Weaning ourselves from keeping up with Al-Houthi

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Under various motives characterized by reliance on diplomacy as a sufficient solution without a deterrent, and sometimes with malice towards the colonizer’s loophole theory, which has been applied in many models such as the Kashmir nail between Pakistan and India, there comes reliance on approaches based on keeping pace with the Houthi militia as a solution to stability, sparing the blood of Yemenis, and achieving a future in which all Yemenis participate.

Firstly, the Houthis practiced politics before they had power, since 1993, when Hussein Al-Houthi represented the Al-Haq Party in parliament, but parliamentary representation and therefore the idea of ​​political participation did not suit him, so he joined the “Believer Youth” movement four years after he left parliament. Of course, President Saleh tried to play with them to create a balance with the Salafists at times and criticized them at other times for wanting to restore the imamate, and for the benefit of what is due to him and what is due, but it is not our topic.

What is important about Hussein’s exit from Parliament is that it is a step that demonstrated that political participation does not achieve their project. The battles between the Houthis and the authorities in Saada have continued since 2004, and in each round they were more violent than the previous one, until the apple fell in 2010. They also sought refuge as a means of deceiving the parties of their desire for political participation by participating in the National Dialogue Conference.

During their participation in the conference, they demonstrated their active involvement, and their representatives received praise from international mediators and Western observers for presenting political visions and civil and constructive theses in the working groups, until the outcomes were not what they desired through the conference approving the federal form of the state consisting of 6 regions, as the Houthis rejected this division because it isolated Saada (their main stronghold) in the “Azal” region.

Because we are not talking about the British Hadar Party here, when we talk about the Houthis’ rejection of the conference’s outcomes, this does not mean protests or sit-ins, but rather it means that they will take up arms and kill what they did not take through dialogue at the conference. It becomes clear how the Western testimonies during the conference did not understand them ideologically in sufficient depth, and everyone knows the following scenario from the invasion of Amran and the rest of the governorates to the occupation of Sana’a in September 2014.

In the same month, they gave a new illusion that they were a political party by signing the “Peace and Partnership Agreement” with the president and the parties. The agreement stipulated that the Houthis would dismantle their camps surrounding the security facilities in the capital after appointing a prime minister, which at the time did not go beyond a breathing truce and redeployment, followed by the siege of President Hadi in January 2015. Parliament was dissolved the following month, and they installed a “revolutionary committee” headed by “Mohammed bin Ali Al-Houthi.” Steps followed to marginalize opponents and allies, leading to the assassination of President Saleh two years later.

Then came three external stations, regardless of their motives, but the behavioral pattern of the militia did not change in them, namely the Stockholm Agreement in 2018, then the folly of the Biden administration removing the Houthis from the terrorist lists, which coincided with a Houthi attack targeting civilians at Abha Airport, leading to the 2022 truce, and nothing in the three stations indicated a difference in the pattern of dealing with partners in the homeland or neighboring countries.

This approach, which considers keeping pace with Al-Houthi a way to integrate and change him, is characterized by gross simplification and is based on the fact that many capitals have dealt with Al-Houthi as a political party that can be tamed with incentives: a removal from the terrorist lists here, a humanitarian truce there, and an agreement that gives it a foothold in power in the hope that it will transform from a militia into a party that practices politics.

But the record extending since the 1990s says otherwise. Every peaceful window opened for the militia became a rest stop for rearmament, then a new attack for opponents and allies alike, on a straight path towards single rule. The fuel for this path is children being led to the fronts, and its financing is trade based on Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of Captagon, and the killing and targeting of civilians in Yemen and neighboring countries, and sailors who have no fault except that they crossed the Red Sea.