On the 25th of September, President of the Presidential Leadership Council of Yemen Rashad al-Alimi called for a general mobilisation of the Yemeni people against the Houthis and promised amnesty to Houthi defectors. From his base in Riyadh, he summoned “the sons and daughters of our great people” to a “general mobilisation” to join the efforts of the armed forces. What exactly does this mean in the Yemeni context?
The Tribe as the Bedrock of Yemeni Life
In Yemen, the tribe is, for the overwhelming majority of the population, the primary unit of social identity, political allegiance and economic security. The tribal system provides what the state, even at the best of times, has rarely managed, including dispute resolution, protection, welfare and a framework for collective action. Most day-to-day conflicts are prevented or resolved through the tribal system, not through formal courts. The tribe predates the Yemeni republic, predates Islam itself in its organisational roots and it has outlasted every political order that has sought to subordinate or abolish it.
This is the terrain on which all parties to Yemen’s conflicts have operated since the first Saada campaign in 2004, where the Houthis as an armed organisation clashed with government’s army for the first time. From the Saada wars to the 2011 uprising, from the Houthi seizure of the capital of Sanaa in 2014 to the Saudi-led intervention in 2015 and the fragmentation that followed, every belligerent (the Houthis, the government, the Southern Transitional Council, the Emiratis, the Saudis, the Islamists of al-Islah) has factored tribalism into its calculations. Military strategy, political alliances, economic extraction, patronage networks are all mediated through tribal structures.
To understand what is currently going on in Yemen, one must recognise how the Houthis co-opted the northern highland tribes, acknowledge Hadrami and Shabwani tribal politics and connect the dots between Yemen’s oil economy and which tribes sit atop which fields.
The Tribe as Political Technology
The rise of the Houthis owes as much to tribal co-option as to ideological fervour. When they swept into Sanaa in 2014, they did so on the back of an alliance of convenience with Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president who had spent three decades weaving tribal patronage networks across the northern highlands. Saleh’s intelligence files, including decades’ worth of dossiers on sheikhs, their debts, their feuds, their sons in government posts, fell into Houthi hands. So did the officers who had run those networks.
The Houthis did not destroy the tribal system, but repurposed it, grafting their own supervisors (mushrifeen) above traditional sheikhs and wiring compliant leaders into smuggling revenues, fuel imports and qat distribution. Relations can broadly be categorised as pragmatic and transactional within this order.
But tribal alliances are not static. Israeli strikes on ports, US sanctions and a wartime economy sliding into barter have squeezed Houthi finances, making the patronage payments that bought tribal loyalty harder to sustain.
More tellingly, resentment is growing against Houthi interference in tribal affairs. The Houthi doctrine of wilayah (the exclusive right of the ahl al-bayt, the Prophet’s descendants, to hold authority) sits uneasily with the tribal code of ‘urf, the customary law that governs everything from dispute mediation to collective defence.
When a woman claiming to be Saddam Hussein’s daughter sought tribal protection in al-Jawf earlier this year and the Houthis detained her and the sheikh who tried to mediate, the response was matarih bringing together tribes of different political stripes – not out of love for the government, but in defence of tribal autonomy itself.
Tribal Resources
Nowhere is the tribal calculus more consequential than in the competition over Yemen’s natural wealth. Yemen’s oil and gas reserves are concentrated in the eastern and central governorates (Hadramawt, Shabwa, Marib, al-Jawf) and those reserves sit beneath tribal territory. Thus, tribes control access to them. They guard the pipelines, protect (or threaten) the oil facilities and negotiate the terms of extraction with whatever authority claims sovereignty over the area.
Hadramawt is Yemen’s largest governorate, accounting for 36% of the country’s territory and produces around 80% of Yemeni oil. The Hadramawt Tribes Alliance, formed in 2013 under Saudi patronage and led by Sheikh Amr bin Habrish, has positioned itself as the guardian of the province’s resources. Its military wing, the Hadramawt Protection Forces, is based in the Hadaba area, at the heart of the oil fields.
When the Southern Transitional Council moved on Hadramawt in late 2025, it was precisely the oil infrastructure, i.e. the fields around al-Masila, the pipelines and the export terminals, that it sought to seize. The STC’s justification was that it was “securing” the facilities, but the tribes saw it as theft.
In Shabwa, Yemen’s second-most important oil province, the Shabwa Tribes Alliance has taken an even firmer line. In July 2026, it declared its rejection of any resumption of oil exports until the governorate receives 50% of resource revenues, a refinery is built and local tribes are given priority in employment. The Alliance warned that it could mobilise tribes to block oil tankers from leaving the facilities altogether.
The central state does not simply extract oil and distribute revenues, but has to negotiate with tribal authorities who can – and do – shut down production at will. When the government of Yemen wants to export oil, it must first secure the acquiescence of the tribes who live above it.
A Mobilisation That Goes Both Ways
This is the environment in which al-Alimi’s call comes. The government negotiates with tribes and tribes have their own calculations. In Marib in 2014, tribal matarih halted the Houthi advance north of the city, but only after the tribes decided that the Houthi project threatened their own survival. The same calculus is in play today. Tribal leader Abdelwahid al-Qibil Nimran stated that “tribes cannot confront the Houthis militarily without support from the state”. Mobilisation, in other words, is not a unilateral act.
The government’s main obstacle is that it is not the only bidder. In the south and east, the landscape is a mosaic of competing tribal alliances held together by foreign patrons. The UAE has cultivated the STC and its Hadrami Elite Forces, while Saudi Arabia has backed rival tribal formations such as the Hadramawt Tribes Alliance.
When the STC moved on Seiyun and the oil plateau in late 2025, the tribes that Riyadh had armed largely stood aside (or, according to some assessments, were abandoned) as Emirati-backed forces consolidated control.
What Next?
Al-Alimi’s mobilisation call may have an effect. The Houthis’ economic strains and their ideological assault on ‘urf have alienated certain tribal constituencies that once acquiesced to their rule. The government’s amnesty offer, aimed at Houthi fighters who defect from 26 September, is meant to exploit those fissures. But a call from Riyadh is not the same as a call to arms in Marib, al-Jawf or Hadramawt. The tribes will mobilise when their own interests are at stake, on their own terms and for their own reasons. The government can enable, arm and pay, but it cannot command.
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Thus, “popular mobilisation” in Yemen is a bottom-up negotiation, with sheikhs weighing their options and young men carrying out their tribal duty. Any outsider who wishes to understand the situation should consider the important factor of tribalism.
Vanessa Sevidova, MGIMO graduate, expert on the Middle East, working in the sphere of public diplomacy
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