Foreign News
How Yemen’s Houthis Became A Global Threat
They began as a religious revival movement in the mountains of northern Yemen.
Today, the Houthis can fire missiles and drones at Israel, threaten naval forces, disrupt one of the world’s busiest shipping routes and raise huge sums of money from territory they control.
How did a relatively obscure Yemeni movement acquire that kind of power? The answer lies in Yemen’s collapse, internal control, a sophisticated war economy and Iranian support.
The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, emerged in Sa’ada in northern Yemen in the 1990s. The movement grew out of the Zaidi Shia community, which felt marginalised by the central government and Saudi-backed Sunni religious institutions.
It initially focused on preserving Zaidi identity through religious education. Under Hussein al-Houthi, its message became far more militant. Influenced by Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, he portrayed the Houthis as an oppressed community fighting corruption, Western influence and what they saw as an assault on their religious identity.
In 2004, authorities tried to arrest Hussein. He was killed, but his followers fought on. Six rounds of conflict followed between 2004 and 2010, turning the Houthis into a hardened insurgency.
Then Yemen itself began to unravel.
The 2011 uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh weakened the central state. The Houthis exploited the vacuum, broadening their message and presenting themselves as champions of Yemenis angry about corruption, poverty and rising prices.
In 2014, the government removed fuel subsidies and prices surged. The Houthis marched on the capital. On September 21, 2014, they seized Sana’a. President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was forced out, Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened, and Yemen descended into civil war.
But the Houthis did not simply occupy territory. They built a parallel system of power.
One of the most important features of Houthi rule is the network of officials known as mushrifs, or supervisors. They operate inside ministries, provinces and districts, often alongside official government figures but exercising the real authority over security, finance and political decisions.
Supervisors oversee security, finance, social affairs, propaganda and education. Even local community leaders have been drawn into the system to gather information about residents, identify recruits and help determine who receives aid. The result is a state within a state: official institutions remain visible, but a parallel Houthi structure holds the real power.
One of the most distinctive parts of that system is the Zainabiyat, an all-female security and intelligence organisation created in 2016. The force allows the movement to penetrate spaces where male fighters would struggle to operate, particularly women’s gatherings, homes, schools and other female-only spaces.
Reports say Zainabiyat members monitor women’s gatherings and online activity, conduct searches and raids, oversee women’s prisons and help suppress protests. They have also been accused of serious abuses against female detainees.
Their role also extends to ideological programmes aimed at women and children, and girls between 13 and 17 have been recruited for roles including guards, spies and combatants.
But control requires money, and the Houthis have developed a formidable revenue system.
The group does not control Yemen’s main oil-producing regions, so it relies heavily on extracting revenue from the territory it holds. Houthi authorities collect about $1.8 billion a year in domestic taxes from businesses, banks and other economic activity. It also includes checkpoint charges, tariffs on goods and a controversial 20 per cent levy described as a “Hashemite tax.”
The Houthis also use international financial networks. A Houthi-linked network involved in Iranian oil smuggling is estimated to generate about $500 million a year.
To bypass sanctions, the network has also used cryptocurrencies and informal money-transfer systems. Houthi-controlled crypto addresses recorded nearly $900 million in outflows between 2017 and 2025.
Then came the Red Sea.
The Bab al-Mandab Strait connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and is one of the world’s crucial maritime chokepoints. After the Gaza war began in October 2023, the Houthis started attacking commercial vessels they said were linked to Israel or Western interests.
Shipping companies responded by avoiding the Red Sea and sending vessels around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. More than $1 trillion in global maritime cargo was disrupted between October 2023 and May 2024.
The disruption also became a source of revenue. Houthis extract an estimated $180 million a month in transit fees from shipping interests seeking safe passage through the Bab al-Mandab. A global security crisis had become a business model.
And then there is Iran. The Houthis began as a local Yemeni movement. Iranian support transformed them into a regional military force. According to the report, Iran has supplied or helped develop ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship weapons and drones, while Iranian and Hezbollah personnel have provided military advice, training and operational support.
The Houthis do not necessarily manufacture every weapon themselves. Iranian components can be smuggled into Yemen and assembled or modified locally. That combination has given the group capabilities far beyond those of a conventional rebel movement.
For Tehran, the relationship provides a partner beside a crucial global shipping route.
So what are the Houthis today?
They are no longer rebels fighting a government. Nor are they a conventional government with international legitimacy. They are something in between: a heavily armed counter-state with territory, taxation, intelligence networks, security forces, a war economy and missiles and drones capable of affecting events far beyond Yemen.
That is the Houthi story: a movement born in Sa’ada that has learned to turn Yemen’s geography into a weapon.
The Houthis do not control all of Yemen. But they have learned a lesson with consequences far beyond its borders: you do not need to control a country to acquire leverage over the world.
