Northwestern Highlands

Conflict background

Before the start of the current conflict, the northern-most governorate of the region, Amran, witnessed fierce battles between Houthi and pro-Islah forces of the 310th Armored Brigade, led by the senior commander of the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG) Hamid al-Qushaybi,¹Al-Masdar, ‘Al-Qushaybi, hours before his martyrdom: We will defend and fight, and we will die on the fields of honor, and the eyes of the cowards will not sleep,’ 9 July 2014 in 2014 as the Houthis advanced south from Saada towards the capital city of Sanaa. The battle, during which over 200 people were reportedly killed and injured on both sides,²Asharq Al-Awsat, ‘Houthis expand presence in Amran amid humanitarian crisis,’ 10 July 2014 was eventually won by the Houthis in July and proved decisive in the defeat of government forces, allowing the group to enter Sanaa.³International Crisis Group, ‘The Huthis: From Sa’ada to Sana’a’, 10 June 2014, pp.3-4 

Since then, the Northwestern Highland region has seen limited clashes between the warring parties even after the war broke out in early 2015 as most of the region was already under Houthi control by then. However, although there was little ground fighting, the region was subjected to regular Coalition airstrikes, although not to the extent of most of the other Houthi-controlled regions in the north of the country as none of the governorates in the Northwestern Highlands were active frontlines. Most of the strikes in the region were concentrated on Amran and Dhamar due to their proximity and connections to some of the main fronts in the conflict, in particular al-Jawf, Marib, and al-Bayda.⁴Casey Coombs and Salah Ali Salah, ‘The War on Yemen’s Roads,’ Sana’a Centre for Strategic Studies, 16 January 2023, pp.19-20

The airstrikes resulted in several high-casualty incidents in the region. Most notably, strikes that hit a Houthi detention center housing prisoners of war inside a former community college in Dhamar city in September 2019 left over 130 reported fatalities and another 40 injured in one of the deadliest bombings of the war. The site had reportedly been visited several times by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had reportedly included the facility on a no-strike list provided to the Coalition, but spokesperson Turki al-Maliki denied they had ever been informed of the facility, which they considered a legitimate military target as it was housing weapons.

As the bombing campaign quickly exhausted fixed targets of military value, the targeting for the aerial operation expanded to include retaliatory strikes and suspected Houthi gathering places and weapons stores, increasingly in populated areas. Other notable incidents during these high points of the bombing campaign that resulted in civilian casualties, for which the Coalition denied any culpability citing, included airstrikes on a wedding gathering in Mayfaa Ans district in southeastern Dhamar that caused at least 43 reported fatalities in October 2015, and strikes on markets in Jabal Iyal Yazid district that resulted in 29 fatalities in July 2015 and another in Qafla Udhar district in January 2018 with nine deaths, both in Amran governorate. Moreover, in early 2022 in the months before the UN-mediated truce, Dhamar and Amran, in addition to other governorates in the country, saw a round of airstrikes that targeted telecommunications networks, with the Coalition accusing the Houthis of using these to coordinate launching points for drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Airstrikes have decreased with time and completely ceased after the start of the truce in April 2022.

Local tribal conflicts have since been the main cause of clashes in the region’s four governorates. Armed clashes had intermittently broken out between different groups of tribesmen over land disputes and revenge issues. Although the clashes are usually ended by local mediation, the grudges can remain within the conflicting tribes and may erupt a few days, months, or even years later. Disagreements with Houthi-appointed supervisors and officials, often over levies and taxes, are another common source of unrest but are usually strongly and quickly suppressed by Houthi security forces.