The Houthi Art of War: Why They Keep Winning In Yemen
Contents
Link to Article
Introduction
- From 2004 to 2010, the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh fought and lost six wars against the Houthis
- The Houthis then launched an offensive in 2014 that resulted in the takeover the Yemeni capital, Sana'a
- This prompted an intervention from Saudi Arabia and the UAE in March 2015
- The Saudis and the Emiratis bet on a quick victory over the Houthis
- After 5 years, however, victory for the Saudi/Emirati alliance remains nowhere in sight
- Houthis have withstood 5 years of aerial bombardment, blockades and attacks on multiple fronts
- Have been outgunned and outspent, but still remain capable of launching multi-front offensives
- Houthis apply the "algebra of insurgency" as outlined by T.E. Lawrence
- Force mobility
- Emphasis on operational security
- Respect for the population
- Patience
- Combined with imported drone and missile technology from Iran, this makes the Houthis a remarkably dangerous force
Move Or Die
- Mobility has been and remains a key factor in the Houthi's success
- Houthis have adapted to a battlefield with persistent aerial surveillance, in the form of Chinese and American-made drones
- Highly mobile small combat units
- Roughly the size of a platoon
- Use small trucks/technicals for transport
- Easy to disguise as civilian traffic
- Can traverse the worst of Yemen's patchy road system
- Smaller groups (roughly equivalent to a fire team) carry out harassing attacks and collect intelligence
- Can operate for weeks with minimal resupply
- Independent minded -- not dependent on commanders providing taskings and orders
- Aware of electronic surveillance
- Minimize the use of electronic devices
- Use other forms of sending messages
- Reliant on field commanders' individual intelligence and initiative
- The skill of the Houthis is the result of a meritocratic process
- Intense competition for spots in field combat teams
- Leadership is groomed from veterans of field combat
- Only those who are capable and lucky become leaders
- The meritocracy and competence of the Houthi lower ranks stands in stark contrast to the Saudi and Emirati militaries
- Saudi/Emirati forces suffer from a pronounced lack of skilled officers and NCOs
- Officers receive ranks based on personal connections rather than battlefield victories
- Senior officers are more interested in force preservation than engaging the enemy
Security and Intelligence
- A key part of the Houthi forces' security is their mobility
- Dress like civilians
- Yemen has a long tradition of civilians carrying firearms, so insurgents carrying AK-47s and G3 rifles blend in
- Use the same Toyota trucks as the civilian population
- Only mass when a target that requires the firepower of multiple teams emerges
- Targets are first identified by human intelligence
- Houthis have an informal but extensive intelligence network
- Extends across Yemen and well into Saudi Arabia
- Informants act out of both ideological loyalty and material gain
- Targets are sent by the handlers of these intelligence assets to Houthi commanders
- Combat units in the area then use a combination of human intelligence and small drones to monitor the progress of the target
- When the target approaches the killbox, units converge from multiple directions to carry out the attack
- Once the attack is completed, the units disperse
- This is all well and good, but this section raises many questions:
- How do the Houthis establish the secure communications links that allow them to do this?
- The approach that the article describes requires a fair amount of coordination
- Commanders have to know about the target, have to know where other commanders are, and have to establish a killbox and approach vectors
- Not likely that they have this pre-arranged, because that would lead to a predictable operational pattern that the Saudis would be able to pick up on
- What prevents the Saudis from adapting to this approach by carrying out sting operations? Have a convoy purportedly carrying valuable arms and ammunition, but actually carrying heavily armed soldiers intent on baiting and destroying the ambushing forces?
- After reading the rest of the piece, maybe the Saudi-sponsored forces are just that incompetent
- Human intelligence is crucial to the Houthi's efforts
- Houthi intelligence networks have extensively infiltrated the Saudi and Emirati supported militias
- Houthi field commanders often know more about their opponents numbers and capabilities than their opponents' commanders
- Human intelligence networks, combined with judicious use of UAVs along with initimate knowledge of they physical terrain serves as a formidable force multiplier for Houthi attacks
Anatomy of Failure
- Military forces opposing the Houthis suffer from slow and ineffective chains of command
- Decision-making is slow, and often compromised by factional rivalries
- Orders are more often treated as suggestions by front-line commanders
- Graft and corruption saps the morale and numbers of the Yemeni army
- Many Yemeni soldiers sign up to collect a salary and help lift their families out of poverty
- When those salaries are skimmed by their commanders for personal gain, those soldiers often desert, taking their arms and knowledge to the Houthis
- A significant number of soldiers on the government's rolls are "ghost soldiers", who exist only as names on a roster to allow their commanders to collect additional graft money
- Saudi Arabia's approach to fighting has exacerbated the problem
- Saudi Arabia has, in effect, cut a blank check to its local allies
- Local allies, in turn, often take Saudi resources and hoard them
- Don't see a good prospect for Saudi victory, so they take and keep as much money and arms as possible to assure themselves a place in the post-Saudi political order
- The situation is rapidly approaching an endgame as Saudi Arabia cuts back on its support for its allies in Yemen
- The UAE has already pulled out
- The Saudis are having to contend with record-low oil prices for the foreseeable future
- The Saudi Allied government is struggling to hold its capital, Marib City
- If Marib City falls, then desertion rates among the Yemeni Army will skyrocket and, in all likelihood, the Saudi-sponsored government will collapse
Conclusion
- When Saudi Arabia entered the Yemeni civil war, 5 years ago, many predicted the imminent defeat of the Houthis
- Yet despite the vastly greater technical sophistication and the greater numbers of the Saudi/Emirati sponsored forces, the Houthis have secured their hold on northwest Yemen and are now poised to capture their opponents capital, Marib City
- The Houthis serve as a living reminder of Col. John Boyd's proverb: "machines don't fight wars. Terrain doesn't fight wars. Humans fight wars. You must get into the minds of humans. That's where battles are won"
- However, despite their battlefield successes, it's unclear that the Houthis will be able to rule Yemen
- Many Houthi allies are only allied with the Houthis because they are interested in repelling a foreign invasion
- Others have allied themselves with the Houthis for material or political gain
- Furthermore, as the war winds down, there will be more tensions within the Houthis' own core leadership
- All of these factors will lead to a dilution of Houthi power after the war ends
- I don't know about that
- They said the same thing about Afghanistan after the Soviet Union left
- While it is true that there was a fairly brutal civil war after the end of the Soviet occupation, the Taliban made steady gains and were on the verge of wiping out the Northern Alliance before the United States intervened on the side of the Northern Alliance
- I think it's quite likely that the Houthis will be able to unify (most of) Yemen under their rule
My thoughts
- This article is interesting, but it leaves me wanting more
- I still don't really have a good understanding of how the Houthis communicate
- The sort of distributed action that the article describes implies quite a lot of communication and coordination between lower-level Houthi units
- How does this coordination occur in a world of persistent electronic surveillance?
- The world that this article describes is very cyberpunk
- There's just something about the image of an insurgent launching a drone from the back of a technical that's evocative of the sort of gritty near sci-fi of Stephenson or Gibson
- (Literally gritty; Yemen is a desert after all)
- The sort of distributed tactics without the need for centralized command also feature prominently in cyberpunk works, though, they're also a feature of guerilla warfare in general
- The article also makes scant mention of the Houthis' reliance on imported arms from Iran
- Would the Houthis be able to take the fight to the Saudis as they have been if they did not have access to everything from AKs to ballistic missiles, thanks to the Islamic Republic?
