‘ONEllah is Greater, Death for America, Death for Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory for Islam. “
So is the slogan of Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Founded in the 1990s by Shiite Muslims outraged by the United States and Saudi Arabia’s interference in the country, the Houthis – officially Ansar Allah, or “Supporters of God” – have been at war with the Yemeni government supported by the Saudis since 2014. They have maintained the capital of Sana’a since 2015, and today the territory they control is home to 80 percent of the country’s population.
The Houthis claim to be fighting for a republic that will safeguard the rights and interests of the Yemeni people; a spokesman once stated that “Ansar Allah supports the establishment of a civil status in Yemen. We want to build a modern and dynamic democracy. “On the slogan, another spokesman explained:” Actually, we don’t want anyone to die. The slogan is simply against interference from those [American and Israeli] governments. “
But their actions tell a very different story. The group is known for firing rockets indiscriminately at populated neighborhoods in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, which supported the Yemeni government and is responsible for a myriad of abuses throughout the conflict. Arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and torture are important parts of the Houthi manual, and journalists, human rights activists and religious minorities have been the most common victims. Harassment and persecution by the Houthis and their allies led to the near extinction of the small Yemeni Jewish community; some of its members fled while others were forced to leave. Yemeni Bahá’ís were arrested and convicted on charges of apostasy. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthi movement, called them “satanic” and, like the Jews, were expelled from the country. And while both sides of the Yemeni civil war have recruited children, Human Rights Watch notes that about two-thirds of child soldiers in the conflict have fought for the Houthis, some of them as young as 11 years old.
It is true that the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis is guilty of its own serious human rights abuses. No party is innocent in this conflict, which has had devastating results: according to the United Nations, 24 million people need humanitarian aid in the war-torn country, half of whom are children, and 233,000 more have died since the war started in earnest in 2014. Furthermore, there are legitimate debates about whether the United States should be involved and, if so, to what extent. Even some Republicans broke with the Trump administration because of their support for the Saudis, which came in the form of arms sales and intelligence-sharing efforts.
However, the Houthis’ record clearly justifies Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision to designate them as a foreign terrorist organization last month, and none of the legitimate doubts about the US involvement in the Yemen civil war justify the Biden government’s decision. terminate the designation.
In a speech at the State Department last Thursday, Biden signaled a less practical approach to the conflict. “We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including sales of relevant weapons,” he announced. An anonymous government official confirmed that this would also mean “ending our intelligence-sharing agreement with Saudi Arabia regarding the war in Yemen”.
Given the dynamics of the civil war in Yemen, the new president’s stance is not entirely unjustified. US support for the Saudi-led coalition poses a risk to his image as a moral leader and, much more important, to the fact that he deserves that image. But it is also undeniable that one side of the war will eventually prevail and that the United States and its allies in the region have a vested interest in ensuring that the Houthis are defeated. Giving Iran what Mike Doran, a senior member of the Hudson Institute calls “a perch in the Red Sea” and access to the Suez Canal, is a recipe for regional instability. In addition, the Yemeni people themselves will be better off if the Saudi coalition wins, as a Houthi victory would likely cause long-term conflict and inflict more suffering on the population.
Leaving aside the issue of US involvement, however, Biden’s decision to withdraw the designation of foreign terrorist that Pompeo placed in the Houthis is flawed. Because of their attacks on civilian targets in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the Houthis obviously qualify as a terrorist group, and it is worth calling them for what they are.
Within the establishment of foreign policy represented en masse in institutions such as the New York Times and the UN, the Trump administration’s decision to do just that was immediately considered a horrible mistake, bound to have horrible humanitarian consequences. THE Times announced that the designation would “almost certainly aggravate the devastation” of Yemen’s continuing famine, while insisting that “it is unclear how [it] will inhibit the Houthi rebels. “
The first charge, based on the claim that the designation “would cool humanitarian efforts to donate food and medicine to areas controlled by Houthi in northern and western Yemen,” was intriguing, as the Trump administration announced humanitarian solutions in its statement of designation:
The US Department of the Treasury is prepared to provide licenses in accordance with its authorities and corresponding guidelines related to the official activities of the United States government in Yemen, including assistance programming that remains the largest of any donor and the official activities of certain international organizations such as the United Nations.
It should come as no surprise that the United States, the largest provider of humanitarian aid to Yemen in 2020, would take steps to ensure that the designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist group does not prevent the provision of such aid. But for those looking to take pressure off the Houthis as part of an effort to get the US to Iran and rejoin the Joint Global Action Plan (JCPOA), the humanitarian argument was a convenient excuse.
As for the idea that it is not clear how the designation would inhibit the Houthis, why should not the group is “cut off from financial support and other material resources that are channeled through banks or other American institutions”, such as the Times put it on? Even though the group’s main source of support, Iran, operates outside the US financial system, officially closing its access to the system does not hurt. And as the State Department’s page on foreign terrorist organizations makes clear, the designation “supports our efforts to curb terrorist financing and encourage other nations to do the same”, raising global awareness of the problem and sending a clear message to our friends and similar opponents on the US position.
Refraining from calling the Houthis what they are – Iranian-backed terrorists – serves no purpose, except to promote the Biden government’s reckless agenda for the Middle East. Balancing the principle with realpolitik in foreign policy is hard work. In the case of the Yemeni civil war, it is doubly true. But President Biden’s withdrawal from the Trump administration’s designation is indefensible both strategically and morally.