Thread by @calvinfroedge

Why do I think the Houthis are such a force to be reckoned with? Why do I think there is actually a chance they could defeat a US led coalition?

Time for a thread 🧵.

First, who are the Houthis? Where are they from?

The Houthis come from the Yemeni province of Sa'dah, on the edge of the Arabian desert.

They're a Shiite Muslim group whose roots go back to ancient times, when they produced frankincense and myrrh, two important ancient spices.

The ancestors of the Houthis traditionally ruled all of Yemen.

Eventually, the Yemeni were conquered by the Ottoman turks, and would later become a British colony administered as part of British India until it became a colony in its own right.

After the fall of the British Empire, North Yemen allied itself with Saudi Arabia and Taiwan, while the South allied with China and Russia.

From 1972, Yemen fought a Brutal civil war in which North Yemen was eventually victorious.

In 1988, Yemen began reunification.

Ali Abdullah Saleh transitioned from president of North Yemen to the President of all of Yemen in 1990.

Around this same time, Zaidi-Shia group Ansar Allah - or the Houthis - began gaining power.

They supported Saleh for the time, helping him crush a 1994 Southern rebellion.

Seeing the threat that the powerful Houthi warriors posed, in 2000, Saleh began trying to disarm them.

In 2004, it turns into a limited civil war, in which hundreds of Houthis are killed or arrested.

Sporadic fighting would continue until 2009 when Saleh sought to crush them.

Besieged by both Saudi forces and the Yemeni government, which was supported by the United States, the Houthi rebels continue to fight and survive.

In 2011, they were aided by the eruption of the Arab Spring, a populist uprising that would change the course of the Arab world.

Saleh and his government would continue to cling to power in Yemen until 2014. Saleh has by now turned power over to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

A 2014 rise in fuel prices, with tensions already high following the crescendo of Arab Spring tensions, helped the Houthis.

The Houthis seized power in 2014 following a coup, and after taking the capital of Sana'a, moved southward to begin an offensive against government forces.

Hadi fled to Aden in in the South, where he would re-declare himself the legitimate ruler of Yemen, resisting the Houthis.

In 2015, A Saudi-led coalition of Arab states—including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan, and Kuwait - with the material support of the US - joins the Yemeni government in fighting the Houthis.

The coalition attacked by land, air, and sea.

Despite an all out "scorched earth" war against the Houthis by virtually the entire Arab world and increased US arms sales to the Saudis, the Houthis remained undefeated and continued to gain ground against the Yemeni government.

The Houthis would claim numerous victories over the coming years, not only against the Yemeni ground forces, but against coalition ground forces, coalition air forces, and even coalition naval forces.

No matter how much they got hit with, the Houthis kept winning.

In 2016 the Houthis even managed to completely destroy a coalition warship, the Emirati HSV-SWIFT 2.

The ship was targeted by a Houthi anti ship missile.

By 2019, the coalition has fallen apart. The Houthis have assassinated many key figures in the Yemeni government. They landed a huge blow against the Saudis in the 2019 Abaqiq attack. UAE forces have completely withdrawn from Yemen.

The coalition decides to let the Houthis win.

On March 30, 2022, Saudi Arabia announces a cessation of all military operations in Yemen.

The Houthis have won. Against all odds, against the whole Arab world, against the United States, from a small city in Northern Yemen, the Houthis have conquered the country.

Fast forward to today, are the Houthis weaker than they were a decade ago? Far from it.

The Houthis now enjoy mass popular support and have inherited vast Yemeni weapons arsenal as well as supplies from Iran.

They enjoy a strong strategic position at a vital choke point.

My reasoning for thinking the Houthis are a force to be reckoned with is simple - they have already proven it, over and over again, while vastly outnumbered against foes supplied and supported by the most powerful empire the earth has ever seen.

The Houthis are the Fremen.

The Houthis have proven that they cannot be starved. Years of blockade were ineffective.

They have proven that they cannot be defeated with technology - they have downed countless modern European and US built aircraft.

This enemy will fight to the last man.

Were the US to throw its full might into defeating the Houthis there is no doubt that we could eventually prevail.

But could we, really? Or would it be another Vietnam? High material and personnel losses for a place that 99% of Americans can't locate on a map. Deeply unpopular.