obviously, we're suddenly trying to bring the situation in yemen into focus. me too, and one thing i can say is that it's pretty darn complex. a person i know sent me from yemen the following summary of the situation, which i am throwing down verbatim.

The current war between the Huthis and the government forces (now the saudi forces as well) is not the first, but is almost the 6th offensive to try and get rid of the whole movement in the Sa'ada Province (northeast of the country). These guys are called the Huthis after their leader Hussein Al-Huthi, who was killed by one of these army offensives in 2003. The interesting part, though, is that this guy and his brother had govenment scholarships to go study in Iran, and needless to say, the Huthi family is a very big family of the Shiite sect (Zaidi Faction) in the country, and their ancestry goes back to the fallen Imam who ruled Northern Yemen back in the late 50s and until 1962. So these Huthi brothers came back from Iran with their fine religious education and actually joined the Parliament as members of the "Haq" Party-meaning truth, but then our guy in the sportlight, Hussein, dropped out of the party because he had disagreements with his family and the members of the party regarding some Shiite-belief details (some factions believe in 4 Imams and some in 12- i can't really ive much detail here coz I am Sunni). Of course, here you wonder why would the Sunni government support a Shiite religious leader just like that, but the truth is, Yemen still prety much functions under tribal laws, especially the North, and since the government itself, in addition to being a military government, is pretty much a tribal government as well (most members of the ruling party come from the president's tribe, etc) and these laws are basically that you pacify possible factions by giving them government posts, peices of land, money, certain regional power, etc. Now we all know Yemen is predominantly Sunni, and needless to say, the Shiites are a silenced minority (lots of people think that shiites don't believe in the prophet and are semi-worshipping Khumaini, etc etc), but this never really surfaced. Now, after Hussein Al-Huthi left the Parliament, he started this movement called "Al-Shabab Al-Mu'emeneen" meaning the Faithful Youth, and rumour has it tha during that time, HUGE amounts of money was being wired to Al-Huthi, and the government pretended not to notice, because quite frankly, there is nothing in Sa'ada, it is a dry mountanous land with absolutely no resources in it. We don't know if this was the government being stupid and only expecting mutiny from the Socialists, r if it were a political move. So, in 2003, the youth group became a full-fledged religious/political movement that spoke out against the government, and against all "infidels", including America, Israel, etc etc. Now, unlike other groups, these guys did not kidnap foreigners or bomb random foreign interests, they were only targetting military bases and personnel. So this kind of set them apart, and I guess they were not taken very seriously as a threat because it was more like a "family business"- i mean look at the name- rather than serious opposition....or again, it could all be part of a political game that the gov is playing a part in just to get rid of some thorns on its side.

Alright, so what did Al-Huthi want? no one really knows, the guy was killed before anyone really found out, and I doubt the Huthis themselves really know if they have a sepcific goal in their rebellion. Some ppl claim that these guys want the whole country to return to Imamite rule and go under the same laws as Iran, some ppl say that they want the seperation and autonomy of Sa'ada as a Shiite state under their own laws, some people think that these people simply got sick of living in the margin and wanted to be part of the political life (but then, who the hell is included in it anyway, shiite or not?) And it turned out that these guys had arms, massive arms, and that the movement has become popular and succeedded in building up quite a support base. The government freaked out, because now, in addition to the South always being a threat, the Al-Qaeda existance that has not yet been under control, and the factions within the factions in every governorate in the whole damn country, there are these guys who are not only strong locally, but also have the outside support of almighty Iran. So wars have been faught and many many many people killed. Yes, the Huthi insurgents have captured and killed many military personnel and high profile officers, etc, and launched attacks against bases and certain government offices in Sa'ada, but the governmet forces have been killing left and right, with no regard to who is being killed (they have used such words as "eradicating and cleansing" Sa'ada from Huthis and Huthi sympathizers, including random civilians. It has been easy for the gov to market this whole war as a war against factionism, anti-nationlism, and instead of using "infidelity" which they used against the leftists, they added terrorism (which has been easily bought by the masses since those guys broadcast videos saying death to Israel and Death to America and death to the infidels). So, after their leader died and the government assumed the whole thing wud die out, they became eve more vigilant, and the war got even more intense. A story someone who was arrested for trespassing a banned area in Sa'ada has told me that this quarentined village in Sa'ada had green air and scattered with bloated deformed bodies, hundreds of them they said, many were kids. The airraids are something that's been happening in the past couple of years only, and yes, villages and schools have also been "mistakenly" targeted (i can actually hear the fighterjets right now). Yemen has become a headlines sensation especially that the situation of the ppl of Sa'ada has been going from bad to worse to just plain old screwed up as hell and it is upsetting the international community and hmanitarian organizations are trying to push for aid for this disaster region. A couple of UNHCR workers were arrested several months ago for sticking their noses in the gov business, and now the government has of course launched its own aid efforts to Sa'ada (food, clothes, water) just to shut everyone up...and the bombarding continues.

Now, do the Huthis have Iran's support? most probably yes, but then the government kindda knew that from the getgo, and these guys are not just waiting for smuggled arms, another confidential resource has informed someone i know that after the Huthis evacuated a certain moutainous area, the gov orces found a gigantic pit dug under one of the mountains which looked like an assembly line for manifacturing arms...dunno if it's true or not, but it is def possible. Now, with saudi it gets a bit tricky. We don't like the Saudis and they certainly do not like us, not governments and not populations, but since Sa'ada is on the Yemeni  border with Saudi, and refugees were trying to rush in, the Saudis naturally felt threatened, coz 1- they do not want Yemeni refugees, 2- they do not want their borders compromised by rebel groups 3-they sure as hell do not want Iran sticking its hand in there. So, the yemeni government gave them the green light to go ahead and bombard the crap out of the Huthis and whoever they feel like levelling to the ground in that area anyway. Alot of people are seeing this as ethnic cleansing, and truthfully, in many ways it is. But we still do not know what the Huthis want, and what is really the extent of their power.

Now, alot of people who are not shiite and are not huthi are huthi sympathizers because everyone is sick of the government and it's kind of a breath of fresh air that someone is daring to stand up to it. Alot of the opposition parties have no beef at all with the Huthis, and were even encouraged by their rebellion to voice some of their own concerns as well. The exiled socialists have been on TV demanding the seperation of the south again, and demanding their nice little democratic marxist state back instead of the north-imposed tyranny...even some of the very famous president's puppets have been on TV talking shit about the guy and asking him to step down from the eagle's throne. So it's really really getting messy.