Saada Governorate

Saada exists because mountains exist. At 1,800 meters in the Sarawat range—northwest Yemen where terrain climbs to 2,050 meters—this governorate's geography made it unconquerable and its isolation made it a refugium. In 893 AD, Imam Yahya al-Hadi ilal-Haqq founded Saada city as the capital of the Zaidi imamate, a branch of Shia Islam that would rule northern Yemen for the next 1,069 years until the 1962 revolution. The mountains weren't incidental to this longevity; they were essential. Central authority couldn't reach Saada easily, which meant Zaidi power structures, kinship networks, and religious authority persisted largely undisturbed through centuries when other parts of Yemen changed hands repeatedly. The geography that made Saada difficult to govern from outside also made it difficult to rule from inside—decentralized, tribal, poor, and neglected even by the imams who claimed it as their spiritual home.

When the 1962 revolution overthrew the last Zaidi imam and established the Yemen Arab Republic, Saada lost its political centrality but retained its identity. For four decades, the governorate remained economically marginalized—among Yemen's poorest regions, with minimal infrastructure development. Then in 1992, a Zaidi revivalist movement called "the Believing Youth" formed in Saada to counter what locals saw as encroaching Wahhabi and Salafi influence funded by Saudi Arabia. The movement, led by Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi (from the town of Huth in southern Saada), argued that Zaidi faith and traditional power structures were under existential threat. In 2004, when President Ali Abdullah Saleh placed a $55,000 bounty on Hussein al-Houthi and arrested hundreds of his followers, the conflict erupted. Hussein was killed in September 2004. His brother Abdul-Malik al-Houthi took over, transforming a religious revival into an armed insurgency.

Between 2004 and 2010, six wars—known as the Saada Wars—devastated the governorate. Each round followed a pattern: government offensive, Houthi guerrilla resistance, ceasefire, renewed fighting. In 2009, Saudi Arabia entered directly when Houthi fighters crossed the border, launching Operation Scorched Earth. A ceasefire held from February 2010 until 2014, when Houthis captured Sana'a and the national civil war began. In 2015, a Saudi-led coalition intervened, declaring the entire Saada Governorate a military target. Since then, Saada has absorbed more airstrikes per capita than any other part of Yemen—Saudi coalition strikes, US strikes targeting Houthi missile sites, and drone attacks. In April 2025, a strike on a Saada detention center killed 68 African migrants—the largest single civilian death toll in a US military operation since the 2017 Mosul airstrike.

By 2025, Saada remains the Houthi heartland, the governorate most firmly under Ansar Allah control. The mountains that made it a Zaidi refugium for over a millennium now make it a military stronghold. Border violence with Saudi Arabia continues weekly in Shada and Munabbih districts along the western edge. The governorate's isolation—geographic, economic, political—hasn't changed since 893 AD. What changed is that isolation is no longer protection. The same terrain that shielded Zaidi imams from outside control now concentrates airstrikes. Saada's population can't leave easily, and external forces can't occupy easily, creating a stalemate measured in decades rather than months.

By 2026, Saada demonstrates what happens when a refugium becomes a battlefield. The mountains preserved a distinct religious and political identity for 1,100 years, but that distinctiveness now makes Saada a permanent target. The Houthis won't abandon their historical heartland, and their opponents won't stop trying to eliminate the threat at its source. Isolation used to mean survival; now it means you absorb the damage because there's nowhere else to go.