On February 5, the State Department informed Congress of its plans to remove Yemen’s Houthi guerrillas from its list of foreign terrorist organizations, a decision that goes into effect today. In the two days after the announcement, the Houthis—an Iran-backed insurrectionist group that has plunged the country into a bloody civil war—launched five drone attacks on civilian targets in Yemen, leading to a condemnation from Foggy Bottom, but no change in policy. Elliott Abrams observes a “contradiction.”
What do we usually call attacks on civilians, of the sort that led to this State Department rebuke? Terrorism. What might we call [the] December Houthi attack, [on the Yemeni city of Aden, that killed 22 and wounded 50 more]? Again, this is rightly called terrorism. The main defense of the Trump administration decision to call the Houthis terrorists is that they repeatedly commit acts of terrorism. QED. And the main critique of the Biden administration’s revocation of that decision is equally simple: the Houthis have long committed, and continue to commit, acts of terror. They should be designated a foreign terrorist organization because they are one.
The motivation for the Biden decision is clear: the designation may have a negative humanitarian impact in Yemen because some suppliers of food and other goods may back away for fear of prosecution. It may also be that the administration concluded that the terrorism designation would make negotiating with the Houthis more complex, thereby hindering efforts to end the war.
Logic suggests an alternative view: that the Houthis will be less inclined to negotiate, especially because the administration’s decision comes only days after its statement that it would no longer support offensive military operations by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. If I were a Houthi leader, I might conclude “I am winning. The Americans want out. They’ve walked away from the Saudis and reversed the terrorism designation even though my own behavior has not changed. Why negotiate?” If that is right, the Biden administration ought to be thinking hard about ways to change the incentive structure it has backed into.
The day after Abrams wrote these words, the Houthi drones attacked an airport in southern Saudi Arabia, setting a civilian plane on fire.
Read more on Pressure Points: https://www.cfr.org/blog/biden-and-houthis