If Marib Falls to the Houthis, What Would Be the Future of the Legitimate Government in Yemen?

The field escalation that the Houthi group started in October 2021 on the southern outskirts of Marib Governorate (north), leads to the advance of its elements and their control of the most important districts.

Houthi militants managed to win the Harib district on September 23, 2021, while the tribal fighters of the Abdiya district withdrew on October 15, 2021, after a suffocating siege imposed by the Houthi elements on the district.

The center of the Jubah Directorate, and its security department, fell into the hands of the Houthis at the end of October 2021, and on November 2, 2021, the Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, announced, in a tweet via Twitter, his group's control of the Jabal Murad Directorate.

Thus, the Houthi militias are 30 kilometers away from the city of Marib, the center of the governorate, the last stronghold of the Yemeni government, and the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense.

The Marib Governorate includes the largest concentration of energy in Yemen, and there is the Marib Gas Station, which continued to supply most of the governorates with electric power before it was damaged by the outbreak of war in the governorate.

These developments raised questions about the outcome and the expected scenarios for the battle of Marib, at a time when efforts for a political settlement under international auspices were looming.

 

Worst Case Scenario

Many experts believe that "controlling the city of Marib has many complications and dangerous dimensions that must be considered with special attention," stressing that "Marib owns the decision to resolve the battle in Yemen."

"If the Houthis defeat the Saudi-backed Yemeni army and take control of Yemen's energy hub, they will have effectively won the war," said David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute.

Schenker predicted that "the potential consequences will be significant, and the Houthis will not stop targeting US allies in the Gulf militarily."

He pointed out that "if the swinging Saudi coalition loses the Yemeni city of Hodeida and the rest of the Red Sea coast, the Houthis can also easily disrupt more than 6 million barrels of oil and petroleum products that pass daily through one of the main passages in the world, the Bab al-Mandab strait."

Diplomatic observers pointed out that the Houthi group decided, since the beginning of the war, to escalate the military attacks to seize Marib, "away from the course of negotiations that mislead the world."

Intense UN-brokered talks in April and May 2021 to discuss ceasefires in both Marib and Yemen in general faltered after the Houthis rejected the agreement.

A report published by the American "Foreign Policy" magazine stated "the Houthis' tendency towards a military solution instead of a negotiated solution was fruitful, two years after their military campaign in Marib."

"If the Houthis achieve a victory, it will certainly be very expensive," it said. "It was reported that the Houthis lost thousands of soldiers, many of them children, in this effort, but it would mark a turning point."

The magazine continued, "In fact, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was right when he officially described them as terrorists. The group deliberately bombs hospitals, recruits and deploys child soldiers, and on December 30, 2020, it tried to kill all members of the Yemeni government."

The correspondent of the Chinese Xinhua agency, Fares al-Hamiri, quoted local sources as saying that "the Houthis are now sending large numbers of children into their offensive lines in the battles that have been going on for weeks south of Marib, in light of the death and injury of dozens of these children on an almost daily basis."

 

Human Hell

According to observers, the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the event of the fall of Marib in the hands of the Houthi group "will represent the worst scenario that Yemen can experience."

The Guardian newspaper published a report by its correspondent in the Middle East, Bethan McKernan, in which she reviewed the high cost of the Marib battles, which have been receiving displaced people from other regions of the country over the past years.

McKernan indicated that "more than 100 civilians were killed or wounded in Marib during October 2021, as fighting intensified there."

On November 1, 2021, 39 civilians were killed in a Houthi missile attack targeting a mosque and a religious school for Salafis in the village of al-Amoud, south of Marib.

The governmental Executive Unit for the Management of IDPs Camps in Marib said, in a report published by the Turkish Anadolu Agency, that since the beginning of September 2021, "the hostilities of the Houthis against the safe havens" in the southern districts of Marib have not stopped.

"The humanitarian situation will remain critical, as a third of Yemenis still face starvation and depend on the United Nations World Food Program for daily sustenance," it added.

In the same context, Peter Salisboy, a researcher at the International Crisis Group, believes that "the population of Marib increased during the years of the civil war from 300,000 to 3 million."

Since the beginning of the war in Yemen about 8 years ago, Marib has enjoyed security and development, and this has enabled it to shelter more than two million displaced people, who fled repression in the Houthi-controlled areas.

About 10,000 people were displaced in October 2021, according to the Relief Agency (international charity), in the largest wave of displacement recorded in less than one month this year, due to the recent Houthi escalation on Marib.

The regional director of the Yemen division of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Erin Hutchinson, issued a statement saying: "Our staff can only reach a small portion of those in need in Marib, and what we are providing is just a drop in the ocean compared to the enormous needs."

More than 70 percent of Yemenis require assistance to survive, and with 5 million already hungry, nearly half are food insecure.

 

Iranian Accounts

In an article published on the website of the Persian Jaraian Studies Center, Iranian writer Ali Reza Majidi said that "the Houthis' control of Marib will close the issue of legitimacy, and Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his internationally recognized government will become a thing of the past."

He added: "The city of Marib has remarkable economic importance, as it is the most important oil and gas center in Yemen and owning the Marib card in the political negotiations will be an effective factor, because in any political framework, Sanaa depends heavily on the Marib economy."

In Majidi's view, in order to achieve Iranian interests, "a distinction must be made between two categories of positive and negative factors for this event."

He pointed out that "there are 138 camps for the displaced in areas controlled by government forces, and Marib governorate is the largest gathering place for Houthi opponents, including opposition parties and tribes in northern Yemen."

Majidi stressed that "if the Houthis take control of the city of Marib, it will be the path to the fragmentation of Yemen and its division into two independent states."

He added, "Perhaps one of the most important reasons for the Southern Transitional Council (the prominent political institution for southern separatists) public support for the Houthi takeover of Marib is that this process is a major step towards the dismantling and fragmentation of Yemen and the independence of the southern regions from Sanaa."

According to Majidi, the city of Marib should be called "the last link between north and south Yemen."

 

Existential Battle

In light of the recent military developments, the governor of Marib Governorate, Sultan al-Arada, announced the Yemenis' refusal to accept defeat before the Houthi group.

Al-Arada said during a television interview on November 6, 2021, after his meeting with the security committee in the governorate, that "Marib has stood and will stand, Marib defeated them in the beginning, and it will destroy them in the end."

Al-Arada added, "It is true that there are directorates that have fallen. I admit this, and it is not a defect. The war is a debate."

Regarding the talk about the fall of the fronts south of the governorate at the hands of the Houthis, al-Arada explained that "it is not in the interest of the nation at these moments to talk about the reasons for the fall of those areas."

Al-Arada stressed that: "The Yemeni people are interested in restoring their state. The Yemenis must rely on themselves, because it is their battle before it is the battle of the Arab coalition."

He continued, "Iran entered with its power and managed the battle from inside Sana'a, through its officers and experts, and this intensifies the responsibility on the brothers in the Arab coalition."

The Director of the Office of the Governor of Sanaa Governorate in the legitimate government, Nayef al-Qiri, confirmed that "the military tactic of the National Army forces on the fronts south of Marib necessitated turning those areas into a hotbed of attrition for the Houthi fighters."

Al-Qiri told Al-Estiklal that "the plan of legitimacy in areas south of Marib was a tactical withdrawal from mountainous military sites with difficult terrain, and this would make it easier for the legitimate forces and coalition aviation to hunt all Houthi forces."

Yemeni journalist and researcher, Fahd Sultan, believes that underestimating the seriousness of the Houthi advance in the districts of southern Marib is a "big mistake."

In an interview with Al-Estiklal, Sultan said, "Military tactics are not in this way. Marib is in more real danger than ever before, and not admitting a mistake is a big mistake, but does this mean that the battle is over, the answer is incorrect."