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Published : 15 Oct 2025, 07:01 PM
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi paramilitary has been lionised at pro-Palestinian protests around the world and on social media for its missile strikes on Israel over the Gaza war. In May, even US President Donald Trump lauded the Houthis’ grit.
“We hit them very hard,” Trump said, in announcing the group had agreed to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea following weeks of U.S. strikes on them. “They had a great capacity to withstand punishment … You can say there’s a lot of bravery there.”
At home, many who have lived under Houthi rule have a starkly different view. In interviews with hundreds of Yemenis who have fled the Houthi-controlled part of this divided country, people described a militant group that silences critics, drives people into starvation, and has used international food aid to force parents to hand over children to be soldiers in its armed forces.
“People are between a rock and a hard place,” said Abdul-Salam, a 37-year-old farmer who lives in a displaced persons camp in Yemen after fleeing the Houthi-controlled part of the country. “The Houthis would give you a choice: be with them and take a food basket to stave off hunger, or get nothing.”
Like many interviewed for this story, Abdul-Salam spoke on condition that only his first name be used, saying he has family members still living under the Houthis.
Interviews with Yemeni civilians and dozens of aid workers, as well as a review of internal UN aid agency documents, reveal how the Houthis maintain their iron grip. They levy an array of taxes on their impoverished subjects, manipulate the international aid system and imprison hundreds. Human rights and aid organisations have faced waves of arrests: In late August, the World Food Programme said 15 staff members were detained after Houthi authorities forced their way into the organization’s offices in Sanaa, the capital. This brings to 53 the number of aid workers currently being held in detention.
“People can’t breathe,” said Abu Hamza, who fled Houthi-controlled territory a few years ago. He spent a year in underground prison cells for speaking out against the Houthis during social gatherings, he said. “We are ruled by a militia cloaked in religion.”
Reuters wasn’t able to confirm all aspects of Abu Hamza’s account and those of others the news agency spoke to, but their stories about Houthi persecution were often similar and largely consistent.
Nasruddin Amer, deputy head of the Houthis’ media office, said Yemenis know that the group’s position on Gaza has subjected it to an “American-Zionist demonization campaign in which their tools in the region, such as the Saudi and Emirati regimes, and others, participate.”
Hunger is pervasive across Yemen, a country torn by a civil war that erupted in 2014. The leading global hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, announced in June that more than 17 million out of Yemen’s 40 million people were facing “high levels of acute food insecurity.”
Funding from donor countries for humanitarian projects in Yemen has been decreasing, in part due to ongoing diversion of aid by the Houthis. The situation worsened earlier this year when the country’s biggest source of humanitarian relief funding dried up after the Trump administration slashed foreign aid, ending many operations around the globe funded by USAID, Washington’s aid arm.
The White House didn’t respond to questions about Trump’s views on the Houthis or the aid cutbacks. The State Department said the Houthis’ “failure to allow the safe delivery of life-saving assistance is driving the rise in hunger in northern Yemen.”
Since the Oct 2023 attack by Hamas, Israel has delivered devastating blows to Hamas in Gaza and to Hezbollah in Lebanon, both part of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance. It also targeted the Houthis, including an attack in August that killed the Houthi-appointed prime minister and several ministers. The Houthis also say dozens of civilians have been killed. But these strikes failed to deter the group from launching drones and missiles into Israel.
The Gaza war has empowered the Houthis, experts say. The group “realized it could exploit the Gaza war and became fond of its new regional and international image,” said Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. On the ground, she said, “popular anger toward the Houthis” has risen because Yemenis bore the brunt of Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Houthi spokesperson Amer rejected the idea that the group has exploited "the Gaza events.” This ignores “the fact that our official slogan since the first day of our movement has been ‘Death to America and Death to Israel’,” he said.
PERSONALITY CULT
The Yemeni conflict has a multinational dimension. The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates back the internationally recognised government. Iran backs the Houthis. Riyadh views the Houthis as an Iranian proxy that poses a security threat given their control over territory on Saudi Arabia’s southern border. Inside Yemen, many define themselves as northerners and southerners, along a pre-1990 dividing line, when Yemen was two states.
The Houthi movement is rooted in the Zaydi sect of Shi’ite Islam, which once ruled the northern part of Yemen, which was an isolated and impoverished zone. Formally called Ansar Allah, or “Supporters of God,” the Houthis are popularly named after the family that formed and led the religious revival movement.
Leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi, in his 40s, has led the group for two decades and through a civil war that erupted in 2014 after the Houthis seized Sanaa. The Saudis, worried by Iran’s growing influence, led a loose coalition of Sunni states with Western backing against the Houthis.
By the time the war abated, tens of thousands of Yemenis were dead and the economy was ravaged. The Houthis emerged with uncontested control of the north. The rest of Yemen is now governed by a patchwork of rivalrous militia leaders and proxies who are loyal to the Saudis and the UAE. These groups make up a ruling Presidential Leadership Council, a body that is internationally recognized but which analysts say is riven with competing political and regional interests, and reliant on Saudi funding.
Talk of government divisions “is exaggerated,” Yemeni Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani said in response to questions. While “there are divergent views, there is a consensus on the main goal: restoring the state and ending the Houthi coup.”
Al-Houthi, who never appears in public, delivers weekly speeches via TV screens to huge rallies in Sanaa’s main square. There, crowds chant the Al-Sarkha, which means “The Scream” in English:
God is Great,
Death to America,
Death to Israel,
Curse on the Jews,
Victory to Islam!
Al-Houthi rules through a small circle of trusted figures and family members, according to Yemen experts who study the group. And through fear: Thousands of Yemenis have been detained, held incommunicado and tortured by the Houthis, according to human rights organizations and several former detainees interviewed by Reuters.
“The Yemeni people know that our movement is a return to the Quran and its values, not a family movement,” said Amer.
The Houthis also conduct intense indoctrination campaigns, dozens of displaced people told Reuters. Government workers are forced to attend weekly sessions in which lectures by al-Houthi are played, they said. His words and images are displayed on giant billboards across Sanaa.
Abdul Malik, a schoolteacher, said he fled Houthi-controlled territory in January last year, after a Houthi school supervisor suspended him from his teaching job for refusing to attend indoctrination sessions.
“Without a salary, life was impossible," said Abdul Malik, 40. “To make things worse, the Houthis would visit my home, demanding donations to fund their weekly pro-Gaza rallies.”
“The allegations of torture in prisons are false and have no basis in truth,” Houthi spokesperson Amer said. So are allegations that people are forced to attend rallies, donate to rallies in support of Gaza and attend lectures in their places of work, he said.
Accusations that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy are an attempt by the Saudis and Emiratis “to justify their aggression against the Yemeni people in service of the Americans and the Zionists,” Amer said.
CONTROLLING THE AID
Between 2015 and 2024, the UN raised $28 billion for humanitarian needs in Yemen. About a third of the funds, some $9 billion, went to the UN’s World Food Programme to feed as many as 12 million people a month – the majority in Houthi-controlled areas. Other UN agencies, including UNICEF and the World Health Organization, have poured hundreds of millions into health facilities, fuel supplies and nutritional programs.
But aid often hasn’t reached the people for whom it is intended.
International aid was a lifeline for Fawaz, who spoke to Reuters in a Yemeni displaced persons camp where he now lives after fleeing the Houthi areas in 2021. He worked as an accountant before the war. After the fighting wrecked the economy and cost him his job, the 47-year-old father of eight said he was forced to sell his wife’s gold jewelry to feed their family.
He tried to register his name on the list of aid recipients in the Houthi-controlled province of Hajjah. The Houthi local authorities, he said, gave him a choice: If he wanted a food basket, he would need to join their militia, take part in weekly rallies and chant “Death to America.”
When he refused, a Houthi supervisor dubbed him an “enemy” and determined he was “not eligible” for aid, said Fawaz. He lost a leg after fleeing the Houthis and trying to cross into Saudi Arabia to find work. His limb was torn off when a land mine exploded as he moved through a minefield near the Saudi border, he said.
The Houthis have effectively hijacked much of the humanitarian aid supply chain, according to dozens of displaced people, local UN field monitors and aid workers. The lists of eligible aid recipients, for instance, include many names of people who don’t exist, or “ghost beneficiaries,” they say. Those who receive aid are often Houthi loyalists such as militia fighters.
One aid worker told Reuters that of the nearly 9 million people registered to receive aid in Houthi-controlled areas, “we didn’t know who five million were.”
This undermining of the aid process led the WFP to freeze the distribution of food baskets in 2023 in Houthi-run areas. The 2023 aid pause in northern Yemen “was linked to the inability to reach an agreement” with the Houthi authorities on measures to accurately target aid beneficiaries, a WFP spokesperson said, adding that the organization “resumed limited emergency distributions to the areas most at risk” to prevent famine.
“Currently, all WFP operations have come to a halt in the northern governorates in Yemen,” the spokesperson said.
Houthi spokesperson Amer said WFP is “an American arm” and that “humanitarian work is, in fact, a political, military, and intelligence operation aimed at subjugating the Yemeni people.”
The Houthis have also exercised control over the collection of food security data, which forms the basis for hunger assessments by the IPC, the global hunger monitor. These projections help donor countries decide how to apportion funding.
When UN organizations collected data for an IPC survey in 2023, the Houthis handpicked many of the data collectors, according to three food security analysts involved in the operation. The Houthis also determined which households would be surveyed, they said.
This has enabled the Houthis to magnify the hunger problem, Reuters reported last year. While some governments facing a hunger crisis have tried to minimize the extent of the problem, the Houthis have done the opposite, exaggerating it in an effort to draw increased humanitarian funding.
To minimize Houthi intervention in the latest IPC analysis, UN agencies gathered data remotely via phone calls to aid recipients to assess hunger levels.
Asked about efforts by the Houthis to control data collection, spokesperson Amer said any information collected from residents was “part of a country’s national security and it is the state’s responsibility.” The IPC didn’t comment for this story.
When faced with access constraints, the UN sometimes turns to third-party contractors to monitor aid distribution and collect data on aid beneficiaries for better targeting. In Yemen, the job of these monitors was to oversee aid distribution centers, quiz aid recipients and report back to UN agencies and donors about any violations.
But the Houthis have effectively shut down several of these watchdogs, raiding their offices and detaining their staff. A dozen staffers at third-party monitoring companies contracted by the UN told Reuters they were too scared to do their jobs for fear of retaliation by Houthi authorities.
Adnan al-Harazi, CEO of Prodigy Systems, one of the main monitoring companies, was taken from his office in Jan 2023, placed in solitary confinement and accused of espionage for a foreign country. In June 2024, he was sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to 15 years in prison.
Some monitors now stay home and make up the answers to standardized questions used to assess whether aid beneficiaries are receiving humanitarian assistance, one monitor told Reuters.
“Threats to the safety of Third-Party Monitors (TPMs) are unacceptable and have raised serious concerns about their ability to carry out their work effectively,” the WFP said.
The Houthis are also currently detaining over a dozen current and former local U.S. government staff based on “false accusations,” the State Department said. The staff have been accused of espionage.
Within the aid community, opinions differ on whether to continue humanitarian operations in Houthi-controlled areas. At least a dozen current and former UN staffers told Reuters that by not setting clear red lines for the Houthis, UN aid agencies had effectively become complicit in the group’s systematic diversion of aid.
The staffers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that despite the repeated breaches by the Houthis, the UN continued operations, allowing large-scale aid diversion to continue. Three current and former WFP staffers and three third-party monitors told Reuters that UN organizations have known for years that food security data is corrupted, but have nevertheless continued data collection and analysis.
“WFP has always acted immediately if credible evidence of diversion and theft has emerged and responded publicly as needed,” the UN organization’s spokesperson said, outlining a series of measures WFP has taken “to improve targeting and beneficiary list management.” The organization has “repeatedly taken swift action when necessary – including pausing operations – to ensure vital assistance reaches its intended recipient, effectively, with meaningful impact, and free from any interference.”
An internal study commissioned by the WFP, dated January 2024, lists many of the forms of aid abuse that Yemenis complained to Reuters about: the “confiscation and diversion of food to feed fighters”; the “withholding of food as a pressure tactic” to recruit fighters; people having to perform “unwanted activities to receive aid, such as chanting the Houthi slogan.”
WFP said the document “was never released as an internal or external report or study, as it did not meet scientific standards.”
‘DIRECT ENTRY TO HEAVEN’
Tens of thousands have fled Houthi-controlled territory to escape hunger, poverty, incarceration, or conscription of their children into the military. Their situation remains bleak: They have little food or work in the displaced persons camps where they now live in the area of Yemen controlled by the government.
In the camps, many live in makeshift tents or rudimentary structures. There is little escape from the extreme summer heat and humidity, and the flies. Piles of garbage litter the camps and the air is filled with a foul smell from pools of stagnant water.
In the port city of Aden, the government struggles to deliver basic services following Houthi attacks on oil terminals. Reuters interviewed displaced families in Aden, as well as in the provinces of Lahj and Marib, who fled Houthi areas and now live on one meal a day.
“If we have breakfast, we don't have lunch. If we have lunch, we don't have breakfast,” said Ismail, a father of five. He said his only source of income is collecting plastic bottles to sell to recycling workshops.
Information Minister al-Eryani blamed the Houthis for the harsh conditions in areas under government control, saying they were “stealing” humanitarian aid.
Fola al-Hadi, a mother of four, fled the Houthi area to Aden in 2021. Like many other mothers, she spends much of her day gathering scraps of food and begging for money.
“We visit restaurants every day,” she said. “We walk for hours to collect leftovers.”
While life is tough, she said she can sleep at night now that there’s no longer a risk her children will be taken to fight for the Houthis. She feared they’d return home in coffins, she said.
Since at least 2009, the Houthis have systematically recruited children for their armed forces, human rights groups say. During the Gaza war, the number of new child recruits increased significantly, according to Human Rights Watch. The UN also says that some government forces have recruited children, but in smaller numbers.
Abdel-Moghni al-Sinani was forcibly recruited by the Houthis at age 10. He said he was imprisoned, beaten and indoctrinated. He received military training and was tasked with delivering supplies to other child soldiers, he said, speaking to Reuters in the Marib displaced persons camp, in the government-controlled area of Yemen.
His Houthi instructors prepared the children for death. The road to heaven, they were told, passed through the group’s leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi.
“They told us that we don’t have to pray,” said al-Sinani, who is now 18. “Once we receive the master’s blessing, we will be granted direct entry to heaven.”
Houthi spokesperson Amer said the child-soldier accusations are “baseless” and “are just fabrications.” The Yemeni government’s al-Eryani said there have been “individual cases” of child-soldier recruitment by the army, but that the government was “working to hold accountable any individual violations that may occur.”
WFP said it had found “no verifiable evidence” to support the claim that food aid has been used to force parents to hand over children to become soldiers in the Houthi armed forces.
Dozens of families who fled Houthi-controlled areas say they were hit with heavy taxes and levies by the Houthis.
Abu Hamza, an army veteran and father of five, set up a small grocery in Sanaa to support his family. But the taxes levied on his business cut into his income. He borrowed until he was 5 million rials (about $20,000) in debt.
Across the road from his grocery in Sanaa, he said, a scene repeatedly played out: Trucks loaded with humanitarian aid that carried the WFP logo were being driven in and out of a school run by Houthi members. “The aid was stolen in broad daylight,” he said.
The taxes kept mounting. As he grew desperate, Abu Hamza said Houthi authorities pressured him to attend Friday rallies, where thousands of people fill the streets. They also asked him to “join their forces and go fight.”
Amer said the Houthis haven’t imposed any new taxes since they took over Sanaa in 2014.
By 2020, Abu Hamza was bankrupt. He began selling his furniture and other belongings, including a dagger with a golden handle – a family heirloom passed on by his father. When that money ran out, he would walk to an area far from home so his neighbors wouldn’t see him. Then he’d stand in front of a mosque and put his hand out asking for money. In 2021, he fled with his family to Marib.
“The more I remember, the more my heart sinks,” he said.
