Yemenis are the biggest victims of the Houthis

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The targeting of Saudi airports and civilian facilities, and the death and injury of passengers, while Umrah pilgrims and civilians were crossing the airport halls, does not merely represent a new round in the path of escalation led by the terrorist Houthi militia, but rather another chapter in the madness of a rogue group that kidnapped Yemen and subjected the Yemenis to terrible torture, then moved its armed project beyond the borders, until civilian airports, travelers, and economic facilities became part of the bank of its goals. The recent attacks on the Kingdom’s airports confirm that exposing civilians to danger is not a side effect or a reckless error in the militia’s behavior, but rather a shift into a suicidal strategy in an attempt to pressure and impose a negotiable political and security cost.

Describing this behavior as madness alone may obscure the understanding of its political motives. The attack on Saudi airports had its aftermath, and came in a different and complex regional context where the American-Iranian escalation had stopped, while Tehran is treating the state of calm as a victory that must be invested in the countries of the region, and this is what it is also trying to market to the Houthi militia, the arm that is being thrown into the furnace of destruction after the failure of Hezbollah. And the state of push and pull in the Iraqi militias. Hence, we must understand the Houthis’ behavior from this angle of “political suicide.”

The Saudi history with Yemen is as clear as the sun at daylight, as it always advances the interests of the Yemenis in a way that serves them and their country.

However, this Houthi persistence is now trying to ignore a fundamental fact, which is that the Kingdom is a pivotal and central state capable of defending its lands, citizens, and facilities, and has accumulated, over many years, experience in confronting missiles, drones, and cross-border threats. In fact, the absurdity that is happening in Yemen by the Houthi militia cannot be reduced to an issue related to the security of the Kingdom, and this is a mistake that is unfortunately committed by those who approach the Yemeni situation without understanding its context, especially by some researchers, institutions, and even political movements in the international community.

The issue today goes beyond the threat of the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab, and the safety of aviation and navigation of the most important and sensitive arteries of trade and energy in the world. The cost of disrupting it is not paid by Riyadh alone, but by the markets and economies of the world for a long period. However, the real dilemma is the militia’s crimes against Yemen and the Yemenis. This is unbearable. The Houthi militia is the one who impoverished and displaced the Yemeni people. Therefore, a great responsibility falls on the legitimacy and fair media that searches for the truth in redefining the Yemeni tragedy before the international community.

Since the beginning of the crisis ten years ago, there have been widespread international approaches towards the Houthi militia, treating them as a political party that must be sought for a formula to integrate it into the political settlement. However, this simplistic description of a complex context such as Yemen hides the essence of the Yemeni dilemma, which is that the Houthis did not reach their position through natural political competition, but rather through seizing by force of arms the state and its institutions, then turning the matter into a bitter reality experienced by about 24.7 million Yemenis out of 34.9 million. One million, or approximately 71 percent of the population of Yemen, compared to about 10.2 million living in areas controlled by the legitimate Yemeni government.

Raising the slogan of the necessity of reaching sustainable peace in Yemen is important, and it is also a goal for Saudi Arabia, as there is no alternative for the Yemenis to a stable state and peace that accommodates all components, but the dilemma is that raising the slogan of peace turns into legitimizing the militia’s crimes against the Yemenis and accepting it as a fait accompli. Yemenis are the biggest and longest-suffering victims of the Houthis. This is a fact that the world must be aware of. Since the seizure of Sanaa nearly a decade ago, the Yemenis have experienced all kinds of torment and suffering, including arrest, forced disappearance, torture, and prisons, recruiting children, planting mines, blowing up homes, confiscating property and companies, imposing taxes and royalties, and restricting journalists, activists, political opponents, and religious minorities, in addition to diverting state and economic resources to serve the war. The matter did not stop at the militia’s control over people’s livelihoods and lives, but rather extended to education, changing curricula, summer centers, and ideological mobilization of a politicized ideological nature, until control over new generations became part of the project to kidnap Yemen and bulldoze its identity.

The crisis today cannot be reduced to searching for the best ways to reintegrate the militia, nor to accepting a fait accompli that was created by force of arms, but rather to redefining the Yemeni tragedy as it is without falsification: Yemen has been hijacked and the Yemenis are paying a heavy price for the failure of the international community to restore its legitimacy and the militia is trying to transform this afflicted country, which is approaching an unparalleled humanitarian catastrophe, into a platform of intimidation to impose an external will by suppressing the interior, threatening neighboring countries and world trade.

The crisis did not begin with the targeting of airports or even the disruption of Bab al-Mandab. Rather, it was born the day the Yemeni state fell into the hands of the armed militia, and it will not end until Yemen returns to the Yemenis as a state that is not dependent on the logic of mines and the sound of the gun.

Quoted from "Asharq Al-Awsat"