Taiz has once again become a key battleground in Yemen’s conflict. The governorate is strategically located between Yemen’s central highlands and the Red Sea Coast, and is traversed by important routes west toward the Red Sea port city of Al-Makha and the Bab al-Mandab, and south toward areas controlled by the internationally recognized government.
In early September, Houthi forces seized Al-Makha and the southern Red Sea Coast. Since then, the group has continued to launch sustained attacks in Taiz in an effort to solidify their control over the newly captured territory and prevent a potential counteroffensive by pro-government forces. Fighting in recent weeks has focused on fronts in the western part of the governorate, in the Jabal Habashi and Al-Wazayah districts, as well as in southern Taiz, as Houthi forces attempt to cut the main roads and supply lines linking Taiz city with other government-held areas. Pro-government forces, supported by airstrikes, have managed to prevent a major breakthrough.
So far, Houthi forces have avoided a direct assault on Taiz’s urban areas, where large numbers of civilians and strong local opposition to the group could make battles particularly costly. But the renewed fighting in one of Yemen’s most densely populated governorates is raising fears of a worsening humanitarian crisis. The targeting of access roads directly affects vital lifelines for food, medical supplies, and civilian movement. The escalation in violence in Taiz also reopens deep collective trauma for a population already scarred by one of the longest and most devastating sieges in Yemen’s civil war.
This analysis offers insights from Yemeni analysts, including residents of Taiz, on the fighting in the governorate, the historical roots of Taiz’s resistance, and the ramifications of these battles for the future of Yemen’s conflict.
The fighting in western and southwestern Taiz and on the surrounding fronts is more than another round of clashes along existing battle lines. It is directly linked to the shifting military landscape on the West Coast and the Houthis’ efforts to consolidate a major strategic gain: the capture of Al-Makha and the area around the Bab al-Mandab. Viewed in this light, pressure on Taiz and efforts to cut supply routes linking the governorate to other government-held areas of the country should be understood as part of a broader campaign, rather than as a separate objective. The Houthis’ overall aim is to secure the land approaches to the newly captured coastal areas and prevent pro-government forces and their allies from using Taiz as a base to support a counteroffensive to retake the coast. This connection between fronts has been evident since the escalation began, with Houthi attempts to sever the road linking Taiz and Al-Makha occurring alongside their military operations along the West Coast.
Taiz matters to the Houthis because it provides the geographic and military depth from which their coastal deployments could be threatened. Houthi forces deployed in newly captured areas in southwest Yemen remain vulnerable to pressure from the surrounding highlands as long as Taiz retains its links to the coast and the south. Cutting routes used for supplies and military maneuver, particularly those leading west toward Al-Makha and south through Lahj toward Aden, would isolate Taiz city and force it onto the defensive, preventing it from serving as a base for counteroffensives toward the coast. Recent fighting underscores the continued Houthi pressure on the Taiz-Aden road and the Hayjat al-Abd mountain pass.
More importantly, from the Houthis’ military perspective, control of the coast requires not only access to the sea but also command of the highlands overlooking it. This explains the importance of the fighting around the mountainous areas of Al-Kadhah, Rasan, and Jardad in western Taiz, as well as Kahbub in western Lahj. This calculation carries greater weight because Bab al-Mandab is no ordinary battlefield gain that can easily be relinquished. It gives the Houthis a strategic position on one of the world’s most important shipping routes, adding substantial regional and international leverage to their military capabilities.
Airstrikes can slow Houthi reinforcements and target exposed troop movements, but they cannot push back the Houthis without a coordinated ground force capable of securing the highlands and supply lines. The next battle may therefore be fought not just over Taiz, but over the hinterland that protects the coast and Bab al-Mandab. If the Houthis succeed in securing this territory, their rapid military advance along the coast will become a firmly entrenched territorial gain, making any attempt to retake it more complex and militarily costly.
“We did not know the imam; we knew the ukfi who lorded over our lives and livelihoods. Today, we do not know Abdelmalek al-Houthi; we know his supervisors, gunmen, and tax collectors. Just as we had forgotten the imamate, the Houthis came to remind us of it.”
This is what a dear friend from Taiz told me when I asked him why people there reject the Houthis. The ukfi—plural ukfa—was the imam’s armed enforcer, whose appearance on the outskirts of a village or neighborhood street corner made people fear the worst.
Understanding today’s battle for Taiz requires an understanding of the governorate’s history. For centuries, Taiz lay outside the imamate’s historical heartland. It lived under more stable and culturally advanced states, including the Rasulid state and the Ottoman Empire. However, the Ottoman withdrawal from Yemen following their defeat in the First World War saw Imam Yahya Hamid al-Din inherit the territories they had controlled. Large areas, including Taiz, refused to submit or recognize his authority. Imamate forces fought protracted wars to take control of northern Yemen. The methods used to subjugate Taiz, and its subsequent treatment, were exceptionally harsh, accompanied by a claim the imamate repeatedly deployed to great effect: that it was fighting in defense of religion.
After a long and bloody battle at Al-Maqatirah fortress, Yahya Hamid al-Din’s armies, led by Abdullah al-Wazir, captured it in 1921. Hundreds of people from Al-Maqatirah were killed or taken prisoner. On Al-Wazir’s orders, army commanders severed the heads of the dead and forced their captive relatives to carry them to Sana’a, walking barefoot in chains for the journey of approximately 330 kilometers (205 miles). At the same time, imamate forces demolished locals’ homes while chanting, “Oh dwelling of the Jew, be gone and never return,” a derogatory term used for those regarded as religious outcasts. In the eyes of Sana’a, Taiz’s residents had become “rebels and Jews” simply because they would not submit to theocratic rule.
Once his control over Taiz was secured, Imam Yahya appointed his son Ahmad as its governor. Ahmad held the position until Yahya’s assassination in 1948, after which he moved the capital from Sana’a to Taiz city, and Sala Palace became the seat of government for the imamate.
Under Imam Ahmad, the populations of the Al-Qahira and Al-Shabakah prisons swelled, the latter serving as a place of solitary confinement. So too did the tale of the Tahish al-Hawban, a fearsome creature said to inhabit the Al-Hawban area, east of Taiz city. The story spread to frighten people away from escaping to Aden through the area’s dangerous scrubland. This history offers a way to understand the Houthis’ ongoing siege of Taiz and efforts to sever the road to Aden.
In early 2015, armed Houthi loyalists arrived in Taiz from the north. They were not regular soldiers, but new ukfa. They branded Taiz’s residents as aligned with the Islamic State, just as Al-Maqatirah had labeled the community as unbelievers nearly a century earlier. The detention facility in the Al-Saleh city area of Taiz became the modern equivalent of Al-Qahira and Al-Shabakah prisons. Collections for the “war effort” mirrored zakat payments to the Bayt al-Mal, the imamate’s treasury. Bribes paid to a Houthi supervisor became the modern equivalent of payments demanded by the ukfi. And the establishment of a Houthi checkpoint in Al-Hawban, cutting the primary route of access to and from the city, became the anchor of a new siege.
For decades, the people of Taiz carried the torch of enlightenment, largely because of their proximity to Aden and their distance from the imamate’s center of power. Al-Fadhul, a native son of Taiz, wrote the Yemeni national anthem, and another native son, Ayoub Tarish, composed and sang it. It has long been a symbol of modernization and a beacon of republicanism. Residents took up arms on three occasions: at Al-Maqatirah fortress against the Hamid al-Din dynasty; during the September 26 Revolution in 1963 against the same dynasty; and, since 2015, against the imamate’s new specter. Today, residents still see Taiz as the republic’s first line of defense.
The long-running battle for Taiz extends beyond shifting frontlines. The governorate’s residents, after more than ten years of war, know the nature of the rule the Houthis seek to impose. Assessing the current offensive solely in terms of territorial control overlooks the resistance, attrition, and enduring hostilities it may generate, as well as the effects of violence on Yemenis’ relationships with one another and with the state that is supposed to unite them.
Taiz occupies a pivotal position between north and south. Its roads and highlands are tied to the security of Lahj and Aden and to the hinterland of Bab al-Mandab. Its population density and political history give it added significance beyond its geographic location. The Houthi targeting of Taiz therefore represents an attempt to reshape the balance of power across a broad swath of Yemen, linking its defense to the future of the internationally recognized government, the security of the south, and Saudi Arabia’s strategic calculations.
The Houthis appear to treat Taiz as enemy territory, seeking to subdue it through bloodshed and fire. This approach has consequences beyond the immediate losses: every advance imposed through violence creates new reasons for locals to reject the group and embeds resistance more deeply within society. Force may secure a military breakthrough, but it leaves behind a social environment that is difficult to govern without sustained coercion, making control itself a recurring source of conflict.
Taiz’s residents are not confronting an unfamiliar project that can win them over with promises. They have seen what Houthi rule means and what their relatives, journalists, traders, and political and community figures have endured in Houthi-controlled areas. These experiences have spread through families, displaced people, professional networks, and everyday relationships. After a decade of accumulated experience, broad sections of society associate the group’s advance with the prospect of repression entering their own lives. Such knowledge is difficult to erase through reassuring rhetoric or by exploiting discontent with the internationally recognized government.
Taiz also has distinctive characteristics that make this confrontation more complex. Its political and social history, widespread education and migration, and multiple centers of influence have fostered aspirations for participation and a sensitivity to exclusion. These intersect with regional and sectarian identification, which can intensify under the pressure of war. When a battle is fought to subjugate a society viewed as hostile, political differences risk becoming deeper social antagonisms that outlast the fighting and leave their mark on national life.
Popular resistance is again taking shape in response to the Houthi threat. Such resistance has a history that the Houthis have experienced and whose significance they understand. But responsibility for this battle rests directly with the internationally recognized government and its allies. Frustration with their performance does not amount to acceptance of the Houthis, but it weakens society’s ability to turn its rejection of the group into a cohesive defense. The collapse of the Al-Makha front in September exposed the dangers of division, poor coordination, and inadequate support. The persistence of these conditions in Taiz today allows the Houthis to make gains despite widespread opposition, and deepens residents’ sense that they have been left alone to bear the consequences of political and military failures they did not create.
For Saudi Arabia, every area the Houthis subdue expands the group’s options for exerting pressure on the Kingdom and narrows the options available to Riyadh and its partners. But the danger in Taiz also lies in the prolonged instability and hostilities that efforts to subjugate it may produce, and that may prove difficult to contain. The battle therefore demands a response commensurate with the threat: political cohesion, dependable support, and protection for residents. Delay allows Houthi gains to accumulate and social wounds to become more deeply entrenched, burdening any future Yemeni settlement.
Since the war broke out in 2015, the battle for Taiz has been closely tied to the struggle over the identity of the state, the political system, and Yemen’s national identity. From this perspective, Taiz is one of the arenas in which the very character of the Yemeni state is being contested.
Subduing the governorate, or neutralizing its capacity to resist the Houthis, would deal a major blow to one of the strongest bastions of republican identity. Its continued resistance has kept this dimension of the conflict alive and prevented the Houthis from translating their military control over large parts of the country into a fully established political and social order. With this in mind, the Houthis have sought to extend their cultural influence in Taiz alongside their siege and sustained military pressure against Taiz city, aiming above all to break its resistance psychologically and undermine its sense of identity.
Since the Houthi offensive along the West Coast began, this approach has acquired an additional operational dimension. This area, which can be accurately described as the Bab al-Mandab hinterland, extends across parts of the Hudaydah, Taiz, and Lahj governorates. Its importance lies in the roads, highlands, and passes that shape troop movements and supply lines. Solidifying control over this area would expand the Houthis’ ability to maneuver and lessen pressure on newly captured areas along the sea. From this perspective, control over western and southwestern Taiz has become directly linked to a broader battle for the land surrounding the Bab al-Mandab.
The anti-Houthi camp has spent much of the war embroiled in internal struggles and competing political and regional agendas. These divisions have weakened the internationally recognized government’s ability to build a unified, organized national force capable of operating under a joint operational command. Taiz has been at the heart of these divisions, and its ability to hold out over many years of conflict has depended heavily on local mobilization. Local communities have shouldered much of the burden of defending Taiz city and its surroundings, with residents of villages and rural areas taking up arms to fill gaps left by the official pro-government armed forces.
This legacy is particularly significant today. Defending Taiz now means more than repelling attacks on Taiz city. It requires protecting the network of roads, highlands, and passes that provide its operational depth and constrain the Houthis’ ability to maneuver and shift their military strength between fronts.
Taiz therefore faces a test that goes beyond its traditional capacity for mobilization and local resistance. This raises a central question: how can anti-Houthi forces turn this capacity for community resilience into a more organized military structure, capable of confronting a geographically expanding battle in which local calculations intersect with regional objectives?
This analysis is part of a series of publications produced by the Sana’a Center and funded by the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The series explores issues within economic, political, and environmental themes, aiming to inform discussion and policymaking related to Yemen that foster sustainable peace.