Houthi movement

The Houthi movement, officially called Ansar Allah and colloquially simply Houthis, is an Islamist political and armed movement that emerged from Saada in northern Yemen in the 1990s. The movement was called Houthis because its founder is from the Houthi tribe. The Houthi movement is a predominately Zaidi Shia force. The Houthis have a complex relationship with Yemen's Sunni Muslims; the movement has both discriminated against Sunnis, but also recruited and allied with them. Under the leadership of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the group emerged as an opposition to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, whom they charged with massive financial corruption and criticized for being backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States at the expense of the Yemeni people and Yemen's sovereignty. Resisting Saleh's order for his arrest, Hussein was killed in Sa'dah in 2004 along with a number of his guards by the Yemeni army, sparking the Houthi insurgency in Yemen. Since then, except for a short intervening period, the movement has been led by his brother Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.