Tribal militias compete with extremist groups for young recruits to resist advance of Shia Houthis who have taken power in Sana’a, and now Taiz

In a hollow in the sands of eastern Yemen, a line of pickup trucks carrying tribal fighters idled. A squat man with a shock of black hair, dressed in an overflowing dusty dishdasha, walked around slowly, inspecting the men and the vehicles, loaded with heavy machine guns and light artillery.

“The Houthis are behind that hill,” he shouted, pointing at a rocky outcrop sheltering the imaginary foe – northern Yemenis who overthrew the government last autumn, and seized the country’s third largest city on Sunday, according to security and military officials. “We will start by shelling their positions, and then you will storm the hill by cars and finally climb the hill on foot.”

His men call him the Biss – the Cat. After a rather desultory attempt to overrun the supposed adversary, they discovered that he had claws. “If the Houthis were actually there, they could have ended you all with one shell,” the Cat spat.

It’s a forlorn landscape, but one that contains compelling clues as to the shifting balance of power in the Middle East, and the new faultlines.

In Yemen there is little history of sectarian strife. The two main sects, Shia Zaidi and Sunni Shafi, have traditionally been seen as moderate with minimal differences.



But this changed when the Houthis, followers of an obscure Shia tradition who are accused of serving Iranian interests in Yemen, stormed the capital, Sana’a, in September, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to the southern port city of Aden.

Their advance had a galvanising effect in the country’s Sunni-dominated south, where al-Qaida is particularly strong and the jihadis of Islamic State are just starting to secure a toehold. A volley of suicide bombs has shaken the capital, most recently on Friday, when more than 142 people were killed in a series of coordinated attacks on mosques during Friday prayers.

This is the part of the world that has hatched numerous international terror plots, from the Christmas 2009 underpants bomb plot to the Charlie Hebdo attacks this year.

The fear is that the Houthi advance will drive a fresh wave of militarisation and radicalisation in the Sunni-majority Yemeni heartland, acting as a recruiter for jihadis. Western intelligence already considers the local al-Qaida faction – al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) – the world’s most potent franchise, a growing threat seeking to exploit regional turmoil to widen its scope. On Saturday, US officials confirmed that Washington had evacuated its remaining personnel from Yemen because of the deteriorating security situation.

When the Houthi militiamen began to advance down the mountain passes that connect northern Yemen to the south-east, the Sunni tribes responded with fierce resistance.

With backing from wealthy businessmen and neighbouring Saudi Arabia, they raised about 10,000 men and set up a string of military encampments such as the one where the Cat was training his fighters. These are known as Matareh and extend over 100 miles.

“When Sana’a fell, the tribes saw the danger and decided to join the fight. The more the Houthis became a threat, the more tribes gathered around the camps,” said an official in the government of Marib province.

“The core of the resistance to the Houthis was religious, led at first by the Muslim Brotherhood and a few sympathetic tribesman who had fought them in Amran Jawf and finally here on the borders of Marib,” he added.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A tribal sheikh and his men praying in the dunes of Marib province. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian



In the haze of the setting sun, the camps had a pleasant feeling. Fighters lounged on cushions, while cans, plastic bottles and yellow jerrycans were spread outside tents, blinking in the fading light.

Some of the young fighters from the Cat’s unit ran barefoot after a ball on a volleyball pitch drawn in the sand, the net hanging between two twisted tree branches.

The eldest was 19, the youngest 14, and all had spent a year fighting the Houthis. They laughed and called each other funny names: were it not for the Kalashnikovs piled nearby and the referee’s long Russian sniper rifle, they could have been mistaken for a gang of high-school kids.



On talking to the boys, though, it became clear that a year of fighting had caught up with them. They used the sectarian logic of Iraqi or Syrian militiamen. They were here fighting the Iranians, said a thin 17-year-old.

The Cat reclined on a pile of mattresses in his tent. Flies buzzed up and down before settling on the coloured linings of the tent and feasting on near-empty glasses of tea.

He claimed the new battlefront had made it easier to persuade youngsters to join tribal militias rather than disappearing off with the jihadis of AQAP.

“I used every method, I offered them weapons, ‘you want to fight, come fight here, with your tribes like we have been doing since the time of our forefathers’. And now they are here with us in the camps fighting and they are the bravest.”



But in neighbouring Baidha province, where the tribes are weaker and more fragmented, jihadi ranks have been swelled by new recruits.

“In my area there used to be five guys who worked with al-Qaida, now there are dozens, and we can’t say anything to them. They say we are defending you against the Houthis,” a lawyer from Baidha said.

In areas of south and central Yemen, local jihadi groups sometimes emerge to take over military camps or just parade in the streets for a few hours before withdrawing. Some of these groups have pledged their allegiance to Isis rather than AQAP.

A local jihadi who has close links to Ansar al-Sharia (an AQAP local franchise) was open in his criticism of al-Qaida.

“Al-Qaida failed in protecting the Sunnis in Yemen. Where are they? Why are they allowing Houthis to advance?” he asked. “The attack-and-run methods had failed, we need to establish a state, like in Iraq and Syria to have land and borders so we can defend it.”

Al-Qaida failed in protecting the Sunnis in Yemen. Where are they?

Marib, said to have been home to the Queen of Sheba, has a history of fierce independence. For two decades, bandits and kidnappers have kept out the tourists who used to flock to the temple of the queen, while the desert hinterland has become a haven for jihadis and militants of various stripes.

The first US drone attack on Yemen took place here in 2002. Scores more have been conducted since, and though exact numbers are hard to come by, the death toll has been measured in the hundreds and is possibly more than 1,000. A small number of the dead have been children.

Mohammed Tuaiman, a 13-year-old killed in a US drone strike, made a short film before his death about the ‘death machines’ in the sky

Since the Houthi takeover in Sana’a, the governor of Marib, Sultan al-Arrady, has declared local autonomy and rejected the new authority in the capital.



“I refuse to recognise the authority of the coup d’etat junta,” Arrady said in his office in Marib city, a lump of concrete, rubbish, wire and fumes, set in the middle of pristine sands and mountains.

But even his authority does not stretch far in a region dominated by tribal systems that are traditionally suspicious of top-down authority.

Saleh nudged his old jeep slowly through the crowded market. Tall with a concave chest and pencil-thin moustache, he wore a threadbare sarong with a new, elegant heavy-wool jacket in the midday heat. His nephew, a 12-year-old dressed in a crisp white shirt, sat silently in the back of the vehicle clutching his uncle’s gun.

The weapons market, a long row of one-room shops selling enough small and medium arms to equip a small battalion, marked the end of the state’s nominal control.

“For 60 years, Sana’a didn’t rule Marib. They built military camps but outside the camps there is no state, we have the tribal law,” Saleh said. “But the tribes are collapsing and need to modernise.” Saleh, who hails from one of the biggest tribes in Marib, spent five years studying computer science in India before returning to take part in the 2011 revolution. “When I came from my studies abroad I wanted to end the tribal system, and replace it with a modern state. I refused to carry a weapon or even participate in the revenge war that followed the murder of my brother, his father,” he said, pointing to the silent boy in the back. “I hate my gun and the pouches are too heavy and hurt my shoulders,” he added, tapping the three metal magazines in his green canvas pouch, a compulsory tribesman accessory. “But the revolution failed, and I realised that in the absence of a modern state the tribe is the best thing we have.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A tribal fighter in Baidha province. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

He drove up a stony hill, the sand stretching to the horizon dotted here and there with encampments and trucks. “Now I am carrying weapons against the Houthis.”

But he said his biggest enemies were not the rebels from the north but the radicals in his own midst, particularly AQAP.

“I can’t make a deal with AQ because they have no brains. I wish the Houthi would get into politics. If they come here as the elected authority no one can say anything. But if they come as a militia of course we will fight.”

“I am very pessimistic towards the Saudi money,” he added. “No country benefited from Saudi money anywhere in the Arab world, not in Syria, not in Iraq.”

To the left was a wide flat desert. Saleh said his tribe and a rival had fought over this land for 40 years. But since the Houthi attack all tribes had come together in the encampments and a general truce was signed.



“The best thing the Houthis did was to bring us together and make us go back and live in tents in the desert and remember a tradition we started to forget,” he said.

The best thing the Houthis did was to bring us together

The Cat was an officer in the Yemeni army. A year ago, he left his unit and went back to his tribe to join the militias resisting the Houthis, rising to become a battalion commander in the tribal army.

Three months ago, he acquired legendary status when he survived a sniper’s bullet that hit him just above the left ear. No one knows why he is called the Cat: some say it’s because of his round face; others because the bullet proved he has nine lives.

“In the army I couldn’t trust my soldiers. The army is divided among the different power centres in Yemen, and this is why when the Houthis came the army split and couldn’t stop them.



“There is a big difference between the tribesman and the soldier. The tribesman will never hand over his weapons: if he surrenders he shames not only himself but his whole tribe and loses his honour. They would prefer to die a hundred times. I know those men around me will never leave – they are my cousins, we are connected by blood and honour.”

As he spoke, two of his men ripped apart a chicken, dropping it in a large pot of boiling water. Another was kneading dough, breaking off small chunks and burying them in charcoal.

From the late 70s the rulers in Sana’a started using the recently settled Bedouin tribes of Marib as an auxiliary force in their external wars and internal crackdowns. They pumped massive amounts of armaments into the hands of tribesmen, who throughout history had placed a great value on weapons.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the military encampments in Marib province, where fighters opposed to the Houthis are stationed. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

Rocket launchers, heavy machine guns and artillery, and even tanks replaced the ancient Mauser and Enfield rifles as the preferred weapons in tribal warfare.

“Because of the blood feuds and tribal wars we train our children to use weapons even before they go to school,” said the Cat. He laughed and nodded towards the dunes. “Now my men are training on tanks we captured from the army last month.”

That night the sky blazed with tracer gunfire and distant explosions. The Cat left the military camps with his best crack troops and went to join his family in its war.

However, this battle was not between the Houthis and the tribes but between two branches of one tribe – a feud over a barren hill that been on and off for 20 years.



For a whole day and a night the two families positioned their pick-up trucks behind rock fortifications and fired heavy machine guns and mortars at each other.

Yemen: understanding Houthi motives is complicated but essential Read more

“We don’t want to kill people,” said the Cat. “Each one you kill you have to pay from your own people. In war even if you defeat your tribal enemy, if you have killed eight and they have killed four, you will owe your enemy four that he will kill as revenge.”

In the morning the Cat unleashed a massive shelling campaign to force the rivals to stop their feuding and accept mediation. The tribal war was stopped with an eight-day ceasefire.

The Cat was euphoric. “Can you imagine we did this among our friends – imagine what would we do to the strangers.”