Houthi Attack on United Arab Emirates

Q What is the context  ?

A Recently a suspected drone attack in Abu Dhabi, the capital of UAE, caused multiple explosions in which three Indians were reportedly killed.

Q Who is behind the attack?

A 

• The Shia Houthi rebels of Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attack.

Q Who are the Houthis?

A 

• The roots of the Houthi movement can be traced to “Believing Youth” (Muntada al-Shahabal-Mu’min).
• It is a Zaydi revivalist group founded by Hussein al-Houthi and his father, Badr al-Din al-Houthi, in the early 1990s.
• Badr al-Din was an influential Zaydi cleric in northern Yemen.
• This group is inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the 1980s.
• Badr al-Din and his sons started building vast social and religious networks among the Zaydis of Yemen, who make up roughly one-third of the Sunni-majority country’s population.

Q What led to the Houthis’ rise?

A 

• When protests broke out in Yemen in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring protests that felled Tunisian and Egyptian dictators.
• The Houthis, now confident from their military victories and the support they enjoyed in Sadah, backed the agitation.

Q Why did Saudi Arabia attack Yemen?

A 

• The rapid rise of the Houthis in Yemen set off alarm bells in Riyadh which saw them as Iranian proxies.
• Saudi Arabia, under Mohammed Bin Salman, started a military campaign in March 2015, hoping for a quick victory against the Houthis.
• But the Houthis had dug in, refusing to leave despite Saudi Arabia’s aerial blitzkrieg.
• With no effective allies on the ground and no way-out plan, the Saudi-led campaign went on with no tangible result.
• In the past six years, the Houthis have launched multiple attacks on Saudi cities from northern Yemen in retaliation for Saudi air strikes.

Q Is it  a one-way proxy war ?

A 

• There are serious allegations against both the Saudis and the Houthis in the war.
• While the Saudi bombings caused a large number of civilian deaths, the Houthis were accused, by rights groups and Governments, of preventing aid, deploying forces in densely populated areas.
• Houthis have been using excessive force against civilians and peaceful protesters.

Q Why did the Houthis target the UAE?

A 

• This is not the first time the Houthis attacked the UAE. In 2018, when the UAE-backed forces were making advances in Yemen, the Houthis claimed attacks against the Emirates.
• They stayed focussed entirely on Saudi Arabia and Saudi-backed forces inside Yemen.