The Houthi rebels’ failure to lead recruitment campaigns

Campaigns by Houthi terrorist militia leaders, under the guidance of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, have failed to recruit more Yemenis to make up for the shortages on the front lines.

Reliable sources in Sanaa revealed a wide popular rejection of the Houthi compulsory recruitment campaigns, which were launched four days ago. They confirmed that the families of the militia fighters who went missing in the battles of the past months in Shabwah, Marib and Hajjah are exerting pressure on the coup, and that the tribes accuse the Houthi leaders of sending their sons to the flashpoints.

The sources said: “There is widespread rejection, not only from tribal leaders, but from various segments of society who responded to the militia’s demands to know the fate of their missing children first”.

Over the past two years, more than 1,000 Houthi militants have been missing, the majority of whom disappeared in Marib and Shabwah, and some in Hajjah and Taiz, it said.

The sources pointed out that anyone who is captured by the law has the ability of his family to know his fate, but those who are killed and the militia leaves his body and flee are still missing.

A few days ago, the terrorist group launched a recruitment campaign for civilians under the slogan: The Yemen Hurricane Campaign, in the presence of the head of the unrecognized coup government, Abdel Aziz ben Habtour, and a number of militia leaders in the capital, Sana’a.

The Houthi militias formed field teams led by supervisors and pro-militia officials following the event, according to the sources, and began fielding new fighters in the capital’s neighborhoods.

Residents in Sanaa have complained about the coup’s return, saying they are intensifying their movements and fielding them to their areas in the capital to demand that residents force their children to fight on the front lines.

A source close to the Houthi government in Sanaa said leaders, supervisors and loyalists of the group began fielding candidates late last week in Shamlan, Madhbah and al-Sunaina neighborhoods in Sanaa’s Maeen district in an attempt to launch an urgent recruitment campaign among civilians.

The source revealed that the Brotherhood, following its arrival in these areas (with high population densities), was deeply disappointed, exceeding all its hopes and expectations.

The source, whose identity was withheld for fear of militia brutality, noted that due to perceived popular reluctance, only a few individuals, no more than a handful, responded to these Houthi calls for recruitment and mobilization in those targeted areas.

It said: The group’s leaders in Sanaa have reissued instructions to their followers to resume field visits to these areas and to use all means of intimidation to make the mobilization a success again.

According to the same source, some instructions urged supervisors to target public and private schools in those areas, and to oblige those responsible to recruit at least seven students from each school as a matter of urgency.

The source reported that Houthi leaders threatened their followers and loyalists with severe penalties and denied them several privileges if they failed again to make the recruitment and mobilization campaign a success.

As a result of the tremendous human losses incurred by the militias and still ongoing in the Marib, Taiz, al-Jawf, Hajjah and other fronts by Yemeni forces supported by the Coalition for Legitimacy’s aviation, the group is now continuing to launch recruitment campaigns targeting civilians in several provinces, cities and villages under its control.

The head of the Houthi coup ruling council, Mahdi al-Mashat, admitted about two weeks ago that his group is suffering from a severe shortage in the number of its fighters and the depletion of its human resources. He called on the various institutions and civilian and other sectors in the areas under its control to play their role in the urgent mobilization and mobilization to the front lines.