Defeating the Houthis Will Require More Than Killing Their Chief
Edmund Fitton-Brown, the former British ambassador to Yemen, recounted a chilling 2016 discussion with Houthi negotiators: Houthi officials claimed that their strategic advantage over Western-backed forces was that they “do not care how many Yemenis die, and when enough have died, [the West] will come to us on [their] knees and beg us to make peace.” This prediction generally proved accurate as pressure grew on the anti-Houthi coalition from 2018 onward to wind down the campaign in Yemen due to the conflict’s enormous humanitarian toll. However, while the Houthis do not care how many Yemenis die, the group might be deeply impacted by the death of one specific Yemeni: the leader of the group, Abdul-Malik al Houthi.
Some analysts have suggested that assassinating Abdul-Malik al-Houthi would lead to organizational collapse and thereby eliminate the threat. It is common practice, to the point of being cliché, for analysts to make a very generic but concrete policy prescription that boils down to “kill the guy in charge and all your problems with the group are solved.” 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, it is unlikely in and of itself to provide a comprehensive solution to the threats posed by the group.
To frame such an analysis, it is worth mentioning the many threats that the Houthi organization poses. Firstly, it has the capability and will to attack U.S. assets and allies within the 2,500-kilometer range of its ballistic missile arsenal. Second, the group has proven its ability to disrupt international shipping by virtually shutting down Red Sea traffic and forcing maritime trade to reroute. Finally, as the Houthis have demonstrated by sending mercenaries to fight for Russia in Ukraine, the group is willing to sell goods and services to rogue actors around the world in order to bring in much-needed cash. Unfortunately, these threats are unlikely to be eliminated with a single well-placed drone strike.
It is also important to state clearly that the assassination of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi is justified on ethical, legal, and national security grounds. He has dragged Yemen into decades of needless war that have already killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, ruled 20 million Yemenis with ruthless brutality that includes murder, rape, and theft, and destabilized the Middle East through Houthi attacks on regional neighbors as well as international maritime commerce. Furthermore, Patrick Johnston has presented a compelling case indicating that organizations are vulnerable following the assassination of senior leaders, noting that “neutralizing insurgent leaders has a substantively large and statistically significant effect on numerous metrics of countermilitancy effectiveness.” But the fact that justice and national interests would be served by killing Abdul-Malik al-Houthi is no reason to inflate the organizational impact of his death to the be all and end all of an anti-Houthi strategy.
For at least four reasons, the results of killing the Houthi movement’s leader may prove disappointing to those holding outsized expectations.
First, it is important to acknowledge the fact that the Houthis have essentially evolved from a rebel group into a quasi-state. The Houthis have been partially institutionalized through their takeover of the existing Yemeni state organs after they marched into the capital Sanaa in 2014, and they solidified control over the establishment after killing Ali Abdullah Saleh and purging his loyalists from the bureaucracy in 2017. In addition to their control of the formal bureaucracy, the Houthi regime has also established parallel secretive Hizballah-inspired command structures like the Jihad Council. Therefore, the Houthis are no longer only a disorganized militia, but now also include hierarchical and bureaucratic machinery subject to Abdul-Malik’s control. When compared with direct informal rule of individuals, more structured bureaucracies are by their nature less dynamic and therefore more resilient to personnel changes.
The Houthis’ entrenched control over the economy in the areas under their control would make them especially difficult to displace. Yemen’s private sector has always been fairly weak compared to its bloated public sector, and those working for the government in Houthi-controlled areas now depend on the regime for their income. Yet, control of the public sector did not satisfy the Houthi need for cash, and so the group has captured all of the major industries in its territory, including many companies that were not previously government owned. In the telecommunications industry, for example, Sabafon and MTN Yemen (now YOUtelecom) have been coopted by the regime. The same is true of the banks based in Sanaa, which now are under formal or informal control of Houthi supervisors to ensure cooperation with the regime. In addition to dominating the local economy, the Houthis also control all seaports (Hodeidah, Ras Issa, and Salif) and land borders, which allows them control of any trade with external entities.
Houthi control over the 20 million people they rule is further solidified by the multiple intelligence agencies committed to quashing any threat to the regime’s absolute power. The group’s Preventative Security is run by Ihsan al Humran and dedicated to neutralizing any threats to the regime from within the Houthi movement. The Security and Intelligence Service is led by Abdulhakim al Khaywani and focused on controlling all aspects of civilian life, from repressing political agitators and indoctrinating the public to ensuring that resources are divvied up in alignment with regime interests. Other state machinery for controlling the public include Police Intelligence, led by Abdul-Malik’s nephew , and the Central Security Forces. These multiple, far-reaching, and overlapping organizations dedicated to ensuring the regime’s control and preventing the emergence of threats are likely far beyond what standard terrorist organizations would possess.
This calls into question whether some of the purported advantages of killing senior terrorist leaders touted by researchers like Bryan C. Price would be applicable to the Houthi case. In his 2012 article “Targeting Top Terrorists,” Price explains that “leadership decapitation significantly increases the mortality rate of terrorist groups, even after controlling for other factors.” However, his research appears to focus on informalized rebel groups of dozens to several thousand people. While acknowledging that succession is almost always a challenge in any organization, it is also important to clarify that Price’s findings do not necessarily cover an organization like that of the Houthis. In light of the many institutions dedicated to ensuring continued Houthi rule over the people and economy of northern Yemen, the regime in Sanaa might best be described as a hybrid between a terrorist group like al-Qaeda and a rogue authoritarian kleptocratic regime like that of Iran or North Korea.
Second, the Houthis and their backers in Beirut and Tehran have now had ample time to prepare for attempts on Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s life. They are likely taking measures both to prevent such strikes from succeeding as well as preparing a mechanism for the “day after.” These steps probably involve isolating him from all electronic communications, keeping him in secure and secret hideouts, preventing senior leaders from congregating, and determining what succession ought to look like in the event of his demise.
But even if the succession mechanism does not work smoothly after Abdul-Malik’s death, it should not necessarily be assumed that the Houthi movement would splinter or collapse. The Houthis’ close familial, historical, and ideological ties have in the past enabled the resolution of heated disputes between senior leaders. While we cannot be sure how the heir will be chosen or who it will be, it is safe to assume that this issue is under consideration from the regime’s key decision-makers and that there are several frontrunners from within the leader’s family, including Minister of Interior Abdul-Karim al Houthi and senior security official Ali al Houthi.
Given Iran’s close ties to the core of the Houthi regime, in the event Sanaa is temporarily thrown off balance by an assassination then Tehran would likely seek to help it recover. Like Hizballah’s Naim Qassem, during brief periods of chaos prospective successors may temporarily seek safe haven in Iran. They would likely feel comfortable there and may prove amenable to Tehran’s designs for succession, as for more than a decade Iran has brought over young Houthi leaders in order to cultivate them. While one could argue that given the utter failure of Iran’s proxies over the past year, Tehran is now looking to cut its losses, the Houthis’ continued ability to sow chaos in the region may be the single pleasant surprise for Iran while the rest of its axis has folded or collapsed.
Graig R. Klein noted in his article “The Leader of ISIS is Dead, But Are Targeted Killings Effective?,” the size, experience, and nature of an organization’s top-tier leadership influences the outcome of the assassination. He writes, “If the terrorist group maintains a cadre of experienced and capable fighters or has an existing line of succession, targeted killings have minimal impact on group capabilities. Larger and older terrorist groups are better able to survive leadership targeting, perhaps because they have better groomed successors or a larger cadre of high-level members ready to take the reins of leadership.” After several decades of conflict and hundreds of thousands of troops in their ranks, the Houthis have a significant pool of experienced and well-groomed potential candidates to succeed Abdul-Malik. According to Klein, these characteristics could position them to mitigate the impact of the leader’s assassination.
Third, there are pertinent historical examples in which successful assassinations of terrorist leaders have failed to negatively impact battlefield performances or even paved the way for more competent leaders to take the reins. Most recently, in the Gaza Strip, the elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has failed to meaningfully impact the terror group’s military ability to inflict casualties on Israel. While Hamas military capabilities have been decimated as a result of the extended Israeli campaign, the death of Sinwar was not a watershed moment in that respect. One could also argue that Israel’s assassination of Hizballah chief Abbas Musawi in 1992 paved the way for the more capable Hassan Nasrallah to take control of the organization. Before his death in 2024, Nasrallah had built the organization into the largest and best-funded terror organization in the world and arguably the most powerful Arab army in the Middle East.
There are even examples of this same troubling phenomenon occurring within Yemen. Abdul-Malik only took control of the Houthi movement after his brother Husayn was assassinated by the government of Yemen in 2004. Since then, he has cultivated a guerrilla movement with small arms and transformed it into a state-like apparatus with a dangerous ballistic missile arsenal. More recently, some of the most prominent Houthis assassinated by the anti-Houthi coalition include: Taha al Madani, who was one of the Houthis’ most senior battlefield commanders and was assassinated in 2016; Saleh al Sammad, who was the equivalent of the president of the Houthi government and was assassinated in 2018; and Ibrahim al Houthi, who was Abdul-Malik’s brother and himself described as a “prominent leader” prior to his 2019 killing. All of these individuals were replaced and their deaths did not result in organizational chaos. While it is true that none of these individuals had the power and prominence of Abdul-Malik al Houthi, and his death could have an impact that far outstrips those of other senior leaders in the movement, the burden of proof rests on those claiming that such a strike would devastate the organization and decimate its long-term trajectory.
Finally, pinning the anti-Houthi strategy on an operation which will take time to prepare for and has no guarantee of successfully eliminating the target, let alone collapsing the regime, would be a unnecessarily risky gamble. It may take time to develop the real-time intelligence necessary to assassinate Abdul-Malik, and it may take even longer for the operational opportunity to arise in order to launch the strike. This could also lead to complacency in the meantime, while there are other valuable activities that can and should be undertaken to undermine the regime’s economic, repressive, military, media, and organizational infrastructure. As Johnston explains in “Does Decapitation Work,” “although decapitation is likely to help states’ overall efforts against militant organizations, other factors will also matter greatly in most cases.”
Indeed, Israel’s successful campaign to degrade and cower Lebanese Hizballah indicates that attempts to defeat institutionalized “terror states” should focus beyond any one individual. While Israel did assassinate Nasrallah, it also took out multiple layers of the senior and mid-level leadership through airstrikes and sabotages campaigns. Its strikes likewise targeted Hizballah’s financial infrastructure, military arsenal, and media operations. Israel also complemented its military activities with a diplomatic campaign to isolate Hizballah and empower alternative centers of power within Lebanon. This multi-dimensional approach provides the anti-Houthi coalition with a more effective and comprehensive model for degrading Iran’s proxy in Yemen.
In Colin Clarke’s 2021 article for War on the Rocks, he assessed that leadership is just one component of a terrorist group’s infrastructure and that the elimination of one individual is usually not enough to bring down a well-entrenched and experienced organization. In his words, “the preponderance of evidence suggests that it is more effective to disrupt terrorist organizations and insurgent networks by focusing on dismantling supply lines, attacking logistical capabilities, and denying insurgents the ability to enjoy external support from both state and nonstate actors. This doesn’t mean that killing high-value targets is ineffective, but rather that decapitation is merely one of many tactics that should be used as part of a wider strategy and that its effectiveness is often likely to be situational.”
Efforts to assassinate Abdul-Malik would be justified to degrade the Houthi regime and would likely yield significant benefits, but they would not necessarily be sufficient to defeat the group or the threats it poses. Looking for easy solutions that resolve strategic problems with a single bullseye is tempting, but that approach is bound to lead to ill-informed strategies and disappointing results. To resoundingly defeat the Houthi regime, the United States, Israel, and those seeking stability in the region should decimate the architecture that enable the regime to function: its economy, propaganda machine, tools of repression, military capabilities, and its multi-tiered leadership. As Clarke 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.
Ari Heistein is an advisor to Israeli startups seeking to sell to the U.S. federal government, a consultant on Yemen-related issues, and a nonresident fellow at the Counter Extremism Project. He has previously worked in business development for an Israeli cyber intelligence company and served as a research fellow and chief of staff at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Image: Mehr News Agency via Wikimedia Commons
