Taiz governorate in southwestern Yemen was never simply another front in the country’s war. The seven-day lightning offensive in September — in which the Houthis seized the strategic port city of Mokha and the Bab al-Mandab Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden — amounted to more than a change on a map. And several districts in the south, west and east of Taiz governorate collapsed between Sept. 13 and Oct. 10, extending Houthi control to additional strategic areas and consolidating their gains on Yemen’s western coast.
Taiz governorate has been one of the most important centers of resistance to the Houthis throughout the conflict. Its demographic, political and historical weight means that battles there have an importance that extends far beyond the governorate itself. If the Houthis consolidate their hold on what remains of the countryside and the city of Taiz itself, they could reshape the balance of power in Yemen.
Recent events reveal a painful paradox: Taiz was a popular base of support for the republican system, which was born in 1962 following the overthrow of the theocratic monarchy that ruled the country. The population also had combat experience. But locals failed to forge a unified military institution capable of protecting the area and honoring its sacrifices. The recent collapse was not simply the result of a shortage of fighters or a lack of will to fight; it was also the product of failures in command, coordination and supply, and the subordination of nationwide institution-building to partisan and personal interests.
For roughly 12 years, Taiz governorate remained a major center of resistance, even while the Houthis controlled parts of the city of Taiz and large stretches of its countryside, including al-Hawban, the governorate’s most important economic and commercial center. But the endurance of its people and fighters never translated into a sustainable defense system. The front lines remained exposed to fragmented decision-making, competing interests and weak coordination, until the nightmare of a renewed siege returned.
The question today is not only whether the Houthis will be able to take the city of Taiz, but what this development would mean for Yemen’s future. Would it represent a military setback that can be contained, or a strategic shift that could redraw the balance of power in western Yemen, weaken the anti-Houthi camp and deepen the divide between north and south?
This is not only a story of retreating front lines, but one of a resistance that never became an army, of a leadership that never learned the lessons of the war and of a republican state-building project now under threat because the forces that championed it proved unable to build the institutions needed to defend it.
The recent reversals in Taiz’s countryside cannot be understood apart from the transformations that preceded them on the country’s west coast. The Houthis’ advance into the areas of Mokha, Mawza and al-Waziiya, and their push toward the coastal strip and Bab al-Mandab, put new military pressure on the highlands that provide important defensive depth for the governorate.
These developments should have prompted military and government commanders, along with their regional allies, to reassess the situation and prepare for the battle to shift from the coast to the mountains. The southern and western highlands are not geographically isolated from the coast; they are connected to it by a network of roads and mountain passes that carry an outsize strategic weight. The coast and the highlands should have been treated as a single, interconnected theater of operations, not as two separate fronts.
According to military, political and local sources, the warnings about the battle moving into the highlands were not taken seriously, and the signals that emerged on the coast did not translate into defensive preparations proportionate to the threat. When the escalation in the countryside began, gaps in coordination and response were exposed, even though the period following the collapse of the coastal front was, in the assessment of those sources, sufficient to redeploy and address the vulnerabilities.
The Houthi move from the coast into the mountains was not unexpected. After securing coastal positions, advancing to the surrounding terrain is the natural next step. Government forces should have recognized that losing positions on the coast could lead to pressure on the highlands and the routes connecting the city of Taiz to its southern countryside, leaving government positions exposed from several sides.
But the response fell well short of what the threat demanded. The setbacks began in Bani Omar in al-Shamayatayn district, and then spread to al-Safiya and the areas of al-Maafar and al-Hujariah, as the Houthis severed the main road between Taiz and al-Turbah. After the fall of al-Turbah, the fighting moved to the areas of al-Mawsit, Samaa and al-Silw; then Jabal Habashi fell, and clashes spread to al-Misrakh. At the same time, government forces and resistance fighters withdrew from positions in the countryside toward the city, while other units pulled back toward Tur al-Baha.
These were not isolated losses; they were a chain of connected reversals that dismantled defensive lines and threatened the supply and communication routes between the city and its hinterland. Every position that fell put neighboring positions at risk. Every road that was cut made it harder to move reinforcements and ammunition, and left remaining units more exposed to isolation and encirclement.
According to local accounts, on Sept. 13 Houthi groups entered positions in the western highlands, particularly in Bani Omar, using motorcycles and some larger vehicles, moving through mountain roads and villages that are difficult to navigate without knowledge of the terrain. These accounts described attempts to probe defensive positions and exploit the sluggish response, along with the distribution of cash and supplies to local cells.
Not all of the movements began with broad assaults. Some aimed to test the reactions of defending forces and identify gaps in their deployment. But the initial breaches were not contained quickly enough, and they developed into a rolling advance that overran adjacent positions and allowed the attackers to push further.
In some locations, including al-Ajram, west of Taiz, positions fell after limited resistance, while other areas saw intermittent clashes. In some cases, reinforcements arrived late, according to local accounts, giving the Houthis additional time to advance.
The scene also carried symbolic weight. Houthi slogans echoed through valleys and mountains long associated with the songs and anthems of Abdullah Abdulwahab Noman, known as al-Fadool, and with the national anthem written by him and sung by the artist Ayoub Tarish. Born in 1917 in al-Hujariah in Taiz governorate, al-Fadool was a popular poet and champion of republicanism. He was an influential writer and journalist as well as a diplomat.
Al-Fadool expressed a national vision broad enough to encompass diversity, grounded in a shared homeland, citizenship and the republic. The Houthi ideology, by contrast, is built on a religious conception of authority that grants a particular group an inherited privilege to rule — the Houthis claim they are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and that they have the divine right to govern.
The slogans chanted by the attacking fighters were not just sounds passing through the mountains. For residents who heard them, the slogans carried a broader meaning: the nature of the authority that might impose itself on the area, and its impact on the future of a community connected to traditions of political and social pluralism.
According to these accounts, locals called out for weapons and ammunition to repel the advance. One resident described the attackers as “the new Mongols,” comparing the Houthis’ incursions into these villages and areas with the Mongols’ brutality and destructiveness. But those calls, according to the same accounts, were not met with a sufficient response.
The contrast between the Houthi chants and al-Fadool’s songs was more than symbolic. It captured the struggle over Yemen’s identity: a republican project grounded in citizenship against a project seeking to revive religious authority. But defending that identity cannot be achieved through symbols alone; it requires institutions capable of protecting the land and the people.
The cutting of the main road between Taiz city and al-Turbah was a turning point. It struck one of the essential arteries connecting the city to its southern countryside, threatened the movement of people and supplies, and left government positions more isolated.
The fighting moved deeper into al-Hujariah, and areas in al-Mawasit, Qadas and Bani Yousef came under increasing pressure, alongside renewed clashes in Samaa and al-Silw. Defenders were no longer facing an attack on a single position, but the loss of an interconnected network of roads and highlands that secured movement between the city and its countryside.
The importance of al-Hujariah lies in the fact that it is more than a collection of districts and villages. Al-Turbah is an important social and economic center, and the area of al-Hujariah is part of Taiz’s broader human fabric. Over the decades, it has produced political, economic and intellectual figures and shaped the social base that gave the governorate its national significance.
Losing these areas means not only the loss of land, but cutting the city off from a population that has long sustained it, and severing the routes connecting it to Lahj and Aden. The Houthi advance also widened the scope of movement between Dimnat Khadir to the east and al-Waziiya to the west, giving the attackers multiple lines of movement and supply, while making it increasingly difficult for government forces to link their remaining positions.
With the fall of Jabal Habashi on Oct. 4, the Houthis drew close to the al-Dhabab area and the outskirts of the city of Taiz, a development that threatened to shift the balance of power around the city. The fall of the district did not come out of nowhere. It followed an accumulation of problems: limited deployment, weak capabilities and a poor reading of the facts on the ground.
The irony deepens when one considers that Jabal Habashi is the birthplace of prominent military figures in Taiz, among them Brig. Gen. Khaled Fadel, commander of the Taiz Military Axis, and Brig. Gen. Yousef al-Sharaji, who held military responsibilities on the governorate’s fronts. But personal ties to the area did not necessarily translate into cohesion on the front line or the capacity to hold it.
The loss of positions coincided with withdrawals that provoked anger among fighters and residents alike. After the fall of al-Turbah and the disruption of the main road, forces under the Tur al-Baha Military Axis, commanded by Abu Bakr al-Jabuli, withdrew toward the Tur al-Baha area. Other units withdrew toward the city of Taiz, and formations moved from the rural fronts into the city or its outskirts to regroup.
Recordings and accounts attributed to fighters included accusations against al-Jabuli of abandoning fighters and withdrawing at a time when positions needed reinforcing. Military commanders, including al-Sharaji, were also criticized over the management of weapons and stores and the withdrawal from some positions. Sources suggested that he retained vehicles and weapons that could have been directed to the fronts, and that the Houthis seized a vehicle loaded with arms. Security commander Jamil Aqlan also withdrew, leaving behind a weapons depot that was looted by residents.
Sources described deep disagreements among Taiz’s main military commanders, all of them affiliated with the Islah party, one of the main parties in the government and the presidential leadership council. Some of those I spoke to said these disagreements went beyond professional differences and amounted to a struggle over influence and personal interests. In one account of how severe the crisis had become, a senior Taiz official said that after the fall of al-Turbah and the Houthis’ advance: “We discovered there is no army in Taiz in any military sense. … Not a single bullet was fired in al-Turbah.” I requested clarification from the Taiz Military Axis command on some of these accusations, but received no response.
The collapse was not the result of a single battle or an isolated withdrawal decision. It was the product of several converging factors: a gradual Houthi advance, the cutting of supply lines, weak coordination between the Taiz Military Axis and the Tur al-Baha Axis, the fall of neighboring positions and units withdrawing without a clear alternative defense plan.
After the collapse of the coastal front, the forces opposing the Houthis traded accusations of negligence and betrayal, and on occasion openly gloated over each other’s failures. Islah party leaders argued that the Houthis had advanced from positions in al-Waziiya that were not under Taiz forces’ command, while others maintained that coordination between Taiz forces and the National Resistance on the coast, which collapsed last month, could have protected both fronts and prevented the gaps between them from being exploited. Either way, the developments reveal that old divisions meant the opportunity to build a shared defense was squandered.
Since the start of the war, the popular resistance in Taiz has never become a coherent national institution managing fronts and resources and enforcing accountability to professional standards. Multiple military formations and power centers continued to influence decisions, while sources spoke of professional officers being marginalized and command positions being given to people who, in some cases, lacked sufficient experience and training. These developments raise questions about the gap between numbers on paper and actual strength in the field.
Fighters cannot be asked to hold their ground without ammunition, communications, medical evacuation and regular supplies. In Taiz’s mountainous terrain, a communications breakdown or delayed reinforcements can cost a position that might otherwise have been defended. Yet sources spoke of weapons sitting in stores that never reached the front lines, raising questions about how resources were managed and directed.
Reports suggest that some commanders received around a hundred Starlink devices, while fighters in the field were still relying on communications networks under Houthi control in Sanaa. Whether an independent, unified communications system even existed to guarantee contact between commanders and fighters during attacks and withdrawals remains unclear.
Fighters also complained of low pay and weak financial support. According to reports, soldiers’ pay in some formations did not exceed around $40 per month, before recent adjustments are said to have raised it to the equivalent of 1,000 Saudi riyals, roughly $260. Weak funding, according to some sources, pushed commanders to compete for local revenues and levies to fund their forces.
The Houthi advance on the west coast was an early warning of what could happen in the highlands. Securing coastal areas means securing the rear, the entry routes and surrounding mountains. The transfer of pressure to al-Hujariah and Taiz’s southern areas was a contingency that should have been prepared for.
But military and political sources said that the government, the military commands and their regional allies did not take the warnings seriously, and that air support, which could have slowed the advance or disrupted some movements, arrived late, after facts on the ground had changed. Support that arrives after positions have fallen and roads have been cut is never as effective as early preparedness would have been.
The experience of Adnan al-Hamadi illustrates the damage political conflicts can do to the military in Taiz. Al-Hamadi, commander of the 35th Armored Brigade, was one of the most prominent officers who led organized resistance against the Houthis in the early stages of the war. The forces he commanded contributed to liberating areas of al-Silw and al- Misrakh, as well as parts of Hayfan, Qadas and al-Ahkum. The 35th Armored Brigade grew into a formidable force in the governorate.
But al-Hamadi fell into disputes with entrenched military and political interests, amid broader conflicts over the management of fronts and military decision-making. In December 2019, he was killed in circumstances that have yet to be fully accounted for, legally or politically.
No direct causal link between his death and the current collapse can be established with certainty, but the marginalization and killing of a professional commander, and the subsequent fight over the 35th Armored Brigade, are part of a wider pattern of institutional decay.
Many people from al-Hujariah and Taiz believe the area never recovered its equilibrium and that the loss of al-Hamadi, a military commander who combined experience with popular standing, left a vacuum that has not been filled.
This experience illustrates that a struggle over command can hollow out a front from within before it faces any major attack. The problem is not only about who holds authority, but about a fighting force that allows political and personal conflicts to affect combat readiness.
The military retreat went hand in hand with the erosion of trust between the forces nominally protecting the population and the segments of society that had been their most important base since the start of the war.
The resistance in Taiz did not begin as armed formations alone. It drew on a community that saw confronting the Houthis as a collective responsibility — to defend the city, the republic and the people’s right to determine their own future. Residents opened their homes, provided information and supplies, endured bombardment, siege and displacement, and paid an enormous economic and social price.
But that relationship has been worn down by the long war, political divisions and the behavior of some of the forces that were supposed to protect society. Complaints mounted about deteriorating security and administrative conditions. Accusations emerged of armed groups committing violations and breaking the law, with some enjoying immunity because of their ties to military or political leaders. These are accusations that require investigation and accountability, not obfuscation or neglect.
The erosion of trust in government forces does not mean that the population will back the Houthis. Rejecting mismanagement or abuses of leadership is not the same as accepting the Houthis or the form of rule they impose. The Houthis may exploit local grievances for tactical gains, but that does not necessarily translate into sustained political acceptance.
The people of Taiz city carried the burdens of the war for years. They sent their sons to the resistance, opened their homes to fighters and displaced people, and helped secure information and supplies. But some leaders became consumed by power struggles and personal interests, rather than training their forces and building readiness, while the Houthis continued to develop their capacities.
Yet in this defining moment, wounds and grievances give way to a larger nightmare: the city falling to the Houthis. Residents understand that the price of that outcome could be worse than the injustices they have suffered, and that the loss of Taiz would mean not just the fall of a city, but the defeat of the republican system of governance as a whole.
Even those living in Houthi-controlled areas of Taiz’s countryside are asking anxiously about the city’s fate. Taiz governorate does not belong only to its own people. It is a symbol for all Yemen’s republicans who reject Houthi ideology and the return of the imamate rule that was overthrown in 1962. Today, the resistance’s social base is setting its grievances aside, not because it has forgotten them, but because it understands what defeat would mean and what the fall of the city could bring on an entire community. The revolutionary songs that al-Fadool wrote and Ayoub Tarish sang are surfacing again, as if written for this moment, rallying a spirit of resilience and defiance.
In Taiz, which has held out for more than 12 years, people know that subjugating it would not be merely a military victory for the Houthis, but the silencing of a voice that has been present at every juncture in Yemen’s history. It is the city whose name became associated with culture, learning, political action and civil society, and its people fear that subjugation would shrink its national sway.
A human rights activist who spent years defending the city against abuses by all parties told me he could no longer see any option other than taking up arms to defend it. “We never expected this terrifying scenario at all,” he said. “Where are we supposed to go?”
The loss of roads and positions in Taiz’s countryside paves the way for the city to be besieged again. The Houthi advance has narrowed the routes connecting the city to its southern, western and eastern areas. The retreat from some positions has also left Jabal Sabir overlooking the city and its outskirts exposed to further pressure.
Taiz lived through a siege for years, and the reopening of the roads was a major change in the lives of its residents. If they closed again, it would not simply return the city to where it was before; it would place it into a more complex crisis, after years of economic exhaustion, declining services, eroding purchasing power and mounting humanitarian needs.
Ironically, the Houthis launched the current escalation under the pretext of “breaking the Saudi siege on Yemen,” but they are now imposing a new siege on a city of more than a million people, by some estimates.
I do not recall the siege of Taiz as an abstract idea on a military map; I lived it in the field during the early years of the war. On Dec. 23, 2015, I was the first journalist to reach an area west of Taiz city via a dangerous route, getting as close as possible to the al-Dahi crossing that had come to symbolize the population’s suffering. People were being humiliated and interrogated as they tried to enter or leave the city. We were able to capture the scene on camera, which was later used as evidence of the brutal siege.
In late December of that year, I left the city for Aden to see my family, descending the rough slopes of the Taluq mountains in the al-Misrakh district. The descent took roughly two hours on foot, and I watched people carrying medicines, solar panels and food on their backs or on the backs of animals.
On the way back, I met a woman from Sabir who said she was willing to sacrifice everything for her dignity. Then I made the exhausting climb back before getting into a car toward the city at night, headlights off to avoid Houthi snipers.
On March 12, 2016, I was wounded while covering an attempt to break the siege at the al-Dahi crossing, together with the videographer Taha Saleh. The injury almost cost me my right eye.
When the road through the al-Dhabab area and the western countryside opened, it allowed people to move toward southern Taiz and Aden without having to climb mountains and take difficult paths. The road meant access to hospitals, the movement of goods, family visits and relief from the isolation the siege had imposed.
In June 2024, the opening of the eastern road toward al-Hawban had the same effect. After years of journeys taking six hours or more through rough mountain tracks, the journey from al-Hawban to the city became a 10-minute drive. It reconnected the city to its social and economic surroundings.
I also remember the first year of the siege, when basic items like ice and yogurt became scarce or unavailable. The siege was strangling daily life, and the people of Taiz endured immense suffering.
A return to isolation today could be even harder to bear. The economy is more devastated, services are weaker, and people have endured additional years of war. Houthi control over areas of the countryside may also reduce the options for going around the city via the mountain routes that residents used during the first siege. Unlike the early years, when many could flee to villages, the options available to residents are now narrower, with fighting having spread to wide rural areas.
A friend in the city described the situation to me as “anxiety, anger and defiance.” He spoke of a lack of fuel and cooking gas, rising food prices and a prevailing sense of fear in the streets. Residents said movement seemed almost to have ceased, that schools had closed and that a deep unease had settled over a city accustomed to war, bombardment and siege, but now facing an existential threat.
Taiz’s governor, Nabil Shamsan, told me he was in discussions with the International Committee of the Red Cross over how to bring food and goods into the city. If urgent measures are not taken to protect civilians and ensure supplies continue, the siege threat could become a major humanitarian crisis.
This situation leaves Taiz facing extremely difficult choices: surrender, with the risks it carries for politicians, journalists, military personnel and civilians who have stood against the Houthis for years, or resist, with the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that may follow. Fighting inside the densely populated neighborhoods of a city risks mass civilian casualties and abuses that would be very difficult to contain.
Taiz is not simply a governorate with a sensitive geographic location. It is a historical, political and social space that helped shape the modern Yemeni state. Its demographic weight, its cultural role and its position between north and south made it one of the most important arenas in the contest over Yemen’s future.
The roots of its status reach back centuries. The medieval Rasulid state made Taiz its seat of power for more than two centuries, and it served as Yemen’s administrative capital in the period from 1948 to 1962. Taiz has remained home to broad segments of the educational and media elite, and a center of civil, political and intellectual activity.
The governorate also occupied an important position in Yemen’s modern political transformations. It was connected to the national movement, to republican currents and to antiauthoritarian civil activism. Its people played a role in the Sept. 26, 1962, revolution against the imamate in northern Yemen and the Oct. 14, 1963, revolution against British colonial rule in the south.
When the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 and the war expanded, Taiz became one of the main centers of resistance and a symbol of the struggle over the identity and nature of the state. The defense mounted by its people was not only a rejection of an advancing military force; it was also a rejection of a political ideology that contradicts the traditions of the republic, citizenship and pluralism that the governorate had long represented.
The defeat of Taiz would bring the Houthis not only control over roads and military positions, but would mean the subjugation of a large population they would seek to mobilize, and would shrink the space where the forces opposed to them could operate effectively.
But historical and symbolic capital cannot compensate for the absence of serious leadership. Taiz has not always received the institutional backing and protection commensurate with its importance. Political calculations contributed to the governorate being treated primarily as an Islah party sphere of influence, while fundamental questions remained unanswered: Why did a governorate with these human resources and this strategic location become so exposed? Why did it endure years of bombardment and siege alongside internal security and administrative failures?
There is no single answer. The retreat is the product of the interaction between extremely sensitive geography, political divisions, a weak military institution, failures of administration and supply, and the erosion of the relationship between leadership and the popular base.
The Houthis’ control of Taiz would give them the opportunity to reshape the balance of power in western Yemen and narrow the options available to their opponents.
What is happening in Taiz is also directly connected to the Red Sea question. Control of the governorate’s highlands matters for securing supply lines and applying pressure on Houthi forces deployed to the west coast.
Such calculations extend beyond the Yemeni conflict alone, given the Houthis’ ties to Iran and the so-called Axis of Resistance, and the continuing regional competition over Red Sea security and maritime lanes. Attacks on shipping and threats to waterways and vital infrastructure, including threats reaching into Saudi Arabia, show that the Yemen war has become part of a broader regional calculus, with consequences that could extend to the security and economies of the entire region — and beyond.
In this context, developments in Taiz cannot be viewed separately from the battles taking place on the west coast, or from the operations launched by the government and the Saudi coalition to recover strategic positions lost to Houthi forces over the previous month, in “Operation Yemen Dawn,” stretching from Mokha to Bab al-Mandab. Officials said the operation’s goal was the recovery of Sanaa, and it left Taiz to face its fate alone.
Taiz’s future affects the capacity of the anti-Houthi forces to maintain a geographically connected foothold in the west of the country and the chances of building a shared national strategy. A widening of Houthi influence in this area could also give them additional options for pressing on the coast and the maritime lanes, even if that falls short of direct control over Bab al-Mandab.
The greater danger is that Yemeni and Saudi forces treat these developments as separate local gains or losses, while their cumulative results are quietly reshaping the entire conflict and threatening Saudi national security and maritime security more broadly. Competition among the anti-Houthi forces, the absence of coordination and the recriminations after every lost front weaken not just one side; they create conditions the Houthis can exploit across Yemen and beyond.
The battle for Taiz, in this sense, is not only a battle over land. It is a test of the anti-Houthi camp’s capacity to rebuild itself, moving from the management of fragmented fronts to a nationwide project with clear leadership and shared objectives. If that transformation does not happen, the current collapse may become a watershed that reaches beyond the governorate to the future of the republic itself. That is why some politicians argue that the fall of Taiz would be more dangerous than the fall of Sanaa: a fall that would break the back of the internationally recognized government, shatter the symbolic weight of a leadership that hails from Taiz, dismantle Yemen’s republican system, undermine its modern national identity, and sap the national movement for which Taiz has long been both cradle and stronghold.
This is the story of an area that defended what remained of the meaning of the state, and was let down by the state and its leadership. If this collapse does not become an occasion for genuine reckoning, Taiz may not be the only one to pay the price. All of Yemen will.