Background
In 1962, a revolution in North Yemen ended over 1,000 years of rule by Zaydi Imams, a branch of Shia Islam, who claimed descent from the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. Sa'dah, in the north, was their main stronghold and since their fall from power the region was largely ignored economically and remains underdeveloped. The Yemeni government has little authority in Saada.
During Yemen's 1994 civil war, the Wahhabis, an Islamic group adhering to a strict version of Sunni Islam found in neighboring Saudi Arabia, helped the government in its fight against the secessionist south. Zaydis complain the government has subsequently allowed the Wahabis too strong a voice in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, for its part, worries that strife instigated by the Shia sect so close to Yemen's border with Saudi Arabia could stir up groups in Saudi itself.
Although it has received little international coverage, the conflict essentially pits Yemen's Sunni-majority government against Shia fighters, a conflict that has added significance for many Arab countries worried about the rising influence of Shia-ruled Iran.
The last five years of fighting against the armed Houthi group were sparked in 2004 by the government's attempt to arrest Hussein al-Houthi, a Zaydi religious leader of Shabab Al Mu'mineen and a former parliamentarian on whose head the government had placed a $55,000 bounty.
Read more about this topic: Shia Insurgency In Yemen
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)