The Houthis are a small tribe in Yemen’s mountainous north who love their quirky Zaidi sect of militant Islam, cherish their guns, and love to chew the narcotic shrub qat. I joined Houthis in the wild mountains of Yemen to follow their wars and chew qat.Houthis like to argue, smoke weed and repel invaders. They live in one of our planet’s wildest, most inhospitable regions, so bleak and arid that even the local camels are cranky and irritable.
The Houthis (officially called Ansar Allah or “Participaries of God”) are a political, religious and armed organization that emerged in northern Yemen in the 1990s. They were born as an insurgent group that sought to defend the traditions of the Zaidites (a branch of Shiite Islam that represents one third of the population...