Pressure is growing on the anti-Houthi rebels coalition despite winding down the campaign due to the conflict’s enormous humanitarian toll, according to a consultant on Yemen-related issue.
He added, while the Houthis do not care how many Yemenis die, the group might be deeply impacted by the death of their leader, Abdul-Malik al Houthi, adding that some analysts have suggested that assassinating the leader would lead to organizational collapse and thereby eliminate the threat, but the reality is that the Houthi movement has become institutionalized, which makes it more organizationally resilient, and it has not been significantly disrupted by high-level assassinations in the past.
So, while eliminating the Houthi leader would be a welcome development, the Yemen expert suggested, it is unlikely in and of itself to provide a comprehensive solution to the threats posed by the group.
To resoundingly defeat the Houthi regime, the expert concluded that the United States, and those seeking stability in the region should decimate the architecture that enable the Houthis to function: their economy, propaganda machine, tools of repression, military capabilities, and their multi-tiered leadership.
The expert cited Colin Clarke’s 2021 article for War on the Rocks, when he explained, “Terrorist groups seem more likely to survive the elimination of a leader … than they are to overcome the crippling of their supply infrastructure.” While it seems unlikely that there are shortcuts to defeating the Houthis, launching such a comprehensive campaign will be far less costly than failing to do so.