Storming the palace: the Houthi insurgency in Yemen

In January 2015, a group of rebels known as the “Houthi” toppled the government of Yemen after eleven years of armed struggle. How did the Houthi manage to do so? The article argues that the main variables that explain rebel victory in civil wars, rebel capacity, state (in)capacity, and external support, can explain how this rebel group managed to oust the government of Yemen. The analysis demonstrates that the Houthi high mobilising and military capacity, the external support of the former ruler of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh, and, most importantly, the low capacity of the state, resulting from a chronic institutional weakness of Yemen’s regimes, incompetence of the armed forces, and unsoundness of the counterinsurgency strategy, are the factors that can explain why and how the Houthi have managed to wage an effective rebellion that caused the collapse of the government of Yemen.