Houthis and the spreading conflict in the Middle East

The current conflict in the Middle East is drawing closer to Pakistan. As discussed later in this article, the crisis in Yemen, which was once part of British India, may bring hundreds of thousands of desperate people into Pakistan, escaping the war in their homeland. For Islamabad, the situation is further complicated by the involvement of two of its close allies - Saudi Arabi and Iran - operating on the opposite sides of the growing conflict. There is further complication by the involvement of non-state actors in the conflict. That is the case in particular as the Houthis, a tribal group based in Yemen, has become a target for the US. Yemen was once a part of the Bombay presidency in British India. Complicating the situation for Pakistan is its close relations with Saudi Arabia which is helping the formal government in Yemen.

The expanding war in the Middle East began on February 28, 2026 when Isreal joined the US in the intensive bombing of Iran. The stated aim was to change the regime dominated by Islamic clerics who had taken control of Iran in 1979 when Emperor Raza Shah Pehalvi fled from Tehran and Ayatollah Ali Khomeni returned from self-imposed exile and took control of the country. He brought into being a regime that followed what he and his followers claimed was the Islamic way of governance.

Since the Emperor had been supported by the US, the Islamic regime in Tehran adopted an anti-American approach to foreign affairs. The most significance manifestation of this approach was the raid on the American embassy in Tehran and the capture of more than 400 people who worked there. They remained in the custody of the Islamic regime for several years.

With this as the historical background, the American government led by President Donald Trump decided to take military action. It was encouraged to take this path by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who believed that Iran's nuclear programme posed an existential threat for his country. The February 28 bombing did not produce the intended results. The bombing of a presidential compound in Tehran killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and a number of his senior colleagues They were succeeded by a group even more conservative than those who were killed in the American-Israeli attack.

Tehran reacted to the attack by having the groups it had created and trained to follow it. Among those Tehran supported were the Houthis, an Islamic group that had captured a part of their homeland, in Yemen. The group came into being as a religious movement in the early 1990s. It focused on Zaydism, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Its leaders mounted an armed rebellion against Yemen's government, saying they were battling corruption and poor governance.

In 2014, the Houthis took over Sanaa, Yemen's capital, starting a civils war. The government in Yemen asked Saudi Arabia and the UAE for help, which led to a civil war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands people. The Houthis survived, cementing their rule over northern Yemen. After a truce in 2022, the Houthis used ensuing peace to become stronger and self-reliant, expanding their access to sophisticated miliary hardware.

While the Houthis became self-reliant, the government weakened. "The Yemeni government is basically a fiction at this point ," said Gregory Johnson, a fellow at the Arab Gulf States institute in Washington. "They spend more time fighting one another than they do the Houthis."

When Washington and Tel Aviv attacked Iran, the Houthis appeared willing at first not to get involved. They hoped to gain greater access to oil revenue. However, the US-Iran talks got stalled. With Saudi Arabia on the American side in the conflict with Iran, the official government in Yemen fought the Houthis. The Houthis survived and with the ongoing conflict, the group developed its own strategy. On September 3, they sent 80,000 of its fighters into battle advised by Iranian experts. One of the first places where the Houthis broke through the government's forces was in the mountains called Kadaha and from there they moved west to the coast. Their aim was to control access to the Red Sea which connected with the Suez Canal and was a prominent shipping route for the world.

On September 9, six days after the Houthis launched their Red Sea operation, the government forces collapsed. They withdrew all the way to Aden in the east, handing the entire Red Sea cost, including an island inside the critically important Bab al-Mandab Strait, to the Houthis. On October 4, the Yemeni government's leader declared a full-blown war agist the Houthi militia. The government's goal, he said, was to reclaim all the territory lost to the Houthis over the past 12 years. For Yemeni civilians, already facing extreme poverty and hunger, the war's return worsened the situation. More than 180,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks, often piling into pickup trucks and motorcycles as they rush to escape the fighting. They are moving to the coast which is separated by a narrow body of sea water from Pakistan. Could Pakistan be facing another refugee crisis as the escapees get into small rickety boats and head towards Pakistan's Balochistan coast. As we know from the case of southern parts of Europe, the rush towards safer ground by people who are determined to escape from their troubled homelands, narrow strips of water does not offer much resistance.

Pakistan has a long history of accommodating troubled foreigners. It started its existence as an independent state in August 1947 by receiving eight million Muslims who had left their homeland in what had become Hindu-dominated India. While exact numbers are not known, probably as many 4 million Afghan citizens have come into Pakistan. We should be ready to accommodate the displaced Yemenis. As the situation faced by 200 million Muslims worsens under Narendra Modi's programme to make what he now calls Bharat a truly Hindu entity, tens of thousands may head towards Pakistan.