The Kingdom of the Houthis (part 2) the houthis secret

(PART 2)............The houthis wars .

*Asharq Al-Awsat news paper 

Brig. Gen. Hassan Libuza, commander of the military in Sa’ada, told Asharq Al-Awsat that “the army is trying to coexist with the status quo in the Sa’ada province . . . At times, the Yemenis fight and other times there is reconciliation,” he said, referring to the intermittent fighting between the army and the Houthis over past years.

The military commanders with whom Asharq Al-Awsat met give the impression that they are overmatched, despite their superiority in both in numbers and technology, due to the Houthis’ monopoly over the Sa’ada province’s levers of power.

 

This has been the case since the Houthis took to the streets demanding the overthrow of the Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh in early 2011. The crucial factor in this equation is that the armed group known as ‘Victorious’ dominates all aspects of life in Sa’ada. Some have said that the state does not exist in Sa’ada as it does in other Yemeni provinces in the north, claiming that power in Sa’ada belongs to the Houthis alone.

The governor of Sa’ada, Sheikh Fares Manaa, who also happens to be an internationally recognized arms dealer, was unable to meet with Asharq Al-Awsat because he was traveling outside of the province. However, it was telling that when the UN envoy met the Houthi leader at an underground location at Sa’ada’s Executive Office, all security measures were overseen exclusively by members of the Houthi movement.

In the city of Sa’ada, which has been called ‘the city of peace,’ the Houthi presence is ubiquitous: posters depict the movement’s founder, Hussein Badreddin Al-Houthi and banners lambaste US and Israeli policy while others bear Iranian slogans, something previously unseen in Yemeni history. Furthermore, the Yemeni authorities accuse Tehran of supplying the Houthi movement with arms.

The UN Security Council has commissioned investigations and formed committees to look into these allegations. It is also noteworthy that the presence of armored vehicles in Sa’ada surpasses even that found in Sana’a and, what is more, these armored cars are new models and are equipped with modern weaponry.

Brigadier General Libuza said that security in Sa’ada is divided into two parts: when the Houthi group hosts events or gatherings, they provide the security, and when there are state gatherings, official state security is on duty. However, one of the leaders of the Salafist parties in Yemen asserted that the government presence in Sa’ada province is a formality and nothing more.