Ten Years of War Between Islamic Forces Devastates Yemen

Detained local United Nations staff will face trial based on the suspicion that they are linked to an Israeli airstrike which killed top Houthi leaders in Yemen, the head of Yemen’s Houthis told Reuters on October 31.

Several leaders of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi terrorists were killed in an Israeli strike on the capital Sanaa this past August.

Houthis are prosecuting the UN staff, but it is the Houthi terrorists themselves who have devastated Yemen throughout the past ten years.

The UN estimates that the war in Yemen, which began in 2015, had killed 377,000 people by the end of 2021. Over 150,000 of these deaths were the direct result of the armed conflict, while far more have died due to hunger and disease, as a result of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war.

According to a 2025 statement by the UN, close to 20 million people in Yemen depend on aid to survive. Nearly five million remain displaced, as violence or disaster have pushed them from one place to another.

Since March 2015, a civil war has ravaged Yemen. It pits the government, supported by a nine-country coalition that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) lead against the Houthi terrorist group in the north of the country.

Yemen is now divided among several powers, including the Houthi terrorist movement, which controls the capital, Sanaa, and much of the northwest; the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG), which the Saudi-led coalition supports, holds parts of the south and east; and the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group that controls much of the south. In addition to these major factions, other groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) also maintain influence in certain areas, further fragmenting control. None of those powers are sympathetic to Christians. The 1% of Yemenis from minority religions are severely marginalized in all those regions.

In 2014, the Iran-backed Houthis aligned themselves with the Yemeni military and took control of the nation’s capital. Houthi forces carried out grave violations of human rights, as well as war crimes, in attacks against civilians.

Yemen’s President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia, who then formed a coalition to reinstall him, protect its own border, prevent Yemen from splintering, and counteract the influence of Iran (the Shia regional rival to majority-Sunni Saudi Arabia). Saudi Arabia expected that its air power would quickly defeat the Houthi insurgency, but the war has dragged on. Iran has provided weapons and training to the Houthis each year, while Saudi Arabia has kept backing Sunni Hadi forces.

The Houthis, a.k.a. Ansarallah (Helpers of Allah), are a Zaydi Shia Islamic terrorist organization. The group has attacked US, Israeli, Gulf Arab, and Western interests in the region. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, the Houthis have attacked Israeli civilian areas, as well as international commercial and military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. According to the UN Security Council,

The Houthis have engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Yemen. The Houthis have engaged in attacks striking civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yemen, implemented a policy of sexual violence and repression against politically active and professional women, engaged in the recruitment and use of children, incited violence against groups including on the basis of religion and nationality, and indiscriminately used landmines and improvised explosive devices on the West Coast of Yemen. The Houthis have also obstructed the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Yemen, or access to, or distribution of, humanitarian assistance in Yemen. The Houthis have conducted attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea using waterborne improvised explosive devices and sea mines. The Houthis have also perpetrated repeated cross-border terrorist attacks striking civilians and civilian infrastructure in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and threatened to intentionally target civilian sites.

In Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, the Houthis are taking increasingly harsh measures against individuals or associations that the ruling authority deems to be a threat. According to the US State Department’s “2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Yemen,”

There were credible reports government officials and progovernment, foreign, Houthi, and terrorist forces committed [torture and other such practices], including against journalists, HRDs [human rights defenders], and migrants… The POE [the UN Panel of Experts] reported in October that the Houthis systematically subjected detainees to torture and other forms of degrading treatment, including beatings, starvation, electrical shock, mock executions, and sexual assault.

The report added that in Yemen, “significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings; disappearances; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious abuses in a conflict; unlawful recruitment or use of children in armed conflict; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; restrictions of religious freedom; crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism; trafficking in persons, including forced labor; and significant presence of the worst forms of child labor.”

Meanwhile, both the naval blockade that the Saudi-led coalition imposed on Yemen and Houthi terrorist actions have exacerbated the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the country, impeding the delivery of humanitarian assistance to civilians in need.

The war has brought Yemen to the brink of collapse. Intermittent attempts at peace, including the 2018 Stockholm peace process and a 2019 agreement between the secessionist Southern Transitional Council and the UN-recognized government, have failed to yield a lasting political solution.

Yemen is an authoritarian Islamic state. Islam is the state religion, and Sharia (Islamic law) is the principal source of law, according to its 1994 constitution. Yemen ranks third in the World Watch List by the human rights organization Open Doors, which monitors Christian persecution on a global scale.

Open Doors estimates that “a few thousand” Christians currently live in the country. Before the ongoing civil war, there were thousands of expatriates, often working in development, who were allowed to worship in registered churches in Aden and Sanaa. Most of these Christians have been forced to leave the country due to the dangerous situation, and some of their churches have been ransacked. Now most of the country’s Christians are indigenous converts. They are at great risk of being killed by their families, clans and tribes. There are also large numbers of Ethiopian and Eritrean Christian refugees residing in Yemen.

All those Christians in the country are in danger. Those in Houthi-held areas live under the strictest prohibitions against Christianity. With a high degree of monitoring and spying, it is very difficult for Christians to meet up in person or online. Those trying to survive in places that al-Qaeda rules are also in danger of being discovered and killed.

Islam is a key part of Yemeni tribal identity. Leaving Islam to become Christian is seen as a huge betrayal of the tribe. According to Yemen’s criminal code, conversion from Islam to another religion is apostasy, which is a capital offense. Punishment from the Muslim community can include being disowned, disinherited, divorced, losing custody of children, being banished or even murdered.

Some regions are particularly threatening, such as in the south, where there is a strong al-Qaeda presence. Converts from Islam to Christianity have also indicated that there is more pressure in the Shia Houthi-controlled areas in the north (comprising approximately one-third of Yemen’s territory) than in areas under the control of the UN-recognized, Sunni government (formerly led by President Hadi).

The three official church buildings (all located in Aden, on Yemen’s south coast) which served expatriate Christians or refugees (mainly Ethiopians) have been damaged in the war, and are closed. Christians may only meet at secret locations.

Amid this ongoing war between Islamic forces, Yemeni women have experienced increasing gender-based repression. Women in Yemen are threatened or violently repressed if they speak out, mobilize or advocate for their rights. The authorities across Yemen are also restricting women’s freedom of movement. The restrictions have reportedly harmed women’s ability to access work, education, and health care.

Religious minorities who experience rights violations in Yemen also include the Bahai and Jews, of whom reportedly only one is left in the country: Libi Marhabi, who is imprisoned in Yemen for his Jewish identity. In 2016, Houthi forces arrested Marhabi for allegedly smuggling an ancient 800-year-old Torah scroll out of Yemen. In 2018, Marhabi was sentenced to three years and six months in prison.

In 2019, a Houthi appeals court ordered Marhabi’s release. However, security forces only released his non-Jewish co-defendants and have instead kept him detained, despite subsequent court orders demanding otherwise. According to sources, Marhabi lives in inhumane prison conditions, where his health continues to deteriorate. He suffers from kidney and lung issues. Interlocutors report that Houthi prison authorities have repeatedly withheld food, subjecting him to physical beatings, electrical shocks, and hours-long interrogations. The severe tortures have reportedly left Marhabi partially paralyzed and caused the loss of all his teeth.

Bahais are another religious community persecuted in Yemen. Religious Muslims consider Bahais to be infidels or “kafirs” and others discriminate against them because Bahais in Yemen allegedly have connections with Iran, where the religion was founded in the 19th century.

Bahai believers in Yemen are occasionally imprisoned, mistreated and tortured, mostly by Houthi authorities. They also face pressure to recant their faith. In addition, they experience persecution because their religious headquarters is in Haifa, which makes some Yemenis regard them as agents of Israel.

In 2023, for instance, Houthi gunmen staged a violent raid on a peaceful gathering of Baha’is in Sanaa, detaining and forcibly disappearing at least 17 people, including five women.

According to a 2023 report by the United States Department,

• As per an UN experts panel statement of 2023, “Houthi hate speech and incitement to hatred threaten the life and integrity of the Baha’i community, as well as those of other religious or belief minorities present in the country.”
• Sources reported that elementary school curriculum and textbooks continued to reflect solely the Houthi Shia interpretation of Islamic doctrine and practice, and to contain antisemitic and anti-Israel slogans and rhetoric.
• It is reported that the Shia Houthis impose restrictions on the freedom of Sunni Muslims in areas under their control.
• Similarly, Sunni AQAP (Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula) presents a significant threat to non-Sunni Muslim populations, especially in the southeastern regions of Yemen.

Before the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, religions in pre-Islamic Yemen included indigenous polytheistic beliefs, with monotheism becoming increasingly prominent through Judaism and Christianity. The ancient Jewish Kingdom of Himyar was located in the southern highlands of what is now Yemen. Established in around 110 BCE, the kingdom converted to Judaism and made it its state religion in around 380 CE. Christianity was also prominent in Yemen, especially in the oasis of Najran, as early as the fifth century.

Today, Yemen is almost completely Islamic, largely run by Islamic terrorists, and offers no religious freedom for the very small number of non-Muslims in the country. Yemen is a striking example of what happens when a society’s Islamization process is effectively completed.

Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist formerly based in Ankara.