Yemen’s Houthis draw the attention of Iraqis
The Houthis in Yemen recently made the Iraqi headlines, as some consider that there are measures to direct the media toward the support of Shiite parties outside Iraq after internal failures.
In a cafe in Baghdad, Mohannad and Ali spoke about the control of the Houthis, the group of Abdul Malek al-Houthi, over the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in mid-September, after advancing toward it from the north of Yemen.
The two young men who were smoking shisha were not the only ones preoccupied with this matter, as all Shiite satellite channels and social networking sites in Iraq turned their attention to it.
The reason behind this sympathy with Houthis is that the group belongs to the Zaydi sect, which is a branch of Shiism. Additionally, Yemen is close to Saudi Arabia, which many Iraqi members of parliament accuse of exporting terrorism to Mesopotamia.
According to Mohannad, who is majoring in technological sciences, “Houthis have been wronged and thus they revolted against the authority.” However, he does not know much about the group, except that they are Shiite. In an interview with Al-Monitor, he said he wished “their revolution would be exported to Shiites in Saudi Arabia.”
