The Houthi Rebel Movement: Analysis on the Role of Wartime Social Order, Legitimacy and Greed in the Houthi Rebel Resilience in Yemen between 2017 and 2023.

Abstract

Understanding Rebel’s resilience and the factors that influence it can assist in clarifying the broader examination of civil war, its expected duration, and possible solutions to stopping the violence. It seeks to explore what makes some conflicts more intractable than others. Research on the rebel resilience of Houthi rebels in Yemen is still limited and needs further exploration. This research will investigate the factors that contribute to the Houthis rebel resilience of the Houthis using the concepts of wartime social order, legitimacy, and greed as the analytical frame to find how each factor contributes to the Houthis rebel resilience. Data was collected by conducting media analysis and OSINT for academic research analyzed through rebel governance, discourse, and rational choice theories. The analysis revealed that three components influence Houthi resilience. First, the Supreme Political Council and its different supervisory systems of security, finance, social, intellectual, and educational allowed the Houthis to apply a divide-and-rule strategy that sidelined other influential social actors in the Yemeni society and created a space where the rebels stayed dominant. The second revealed how the Houthis created several revenue-generating methods, such as taxation, to exploit citizens to fund their movement and benefit individually from these gains. The third and last finding explained how the Houthis used media discourse to legitimize their movement, mobilize popular support, and create a collective grievance by leveraging international events like the Israel-Gaza conflict, which most Yemeni people empathize with. These findings highlight how the Houthis effectively built and used a governance structure, created financial strategies, and formulated collective grievances through discourse to enhance their control, sustain their movement, and secure their position in the conflict, all of which factor into their resilience.