Anyone hero-worshipping the Houthis is a fool

This is Tim Marshall’s weekly column on geopolitics for Reaction. Subscribe to Reaction here.

Yemen’s Houthis have made their useful idiots in the West proud. In January the idiots, in London and other cities, signed up to a new chant during their anti-Israel marches. In support of the Houthis attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea, they shouted, “Yemen, Yemen make us proud – turn another ship around!”. On Wednesday, two Filipino and one Vietnamese crew members died when a Houthi missile struck their ship in the Gulf of Aden.

The Barbados-flagged, Liberian-owned, cargo ship, True Confidence, was hit by an anti-ship ballistic missile causing significant damage to the bridge and accommodation area. As well as the three fatalities, four men were injured, three critically. The crew abandoned ship.

The Iranian-backed Houthis say they are attacking merchant vessels in support of Palestinians and have only hit ships connected to Israel, the US or UK which is demonstrably untrue. The Americans and British are in the frame due to their air strikes to try and end the attacks – a policy which is not working. An increasing number of companies will now join others and reroute vessels an extra 3,500 nautical miles around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Insurance costs will continue to rise as may the prices of consumer goods.

Wednesday’s attack followed the sinking last weekend of the cargo ship Rubymar two weeks after it was hit and abandoned. The two incidents brought the total of Red Sea attacks in recent months to more than 60.

When people shout “Yemen, Yemen!” they actually mean the Houthis, although this is not the government of Yemen. They may also not know that the Houthis have their own official shout, or “sarkha”. It goes like this:

“God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews. Victory to Islam”.

Catchy, eh? But perhaps not enough to persuade those on the Saturday marches that they should choose their friends more carefully. If they’re against Israel and the Americans, they are anti-imperialist, and so perhaps they could put that stuff about the Jews to one side. After all, MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, and Richard Burgon are at the marches and others such as Aspana Begum and Zarah Sultana have made speeches at them.

But what about the child soldiers the Houthis use? Putting one 13-year-old on the front line wouldn’t be too clever, putting 1,851 there is callously stupid. No wonder every year the UN Secretary General includes the Houthis in the annual list of groups responsible for violations against children in armed conflict.

Then there’s the thousands of people abducted from their homes and tortured in secret prisons. Step forward Houthi Criminal Investigation Dept chief Sultan Saleh Aida Aida Zabin of UN Resolution 2564 fame: “In these sites, women, including at least one minor, were forcibly disappeared, repeatedly interrogated, raped, tortured, denied timely medical treatment and subjected to forced labour. Zabin himself directly inflicted torture in some cases.”

There’s so much more. The reintroduction of slavery, the stoning and crucifixion of men found ‘guilty’ of homosexual behaviour, restriction of women’s movement, prevention of humanitarian aid reaching civilians, and the persecution of the Baha’i religious minority.

No wonder almost all the country’s Jews escaped. They were persecuted for centuries until, beginning a year after a pogrom in 1948, most of the 50,000 were flown to Israel. Now only a handful remain – some reports say just one Jew is left.

That does not prevent the Houthi leadership from railing against them as apes and pigs, scheming to dominate humanity. Their worldview is taken from the teachings of a religious revivalist leader called Hussein al-Houthi whose younger brother Abdulmalik now commands the movement. The teachings are compiled in an online document called the Malazim or “instalments” and run to more than 2,000 pages.

The Houthis are Zaydi Muslims, a branch of Shia Islam and the Malazim bears resemblance to some of the beliefs promulgated by the Ayatollahs who rule Iran. It says societies require a supreme leader who acts as a guide for how to live. Some adherents seem to hold it in as high regard as the Koran which non-Zaydis would regard as idolatrous.

Despite this, despite the murder, rape, and torture, and despite presiding over an incompetent bankrupt government, the Houthis, and Abdulmalik, are now held in high regard across many parts of the Middle East for firing missiles at cargo ships. Making the “Arab Street” proud in turning around ships is one thing, but support from Westerners marching through London, Paris, and New York?  They’d have to be idiots.

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