In 2004, Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi, the sheikh of Yemen's Zaidi authority and leader of the Ansar Allah movement, a group founded in the 1990s to protect the Zaidi Shiite minority, and to revive the lost imamate of the Hashemites who ruled Yemen for more than a thousand years before the establishment of the republic, was assassinated. Yemen in 1962. Although the "political Zaidis" retained the reins of governance in Yemen after one of the sons of the sect came to power, represented by the slain President "Ali Abdullah Saleh", the Houthis have always considered themselves threatened under the shadow of the former sheep shepherd who mastered evasion and made an alliance with Saudi Arabia - The big Sunni neighbor - against them, and after the killing of one of the movement's most important and influential men, the whole group is in the wind.

Among the circle of leaders around Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, his younger brother, Abd al-Malik al-Houthi, was not seen as a potential candidate who could assume the leadership of the movement in the presence of others more powerful and influential. Moreover, Abd al-Malik did not receive any formal education, unlike the leaders of the first class, he was none other than his brother's guard despite his emaciated physical build, so that he was not known to many outside his narrow group who received the news of his assumption of the leadership of the group with doubts about the fate of the movement after it was lost its spiritual leader. Now a quiet prince has reached the top of the movement, with no confidence in his capacity to carry out the duties of the position assigned to him by his brother, apart from the senior leaders, including his uncles and brothers.

Perhaps no one thought at the time, even in his secret circle, that the younger Houthi (he was only 25 years old) would later succeed, with very cunning pragmatism, to extract from the Yemeni government a recognition of the illegality of the wars that were waged against them. He will lead a strange partnership of its kind in alliance with his brother's killers in order to change the course of the Yemeni revolution in favor of his group, and it is currently believed - by the admission of his opponents - that he is the only one who holds the keys to ending the war in Yemen after it has passed its seventh year, without achieving any of its goals.

As soon as Abdul-Malik al-Houthi officially assumed his new position in 2006, he completed what his brother was unable to do, and began bypassing the military siege imposed on his men by the Yemeni army, and also succeeded in bypassing the eyes of the whistleblowers who followed his trail wherever he went and traveled, after he fortified for an unknown period in the mountains Saada Governorate in northern Yemen, where he was born about 42 years ago to a poor religious family that taught jurisprudence, and became the reference for the Zaydi sect for decades.

The child grew up with his parents, moving in the middle of remote rural areas where social justice and the authority of the central government were absent, and the voice of material need was raised, and where certain classes and parties monopolized political positions.

In circumstances that marked the lives of many around him, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi did not receive any formal education. His cultural background was built on the lessons of the mosque and the stories of the lost history of the Hashemites, in addition to the teachings of the Zaydi sect that adopts the approach of revolting against the unjust ruler, positions that paint a more comprehensive picture of the personality of the Houthi leader who His rise changed the face of Yemen.

The intellectual and political convictions of the Houthi leader were formed far from Saada, and in a geographical location different from the primitive life he lived as a child, as Abdul Malik was fascinated by the lights of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, when a young man settled there to live with his older brother, “Hussein Badr Al-Din,” the owner of the rural body accompanied by a conservative religious name. .

The older brother added a more glamorous dimension to his brother, especially as he completed his university education and obtained a master's degree in Sharia sciences. He also created a purely political path for himself when he became a member of the Yemeni parliament.

These represented exceptional data by which the elder brother was able to establish a political organization in 1933 by which he bypassed the idea of ​​religious vocation, and moved it to the more institutionalized movement model as the only way to revive the Hashemite Imamate.

As for the young man made on his brother's eye, he had acquired those thoughts one potion while serving as his older brother's bodyguard.

Ali Abdullah Saleh (right) and Abd al-Malik al-Houthi

With the killing of Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, and his refusal to hand over his body, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi took office while he was in a state of war with the Yemeni government, which erupted after accusations that the movement had established an armed entity similar to the Lebanese Hezbollah. While the accusation was considered a sufficient reason for the Yemeni president to get rid of Al-Houthi, the Yemeni army faced resistance and military superiority that was not taken into account that put Ali Abdullah Saleh in an embarrassing position. While the other account revealed by field commanders who participated in the war, says that "Saleh" arranged to show his enemies in the form of a fierce resistance, and then force the Gulf states to pay attention to him and support him financially. This was not easy given the tense history between Yemen and the Gulf. A fierce Gulf campaign was launched against Yemen because of Ali Saleh's support for the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the occupation of Kuwait, and his refusal to form an Arab deterrent force, and then his rejection in 2003 of an Arab resolution calling for Saddam's exclusion from the political scene in exchange for Washington did not invade Iraq.

However, Ali Abdullah Saleh's plan to win over the Gulf succeeded in the end, and he obtained unlimited US Gulf support. On the other hand, the young Houthi leader’s stubbornness grew militarily, and he became more revered among his supporters. Since its founding until 2011, the movement fought six wars against the government, without the Yemeni president being able to subdue its leader by force of arms or political methods. Despite the influx of Gulf money, the war exhausted the Yemeni economy, costing it about five million dollars a day, which later contributed to the overthrow of Ali Saleh's rule after the outbreak of the revolution in February of the same year. While the situation flared up in the areas of the central government, the Houthis transformed themselves within their areas of influence from a militia into a local state that governs the greater part of northern Yemen, without the Yemeni government being able to extend its control there.

When the Yemeni revolution erupted in February 2011, the Ansar Allah movement participated in the demonstrations against its historical enemy, Ali Abdullah Saleh, in the hope that the revolution would produce a new political situation that would pave the way for the separation of the north from the south, allowing the young leader to restore the old Hashemite rule in North Yemen. . A year after the revolution, interim President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi came to power in elections that did not seek more than one candidate. His rise at the time represented a symbolic victory for southern Yemen, which had just abandoned its separatist dreams by having one of his sons come to power for the first time since Yemeni unity in 1990.

The rise of the Sunni southerner to the forefront of the central authority has resulted in sectarian fears among the northern Zaydi minority of a Sunni advance towards their strongholds, and these fears have been deepened by the rise of political elites hostile to the Houthi camp, sectarianly and politically, represented by the Yemeni Congregation for Reform Party, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The situation that resulted in the Houthis' conviction that the presence of Sana'a outside their control, under the new rule, poses a threat to their political future in Yemen. Therefore, Abd al-Malik al-Houthi declared his first battle by expelling the Sunnis from their political fortress. He fought armed battles in the Saada governorate that ended in forcing his opponents to leave the governorate towards the capital.

The events in Saada intersected with the moves of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to thwart the nascent government, and while the forces of "Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar", the military wing of the Islah party, were the common enemy that united Abdul-Malik al-Houthi with his brother's killer, the most prominent rapprochement occurred that changed the course of the Yemeni revolution And it was represented in Saleh providing military support to the Houthis through the Republican Guard and the Special Forces that owe him loyalty, in order to break the thorn in the Islah movement, control the capital, Sanaa, and overthrow Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour in late December 2014. The duo then arrived The last stop in the alliance between them was through the formation of a presidential council, and the Houthis intended to monopolize the new authority in Sanaa without giving their partner Ali Abdullah Saleh any internal influence that would enable him to turn against them, a scenario that the Houthi leader has long pursued.

Faced with Saleh's betrayal of the Gulf initiative that gave him a safe exit from power by allying himself with the Houthis, Saudi Arabia announced its anger by announcing the military operation "Decisive Storm" in March 2015, which aimed to restore Yemeni legitimacy to President Hadi and expel the Houthis from Sanaa. On the other hand, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi did not trust his brother's killer and ally of necessity, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The man has repeatedly shown that he has no problem in breaking up alliances and replacing them with others as long as the pragmatic policy serves his interests represented in staying within the Yemeni scene. This was confirmed by explicit indications represented in the official Saudi-Emirati move to push Saleh to break up his partnership with the Houthis and end the Yemen war, in return for his return to political life. Saudi Arabia has already saved the life of the former Yemeni president twice, in addition to talking about secret deals that give his sons the rule of Yemen in exchange for ending his partnership with Al-Houthi.

At that moment, Abd al-Malik al-Houthi had well prepared his plan to avenge his brother's murderer, and avenge Saleh's betrayal. After the ousted Yemeni president announced that he would push the Houthis to stop firing missiles at Saudi Arabia, in reference to the end of the coalition that changed the course of the Yemeni revolution, and the transition to a new political stage, fighting erupted between the two teams inside Sanaa, but the victory was not an ally of Saleh in a battle that seemed to be prepared by the Houthis. her well. The matter began with the bombing of Saleh's house in the center of Sanaa, and soon his convoy was targeted and executed by firing squad, to begin a new era in the Yemeni cause, in which Abdul-Malik al-Houthi is completely in control.

Before their young leader's takeover of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, the Houthis did not have enough experience to enable them to engage in political action if they were able to impose their guardianship over their areas of influence in the north of Yemen. All they did was only military confrontations on the ground. However, the coup launched by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in late 2014 to seize the capital, which dazzled him in his youth, along with 11 other governorates out of 22, required the movement to defend its gains at all costs. After seven years of war with high costs and consequences, it seems that the political and military reality in Yemen has already tipped in favor of the Houthis, because they are already controlling the equation of war and peace until this moment.

With the entry of Saudi Arabia into Yemen in March 2015, Al-Houthi suffered a strong blow, coinciding with the advance of the Arab coalition and its control over large areas without significant losses. But al-Houthi, despite his defeats in the first round, bet and his supporters that Saudi Arabia can start the war, but it cannot end it. As the years progressed, the Houthis proved themselves as a military force that had its weight on the ground, while the Yemeni government was put in a quandary, and it has been carrying out its tasks until the moment from Riyadh.

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi imposed on his opponents from the beginning the rules of profit and loss in Yemen, especially since the negotiating path to end the war was linked to progress on the ground or not, as are the rules of military conflicts. It ended with a UN intervention that resulted in the signing of a political agreement, the “Stockholm” agreement in 2018, which considered the Houthis an officially recognized force, and it is the biggest political defeat for the enemies of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, whose name Washington has so far refused to put on the lists of terrorism, in a clear indication. However, he alone holds the keys to stopping and igniting the war in Yemen.

In addition to politics, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi led his supporters to develop their local military arsenal, and not be satisfied with relying on Tehran, a vision that changed the balance of power and the course of battles, and prompted Saudi Arabia - compelled - to negotiate directly with the Houthis, considering them - for the first time - part of the solution after years. of trying to exclude them. As for the latest transformation, it came after more complex political factors. The Transitional Council, the official partner of the government in what is known as the Riyadh Agreement, controls large areas of the south, and is officially seeking secession, a goal that is consistent with the goals of the uncrowned emir of Sanaa since the beginning of the war. Although no one can predict what will happen in Yemen in the coming months and years, everyone knows that al-Houthi has imposed his presence on the Yemeni arena, and even if his group does not rule Yemen directly, he will exercise his veto over Yemeni politics for many years to come.