The Pigeon - THE UAE'S HOUTHI PROBLEM

The UAE’s Houthi problem

Three people were killed and six others injured in a suspected drone attack carried out on an oil facility in Abu Dhabi on Monday, January 17th. It was later confirmed that two of the deceased were Indians while the third was a Pakistani national. The Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, claimed responsibility for the attack on the capital of the United Arab Emirates. They warned that the “UAE is an unsafe state as long as its aggressive escalation against Yemen continues.”

The Houthis are an extremist Shia Islamic movement founded in the 1990s in Yemen. They were disgruntled by the growing influence of neighbouring Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and began protesting against their own president and Saudi ally, Ali Abdellah Saleh. After years of protests, clashes with government forces and assasination attempts, the Houthis finally forced Saleh to step down in 2012.

However, in 2014, Saleh and the Houthis joined forces to seize the capital city of Sana’a and overthrow Saleh’s successor. The capture of Sana’a triggered a civil war that continues to devastate Yemen to this day and is seen as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

The Houthi capture of Sana’a was not well received by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states. Particularly worrying were reports that Iran was backing the Houthis. A Saudi-led coalition launched an air campaign to defeat the rebels. They were backed by the US, UK and France. But what the coalition expected would take just a few weeks to accomplish evolved into a full-blown civil war, with the Houthis warring against Saudi-backed government forces throughout the country.

While coalition troops were able to drive out the Houthis from the south of Yemen, the rebels still occupy most of the north-west region. Thousands of people have been killed in the war, with both sides being accused of committing war crimes including the killing of civilians.

The UAE joined the Saudi-led coalition in 2015 and has provided major assistance to anti-rebel militia, as have several other Arab states. But while the Houthis have retaliated with several attacks on strategic locations in Saudi Arabia throughout the war, attacks against the UAE have been very rare, with the previous Houthi-claimed strike coming in 2018. In 2019, the UAE announced that it was slowly withdrawing troops from Yemen as part of a UN-led peace process.

But in recent weeks, UAE-backed groups have launched an aggressive offensive in the oil-rich province of Shabwah. At the same time, the Houthis claimed to have seized a UAE ship off the Yemeni coast that was carrying “weapons for extremists”, an allegation denied by Abu Dhabi.

A spokesperson for the Houthis said that the attack was a “clear warning message…. by hitting places that are not of strategic importance.” In response to the attack, the Saudi coalition announced that it had launched air strikes targeting Sana’a, according to the Saudi Press Agency on Twitter.

Deepak PN is a Media Practice student at University of Hyderabad who's trying to figure out the world of journalism and his place in it. He loves writing about sports, especially his beloved Man United, but is willing to be a utility player for the Pigeon.

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The UAE’s Houthi problem

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