political moves being made in the north. Then you had the formation of the Zaydi political party, Al-Hak, which was founded in opposition to the Islamist party, the Islamist party, which is kind of Yemen's version of the Muslim Brotherhood. That also happened in 1990. And then they vote with Saddam after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, in the Western world punishes them by cutting off aid? Yeah, this was sort of Sarlay's biggest mistake and worst move that he could have made, really.

And he paid a price for it and learned from it. So, yeah, during the UN Security Council resolution that happened at the end of 1990, which was basically given authorization for what then was the Gulf War the next year, which gave an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen, was the only. country that didn't support that resolution. Other than Cuba. Cuba's the last time.

And as a result of that, yes, the IMF, the World Bank, all withdrew funding. They lost $70 million in funding from the US. And Saleh was isolated and financially almost ruined, really, because you've got to remember after unification at the beginning of the year, they were taking on the economy of the South, which was already in trouble because of the collapse of the USSR. So it was a real moment for Saleh when, yeah, he lost a large, significant amount of the income for the country for him to be able to run this new country, almost overnight as a result of that. So the money's drying up. Does this not also trigger a really autocratic streak in him?

Yeah, I mean, some might say that he was like that already. But really what happened also during that time was all of the Yemenis that were working around the Gulf in the Gulf Corporation Council, the GCC countries, there was nearly a million of them. They were all kicked out of both Saudi Arabia, the UAE, across the Gulf were kicked out and sent back home to Yemen. And the remittances that they had been sending home was almost like a development fund for Yemen. It had been, you know, it was a grassroots sort of funding that all of these families, whether it be in rural communities or in the cities, were receiving income from. abroad suddenly stopped. What happened then for Salae really during that period of 1990, although

oil had previously been discovered in Yemen in 1984, it didn't really take off until then in 1991 when it was discovered in the Missilla Basin, which was in old southern Yemen, in the old PDRY, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, which the socialist state was. And that really then centralised financially the economy in Yemen because these remittances have been. lost, where it was going in very much at grassroots levels across communities. The money then was coming in centrally, and that was how Salle was able to finance his patronage network, how he was able to rule. I mean, the UN estimated Sallet stole, embezzled, squirreled away, somewhere between 32 billion and up to $60 billion worth of money for himself and his family

and everything else, but that most of that came through oil contracts. Now, Yemen didn't have the amount of oil that was obviously in Saudi Arabia or in other parts of the Gulf, but it was enough to be able to fund Saleh's rule, really, and his sort of appetite for stealing money from the state, really. It's a good place to take a break here. So you've got Salé presiding over a whole of a unified Yemen, cementing his autocratic leadership, basically his hand in most people's pocket. And join us after the break when the Houthis will enter the story.

Welcome back. So just before the break, our wonderful guest star today on today's Empire podcast, I know Craig was telling us about how Yemen becomes a consolidated country under the, I was going to say under the wing, but more under the boot of this man called Sala. And then we have entering the fray, the Houthis. And I want to talk about Hussain Al-Houthi, who was born in Yemen in the 1950s. So he was born at a time when the British was still in charge. They hadn't left yet.

Tell us about him. What was he like? Where did he come from? What's his origin story? So Hussein was a Zadie sort of scholar and orator. He was very well respected. A cleric? Yes, he was.

But he was also slightly ambiguous in his teachings in the sense that when he founded the believing youth with others from the Zedi movement, there was a lot of disagreement really between his version of Zadism and what was seen as the true root of Zadism. A lot of other clerics and scholars thought what he was teaching wasn't correct and was a diversion from true Zadism. And they were critical of him and his writings. And they thought that he undermined sort of Zadie jurisprudence and other elements of Zadiehism and didn't necessarily always agree with him. And I know, just for clarity, if you were an Ayatollah in Com, what would you think of

Hussein Al-Hutti's theology and the Zadis in general? I mean, are they compatible with mainstream Shiasim, or would they be regarded as basically rather eretical? Well, actually, the Zadis have far more in common with the Sunnis and particularly the Shafi-I Sunnis of Yemen than they do with the 12 or Shias, for sure. I think the thing was with Hussein, which he was never clear about really, is one of the aspects of Zadism is about the right to rule and the genealogy of whoever is in power.

And in some parts of Zadism, and this is where the division happened in northern Yemen, in particular, after the Amarmate, there were those that still believed that those who could trace their lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad had the birth right to rule, if you like, Whereas there was then another school of Zadism that believed that actually now there was a republic and everything else, that it should be done through political parties.

And so now, you know, in present day in Yemen, the Houthis very much favor and give positions of power to, and their patronage network is set around not just the Hashemites. And when we say Hashemites in Yemen, it's not really to be confused with the Hashemites of Jordan, although they still trace their lines back to the great-grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad and Benny Hashim. We really mean Thadda in Yemen when we say Hashemites or the singular of that which is Sayyid. So Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthis is called Sayyid Abdul-Malik. And that means that they can trace their lineage directly back to the Prophet Muhammad's family and not the Hashemite, which is broader and goes to all the cousins and is a much broader group.

the Saddha is a direct line to the family of the Prophet Muhammad from his grandchildren. So the Houthis now very much use the Zadhi School of Thoughts that believes in that divine right, if you like, to rule. And so their patronage network sort of taking over from where Saleh left off, but they favour those who are Sayyids or Saddha, as well as Hashemites. And they are given priority. they're given wages when others aren't, they're given positions of power in ministries, in the military and everything else because of that. But going back to Hussein, he was never

really clear about what he thought on that and never expected it clearly whether he believed that it should continue through the lineage of the Prophet Muhammad or go through political means, which is the route. He went down initially. He was a parliamentarian. He was a member of parliament in Yemen until 1997. And that was the route that he chose. But he was never. clear in his teachings and his writings about his thoughts on that. You know, just, you've talked about sort of the family lineage, just on the political family allegiances that he might have had or formative. I mean, I read somewhere, I don't know whether it's true or not, that he spent some very formative years in Iran. And, you know, according to one disciple, he sort of was hanging about

in the orbit of the founder of Hezbollah at that time as well, and that they were sort of brothers in ideology. Does that, I mean, does that ring true to you? Or is that just somebody wanting to back projects? No, I think what they had in common more than the Shia Islam really was the wanting to change the status quo in the region. And for somebody like Hussein, it was really a feeling of anti-American sentiment because of the war in Iraq in 2000, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which of course, because Saleh had learned from 1990, having stood on the side of Saddam Hussein, he realised not to do that post-9-11. No, because the money dried up.

When he did that, the money completely dried up, yeah. He was not just supported the invasion of Iraq. He then gave a huge amount of support and welcomed support for counter-terrorism in Yemen from the Americans. And the Houthis really, since 2003, when they took up this slogan of anti-Americanism, that's what they shared really with Iran or Hezbollah, was this wanting to change the status quo in the region, this anti-American sentiment that also

included anti-Israelian and anti-Semitic, really. But that's what they had in common, more so than the religious aspect. I've read somewhere that the Houthis actually trained in Lebanon with Hezbollah. Is that likely? Yes. I think, particular time's gone on. What began really with the believing youth, and in the early days of the Houthi movement, was summer camps. It's unclear really where that included military training that early on. Certainly there was political connections and movement of Houthis and Zadis going from Sada, both to Iran and to Lebanon, long before the civil war that we're now experiencing

Yemen since 2014. But it became an increasingly militarized sort of movement, really, particularly once 2004 happened, which was the first of the wars between the Houthis and the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh. And Hussein Al Houthi was killed at the beginning of that first war in 2004. Let's not throw that away cheaply because, you know, he is properly getting up Salé's nose, isn't he? Because he's decrying that there's corruption, which there is. He's saying that he's a puppet, which arguably he is, because he knows what happened the last time when he opposed, you know, the American rule. So how, there's a bounty put on his head?

I mean, Salé takes him very seriously in this voice of, you know, radical pushback from him. He won't have it. What happens then? The security forces were wanting to arrest him. The state security forces under Ali Abdullah Saleh. And he was shot dead, reportedly at a checkpoint by state security forces. But most importantly, his body was then taken by the state and was held onto it until Ali Abdullah Salé was out of power.

until his successor, President Haddi, was put in place. And Hussein's body wasn't given back to the Houthis then until 2012. So he died in 2004. He was killed in 2004. And then they had this huge funeral for him in 2013, which was, you know, given the importance that he became in his death, the martyr that he became in his death and the importance to the Houthi movement, in that time, it was a massive gathering in Sada.

and it was really the first time where you knew saw that the Houthis had created through this period of six wars with the state, really their kind of own statelet in Sada because they had their own security forces in their own uniform, protecting this funeral in 2013. You had a representative there from the Iranian embassy. You had other religious figures there from the region, including Syria. And it was really a moment when you suddenly realized that the Houthis had effectively got, control and governance over the whole of Sada and also governates to either side of Sada, where the war and conflict had spread to during those six wars, that they had taken a little bit

more territory each time, if you like. So, yeah, Hussein became this, you know, hugely important religious sort of figure, really, to the Houthis. And so when he was buried in 2013, it was a massive event. It was a huge event for the Houthis, despite the fact that he died sort of nine years prior to that. But then with all of that fervor sort of kicking around in the air, you know, this mass morning, I suppose no surprise then at 2014, and this is all bubbling and boiling that the Houthi coup happens. Can you speak to that a bit? Yeah, so really the, as much as Saudi Arabia at the time probably would have liked to have blamed Iran, the reason the Houthis were able to do that was because of Ali Adela Sala. Having Salao fought all these wars with the Houthis,

He was looking to claw back power, having been kicked out of office in 2012, and he knew the kind of Trojan horse for him, really, was going to be the Houthis. So he did a deal with the Houthis, and Salé had maintained his loyalists within the army. So when I was living in Sonara in 2014, when the coup happened, it was kind of extraordinary really, because there was some initial fighting for about four days at a major military camp on the outskirts of the city. that was the home of Ali Mossan al-Akmaar, who was Saleh's greatest foe. He'd led the wars for Sarlay against the Houthis, but he was also the most powerful man in the military, and Salae had long hated him. He'd defected during 2011, during the Arab Spring, and his guides in the military had turned on Salae's forces. So Salae had a long grudge against Ali Mosson, so the fighting started around his camp. But when it came to taking the Ministry of Defense, the Parliament, I was living right by the Parliament at that time, and I remember walking out the door the day the Houthis took control and not a single shot was fired. The security forces

standing outside the Parliament welcomed the Houthis walking up to them, literally shook their hands and they came and joined them. And just parted ways and opened the gates. Wow. Yeah. And the same thing happened at the Ministry of Defence. I then literally walked down the road. I was going to meet a photographer friend of mine and somebody messaged me and said they'd taken the Ministry of Defence. And I said, I'm 100 metres from the Ministry of Defence. There's not a shot been fired. And the same thing happened. And at that time, the Houthis had, you know, been riding on really a wave of opportunism, as they've repeatedly done now. But there have been massive issues again over corruption with the new present Haddy. There have been a reduction in the subsidy on fuel, so people have gone

and protested because the cost of fuel had risen substantially. And so the Houthis took this as an opportunity. They saw it as a new revolution. And they took control of the capital. in September 2014, when the entire international community and the UN Special Envoy was sitting in the presidential palace waiting to sign a deal with the Houthis to say that we will join a unity government. And whilst they're all locked up in the palace, had their phones taken off them so they couldn't communicate with the rest of the world. But for security reasons, the Houthis were sweeping through the city and taking control of all of the ministries. And it was quite an extraordinary thing to watch because it was a coup that even the international community was

denying was a coup at the time. I mean, can I just say, I mean, I'm just slightly astonished by the fact that you're strolling around while the coup is happening. I mean, what was it like to be a woman? You know, you're a slight Western woman and you're sort of muddling along. The Houthis have come in. Then, you know, if there's a huge seismic change in government, how did you operate in Yemen? I mean, did you have to be vagled? Did you have to be covered? Because I mentioned at the top of this program, 2013 was when there was an assassination attempt on you. So, I mean, what, what's gone on here? here, Iona. Well, certainly when I first turned up in Yemen in 2010 and all the way through to probably 2013, really, I never covered my head. I had shorter hair than I even do now then,

and I was often mistaken as a man, because I would always wear sort of long-slee clothes and a top that covered my bum and went down to my knees, sort of like a dress with trousers on underneath. And I did often get mistaken for a boy a lot of the time. I used to have arguments going on in Arabic in the public bus behind me about, is she a girl, is she a boy? But really then, certainly foreign women could move about freely without having to be covered. That then changed during the period after the Arab Spring before the revolution happened when there was what they called the National Dialogue Conference, which was a transitional phase in Yemen. Are we talking about 2012? What year are we talking about when things changed? 12 and then 13 really, because

during this kind of period when you knew there was going to be a war, everybody who spent time in Yemen knew there was a war coming and that Ali Abdulazale was probably likely behind it. You had a string of assassinations, political assassinations going on. Car bombs. Yes, drive-by shootings. Car bombs were normally the kind of Al-Qaeda thing, suicide bombings, but you then, that Al-Qaeda would often claim you'd have car bombs, suicide bombings, drive-by shootings. You had regular kidnappings then a foreign national. So I had six friends kidnapped in that period. And that was actually when I started wearing a buyer and a hijab, I've just obviously I look like a white foreigner, but if somebody's driving past, then I'm not

an immediate sort of target. But yeah, I had several friends kidnapped during that period. And returned or what happened to them when they were kidnapped? I mean, I'm going to come to your story because I don't want you skipping over that. But what happened to your friends once they were kidnapped? Who had taken them? What did they want? Well, this was a thing. A lot of them were taken by tribesmen but sold on to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was then in a kind of financial need and realized it was profitable business to be getting into the kidnapping business, if you like. And all of them were released bar one, who was an American British national, Luke Summers, who was a journalist, also a photojournalist.

And he was killed in a failed rescue attempt by the Navy SEALs, along with a South African who was also being held with him. So, yeah, all of them were released, except for him. Unfortunately, at the end of 2014, he was killed in it. in a failed rescue attempt. But yeah, so 2013, there were a lot of political assassinations going on. A lot of them happened to be the Houthis who were the more moderate Houthis, the political-minded Houthis, the ones who maybe a year down the road

wouldn't necessarily have supported a takeover, a sonar and this kind of soft coup, if you like, that would have been against that. And many of them were killed in shootings during 2013 and in the run up to the period when the Houthis started taking territory. So a lot of the moderates amongst the Houthis were removed from the picture entirely purely by being killed. What happened to you? Can you, I mean, can you bear to talk about that day? I just want to know, can you, I mean, don't, if it's awful. Oh, no, it's not awful at all. So what, what happened? So it's morning time, you get into a taxi. I mean, just talk us through what happened. So I just interviewed

Ali Abdullah Salé two days before. And I hadn't filed my story for the piece of the times yet, because Sarlay was going out to do his first political rally to his supporters since he'd been removed from office in 2011. So he hadn't done a public speaking or rally or anything like that since the Arab Spring. So I thought that was good context for the story. So I went to the political rally. He did his speech and I left. And when I left, of course, there were a huge amounts of people leaving.

I flagged down a cab, got in the taxi. And as we were driving through this sunken road that kind of goes around, outside of Sassana's old city, you know, a couple of miles from where I was living at the time, we went past the Ministry of Defence. And as we did so, a vehicle came out of the ramp outside the Ministry of Defence and blocked the road in front of us. How terrifying. And then as it blocked our route, somebody from over my right shoulder, I was sitting on the backseat, open fire through the window. And obviously, you know, glass went flying and bullets went out at the other side. Thankfully, the taxi driver who didn't know me from Adam, I threw myself in the foot,

well, played dead. And he turned around, saw that I was okay, pulled around this car that was blocking our road and just took off down the road. I then got him back to my house later in the day to give him some cash to pay for the damage that the bullets had done to his car. And I then explained that I was a journalist, at which point he sort of put his head in his hand and said, what the hell were you doing getting in my car? And I promised him I would never get in his car again. And I gave him some cash for it for all the broken glass. But, I mean, he felt the bullets go through the hair on the back of his neck, you know. Oh, my God.

We were both, you know, kind of relieved and laughing at the aspect that we were both sort of still alive and had survived that experience. And in those days, you had to get an exit visa. So I then spent the next couple of days trying to get a visa to be able to leave. And I did go home for a couple of weeks, but I came back again. But there was then a lot of, it kind of got a bit political because Saleh blamed Islam, which is, the opposition party in Yemen, Islam blamed Saleh. Salé's aide then called me up the next day and said, Salé is worried about you. He wants to send you guards and a driver and all this kind of thing outside your house, at which point I knew it was time to go because I didn't want

to get involved in any of that. So yeah, I went home for a couple of weeks and then came back again. For a couple of weeks? No stopping this woman. By which time, you know, the political assassinations have moved on and they were murdering other people. I mean, I still don't know to this day whether it was an attempt to actually take my life or just to try and frighten me. I had no idea. But who had most a game from doing either of those things? I mean, when people say to me, do you have any enemies? I said, well, there was a long list at that point. The only people I know it wasn't was Al-Qaeda because I actually contacted them and asked them, and the guy kind of laughed at me.

Wait, you're just 1-800 Al-Qaeda. Hello. Wow. Can I, I mean, just staying with you for one second. I mean, you know, you've said this and I know you don't like talking about it because You've just sort of like, not because it's painful, but because you just don't know talking about yourself. But I want to talk about you a little bit. Well, why, why after something like that happened? I would not be going back there. There is no way. I would say, right, I have completely worn out my luck. And I'm not going back. But you did. And again and again and again,

why? Absolutely stubbornness. Pig-headedness. It's not about bravery. I thought, A, whom I'm running from, I didn't know who was responsible. And B, if it was attempt to frighten me, which I thought it probably was, because in Yemen, you know, assassinations are pretty common and they're pretty good at killing people. They very rarely fail. And so I thought if this is somebody's attempt to frighten me, I'm not going to be frightened by this. Absolutely no way am I going to be frightened by somebody doing this. So, so yes, it was absolutely stubbornness. It was a sort of determination to sort of, I suppose, give my middle finger to whoever it was who was trying to frighten me and say, I'm not, I'm not frightened. So, so yeah, it was complete stubbornness on my part. Cal, who's our brilliant producer on this program who we love dearly and who had a chat with you before you came on, said, ask her about the swimming, ask her about the swimming. Okay, so I don't know what this is about at all. Where's this going?

But, Iona, tell us about the swimming. Oh, no, I shouldn't have mentioned that. So I was talking about to him about how the Yemen that I fell in love with when I moved to Yemen in 2010 and lived there for four years, unfortunately doesn't really exist anymore because of the war, because of the division in society, because the way both sides and the conflict, although there's more than two sides, are now ruled. So, you know, the Houthis now have very strict rules on what women can do. They're not allowed to travel without a male guardian, which was never the case before.

The last time I was in Sonara, I wasn't even allowed to walk out the door with an Obaya on. And just the kind of strict social norms that have now been imposed. And equally, in southern Yemen, you've had the rise of the kind of Salafi militias that have been funded and used militarily in the war, that you've had kind of extremism growing on both sides, really. But when I first went to Aden 2010, this is where the swimming thing comes in, I was able to put on a bikini and go to the beach, albeit on a beach where you had to pay to go because it belonged to a private hotel. It wasn't like a public beach. But I paid my money. I went in and I thought, I'll go for a swim in a bikini.

by 2015-16, not a chance, no way. And so in 2020, when I got stuck in Aegean because of COVID, and they'd shut the airspace and they'd shuttle the airports, shut the roads and everything else, and I got stuck for a couple of months longer than I anticipated being in Yemen at that point. And I'm right by the sea. There's barely any electricity because the infrastructure is so problematic

because of corruption and other issues. There's no fuel to run the generators off. So I was like, I want to go for a switch. it's 40 odd degrees and you know I couldn't go for a swim unless I was wearing in a buyer so I said no I'm not I'm not doing that so I got my emily friends who's staying with me I said right get the scissors out so I had shoulder length hair at that point he cut all my hair off in a rather sort of edward scissors hand haphazard sort of a way I then borrowed his brother's football shorts I got a bandage from my first aid kit and bound my chest put on a t-shirt and off I went and said right we're going for a going to the beach and so we did. So yes, I did my best impersonation of a bloke or a boy or a man or whatever. You are a bloody-minded bird. That's what you are.

And good, good, good. Brilliant. It was a nice swim, I hope, at the end of all that. It was, yes. And I did it quite regularly, actually, after that. So we've seen the hooties now, Sue's control, Iona, and things are getting darker. There's more extremism. There's violence.

There's been a coup. what happens next? And tell me about Saudi Arabia entry into this in 2015. Well, what happens after the Houthis take control of the capital in September 2014 is they sign this agreement saying they will go no further, they'll withdraw their troops from Sonara and kind of go back to Sada. Not only did they not do that, but the exact reverse happened. So they continue taking territory through the country. They continue pushing south and east. And then in early 2015, there was fighting in the capital itself, and President Haddi, who was sallet's successor, was effectively put under house arrest, wasn't able to move.

The government was disbanded and the Houthis took power by full force at that point. And just to remind us, I know, what percentage of the population are Houthi, or Zedi? Well, Zadis, between 15 and 20%. So there are a small minority? Yes, but I think, you know, a lot of people would say now that not necessarily all Houthis and vice versa, all Zadis are Houthis. But, yeah, as 2015 then got going, you had the collapse of the government that the Houthis then took absolute control.

President Hadi was under house arrest and then somehow managed to escape house arrest, reportedly dressed as a woman and a buyer with a nicarbon. The reverse to you. Yes, exactly. And got in a car and escaped to Aden in the South. But the Houthis followed him. And to the point that actually, because they've taken over the systems of the state, they used the Air Force for the first time and air strikes by the Houthi then controlled. Yemeni air force were carried out in Aden against President Hadi and his supporters, at which point Hadi fled. And he went to Saudi Arabia. And with that, the Saudi-co-

coalition was formed and literally overnight in March 2015, Saudi Arabia launched this bombing campaign in Yemen that began in March 2015 with the idea that it would last a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so and was still going on until a ceasefire in 2022. And the UAE also became a crucial part of that coalition. And the UAE, their primary involvement, not only in the air wars, was on the ground as well. So they sent forces in and also funded. and trained militias, including Sudanese and Yemeni Salafis and other groups in support of the old southern separatist corps. Who are the foot soldiers in the Saudi anti-Houthi forces? It is actually regular regiments of the Saudi army or who's fighting the war now?

No, the Saudi army isn't really involved in foot soldiers at all. So you've got multiple units and groups on the anti-Houthi side. They've actually forced. each other. So the UAE has supported one side, the southern separatists known as now the Southern Transitional Council, which they help create and a fund against the internationally recognised government, which also has Islam, the political party as part of. And the UAE is absolutely and adamantly opposed to Islam. Because they see them as the Muslim Brotherhood and this potential to be an existential threat to the UAE, they are deeply opposed. to Islam having any power. And so hence they supported the SDC, the Southern Transitional Council

into creation and have funded it and other fighters who are also not pro-Isla. So within the anti-Houthi faction, it's very fragmented. And they have fought each other to the point the UAE even carried out air strikes against some of the internationally recognized governments backed by Saudi Arabia side. And it's really weakened their ability, therefore, to fight the Houthis because of this internal fighting really on the anti-Houthi side. And the Houthis have obviously been able to take advantage of that. I mean, you've just got people being pounded amidst all of this sort of crossfire going on between different interest groups, which, not surprisingly, has led to a complete collapse in the healthcare system, famine, people not getting food. In 2019, the Global Food

index said that Yemen had the second highest score for hunger in the world. And 2022, which a couple of years ago, World Food Program said 17 million people in Yemen are food insecure. What's going to happen next to a country that I know you love and that you would, you know, sort of long to be back in if it could be a little more like the place that the young boy girls swam in, you know, yeah. I think this is a problem that none of the protagonists, you know, in the war, whether it be Saudi Arabia, the UAE or the Houthis or the internationally recognized government, have Yemeni civilians as their priority at all. They all have their own interests, a primary. I mean, the starvation aspect of it has been dire. A large part of that

has been down to the Saudi-led coalition and the de facto blockade they impose, but also the Houthis have manipulated aid. They've besieged cities. They're still besieging, partly procedure in the city of Tyres. They prevented food and water getting to civilian populations. So all parties are kind of guilty of this, really. And I think going forward now with the Houthis is really a question of how far they are willing to escalate in the Red Sea. And therefore, the reaction this is going to draw from the US and the UK. So the US has now designated the Houthis as a specially designated group. They had been previously. designated as a foreign terrorist organization, which is slightly different, but being designated

as a terrorist organization now will also have an impact on companies willing to ship food into Hidah, which is under Houthi control, the main port for the most densely populated part of Yemen, and therefore will affect food prices. Food prices are also affected by shipping insurance, which of course is huge from anything going into the Red Sea where Hidada port is. So the consequences of international reaction to what the Houthis are doing now in the Red Sea can still again have devastating consequences for the civilians in Yemen. Well, it's a really bleak assessment to leave things on, but we've been so charmed and delighted by having you here.

Thank you so much, Iona. I know you don't like talking about yourself, but I think people will find your own personal recollections of not getting shot, not getting shot in their head really quite mesmerizing. Listen, we should also say that it's kind of a grand crescendo to end our Iran series. Out, tragically, with a bag, quite literally. Well, yes, I know, I know. It may not be the cheeriest of endings, but we hope you've enjoyed this series.

Do stay tuned because we've got a complete change of pace for our next mini-series here on Empire. Just going to have to wait, find out what it is. And well, unless William tweets it, you know what he likes. Unless somebody lets the cat out the bag, I can't think. Unless William just blast it onto X or Twitter or Instagram. Anyway, till then, though, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Thruple.