There are moments when a conflict stops being someone else’s war. It begins to knock on the doors of neighbouring states, threaten the routes that carry the world’s commerce and, eventually, challenge the limits of what nations are willing to tolerate. The Houthi conflict has reached that point. What began as a Yemeni power struggle has evolved into a wider security challenge involving sovereignty, regional stability, maritime trade and, most significantly for Pakistan, the security of Saudi Arabia and the sanctity of the Haramain Sharifain.

The Houthis emerged in northern Yemen as a Zaydi revivalist movement in the late 1990s and seized Sana’a in 2014, transforming themselves from a local insurgent force into a powerful regional actor. Their growing use of missiles and drones has expanded the geographical reach of the conflict. UN Security Council Resolution 2216 of 2015 demanded that the Houthis withdraw from areas they had seized and relinquish weapons taken from state institutions. Resolution 2624 of 2022 subsequently placed the Houthi movement under a........

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