As Houthis encircle Taiz, Yemen's Saudi-backed gov't faces disaster

To encircle Taiz means surrounding the city and limiting the movement of people, supplies, and aid. The World Food Program says it cannot reach more than 600,000 people in and around Taiz. The siege makes the city both a humanitarian emergency and a military pressure point.

The Houthis, formally called Ansar Allah, draw strength from Yemen’s Zaydi Shia highlands in the north. Critics say their ideology gives ruling rights to sayyids, or descendants of the Prophet Mohammad. The Houthi family belongs to that lineage. The movement denies wanting to restore the Imamate, but Taiz has resisted Houthi encroachment for a decade.

Today, the Houthis encircle Taiz again after a siege lasting from 2015 to 2017. Their renewed pressure follows a September offensive along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. It also coincides with a government counteroffensive that has so far stalled, leaving Taiz exposed and aid access restricted.

The crisis around Taiz has two large human dimensions: people trapped behind restricted access and people forced from their homes. The World Food Program says it cannot reach more than 600,000 people in and around the city. That number shows the scale of the siege’s humanitarian consequences.

The International Organization for Migration counts over 200,000 people displaced since the Houthi offensive on Yemen’s Red Sea coast began in September. The displacement figure covers people uprooted by the wider fighting, while the food-access figure concerns those whom aid workers cannot reach around Taiz.

Together, these figures show why the battle is more than a contest for territory. Taiz is again encircled, while fighting on the coast has driven mass displacement. Government forces have retaken some ground near Bab al-Mandab and Dhubab, but Mokha remains under Houthi control, so the emergency continues.

Taiz matters because it combines political symbolism with strategic geography. Its poets and journalists helped topple Yemen’s Imamate in 1962, and its streets became a center of the 2011 uprising against Ali Abdallah Saleh. The city has also resisted Houthi encroachment for a decade, making its fall especially meaningful.

The governorate is the birthplace of Rashad al-Alimi, who chairs the Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council. That council leads Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Al-Alimi announced Operation “Dawn of Yemen” on October 5, with the stated aim of recovering the whole country, including Sana’a, from the Houthis.

Taiz also sits between the Red Sea coast and the southern highlands that shelter Aden, the government’s administrative capital. Houthi control there could make the government’s counteroffensive around Bab al-Mandab harder to sustain. The government has retaken some ground, but its offensive appears stalled.

Control of Taiz and its surrounding mountains would give the Houthis a strategic position between Yemen’s Red Sea coast and the southern highlands around Aden. The city sits at this geographic hinge. That makes it important not only as a population center, but also as a route connecting several battlefronts.

The article says the southern highlands shelter Aden, the administrative capital of the internationally recognized government. It also says that Houthi control of the surrounding mountains would make the government’s counteroffensive around the Bab al-Mandab strait far harder to sustain. The Houthis already hold a contiguous area, allowing them to shift forces and materiel relatively easily.

This would put pressure on the government’s effort to recover the coast. Government forces retook ground around Bab al-Mandab and Dhubab, but Mokha remains in Houthi hands. If the offensive cannot hold its coastal gains, access between fronts and pressure on Aden could remain contested.

Yemen’s anti-Houthi forces struggle because the government umbrella contains many factions with separate commanders and political goals. They do not operate like a single army. Saudi Arabia supplies heavy air cover, but airpower cannot automatically resolve disagreements among ground forces or create one chain of command.

The article gives a clear example from the Red Sea coast. When the coast collapsed in September, Tareq Saleh’s National Resistance Forces withdrew to Aden. Southern units initially refused to let his men enter. Their suspicion reflects Saleh’s family history: his uncle, former president Ali Abdallah Saleh, helped northern forces defeat the south’s independence bid in the 1994 civil war.

This fragmentation lets the Houthis exploit their own advantage. They hold a contiguous area and can shift forces and materiel between fronts with relative ease. Their opponents must coordinate factions that distrust one another. As a result, the government counteroffensive has retaken some ground but appears stalled.

The 1962 revolution gave Taiz a lasting identity as an opponent of religious hereditary rule. The city’s poets and journalists supplied much of the dissident energy that toppled the Imamate. That history helps explain why many people in Taiz distrust the Houthis, whose critics link their ideology to sayyid rule, even though the movement denies seeking to restore the Imamate.

The 1994 civil war deepened north-south divisions. Northern forces overran the south and crushed its bid for independence. The memory remains politically powerful. Southern units’ suspicion of Tareq Saleh’s forces is tied to the role of his uncle, Ali Abdallah Saleh, in that war.

The 2011 uprising added another layer. Taiz was one of the centers of protests against Saleh’s presidency. These histories now overlap: opposition to hereditary rule, resentment of northern domination, and distrust of former regime networks. They make it harder for anti-Houthi factions to form a unified military and political front.

A proxy conflict is a local war shaped by outside powers that support opposing sides. The local fighters still battle over territory and political control, but foreign backing adds weapons, money, airpower, and wider strategic goals. That can prolong fighting and make compromise harder.

In Yemen, Iran is described as the Houthis’ primary outside patron, while Saudi Arabia backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Saudi forces have provided heavy air cover for government operations. The Houthis have also attacked Saudi targets, including King Khalid International Airport and Aramco’s headquarters, turning Yemen’s conflict into a direct regional security crisis.

The article says the war is now tightly bound to the wider U.S.-Iran war. Saudi Arabia has responded forcefully but avoids openly naming Tehran, possibly to preserve room for a Washington-Tehran deal. If Iran pressured the Houthis to de-escalate, the article says, it could create space for a Saudi-Houthi ceasefire and talks.