Fall of Amran sends shock waves across Yemen

SANAA, Yemen — Amran is the city of the Hashid tribe, the tribe of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president of North Yemen from 1978 and the first premier after the reunification in 1990. From this time on, all military leaders have hailed from this tribe, including Gen. Ali Mohsen, who defected from the regime in 2011 during the popular revolution. The Hashid tribe remains the strongest among the Yemeni clans, headed by prominent politician Sheikh Abdullah Bin Hussein al-Ahmar until his death in 2009. Under the Saudi Wahhabist banner, the tribe managed to rule Yemen for more than three decades until it divided during the revolution in 2011.

The Houthis are a Zaydi-Shiite group that emerged as a result of the consecutive rounds of fighting they waged against by the state from 2004 onward. The Houthis grew and expanded and are now governing the city of Saada, which is inhabited by more than a third of the country’s population and borders Saudi Arabia in the far north. The city is seen as the stronghold of the Zaydis, who present more than a third of the Yemeni population.

In 2011, the Houthis participated in the revolution against Saleh and formed a wide political alliance in Sanaa that was known under the name of Ansar Allah.

The situation following the 2011 revolutions left an army and a capital divided; a participatory government and a decline in the state’s presence in most of the cities. This prompted the Houthis, as an armed sectarian militia, to expand militarily in their sectarian regions in an attempt to get rid of Wahhabis in these regions during the reign of Saleh. They also took advantage of the absence of the state, as the group refused to turn into a political movement or party, despite the Houthis’ participation in the national dialogue. The military aspect continues to be the group’s strongest characteristic as it was not recognized until it became a powerful military group that controlled some areas.