After removing the terrorist designation in 2021, the Biden administration has again designated the Houthi movement as terrorists.

 

Houthi fighters with their cheeks stuffed with khat, a common drug in the region. CNBC/Reuters. 

The Biden Administration has re-designated the Houthi movement as a terrorist group, only three years after removing the designation. CNBC. President Donald Trump ordered the Houthis to be considered a Foreign Terror Organization (FTO) but Biden removed the designation as one of his first acts in office. The move was controversial at the time and after the Red Sea crisis broke up, Biden came under pressure to re-label the group. However, Biden did not designate them as a FTO, but as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). That level means that the Houthis will still receive foreign humanitarian aid. The designation was said to deter attacks by the Houthis on shipping targets in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. 

My Comment:

Removing the Houthis from the terror list was always a baffling decision. Supposedly it was so that humanitarian aid could be brought to the Houthis, but that could have been done by changing the classification from FTO to SDGT. Instead, Biden removed the designation entirely. Presumably this was done out of spite because Donald Trump was the man who put it in place in the first place. 

It was an obvious mistake as we ended up in a de facto war with the Houthis. Indeed, we had incidents today where one of their drones hit an American ship in the Red Sea and we launched airstrikes in return. The Houthis are absolutely our enemies now and it's ridiculous that Biden took this long to re-designate them. Again though, it's probably because the Biden administration couldn't admit that Donald Trump was right about anything. 

This won't do a damn thing to deter the Houthis. They are inviting a war a country dramatically more powerful than them. Do you think they care about a terror designation? Bombing them didn't deter them, why would a random declaration like this do anything? 

Though I don't think that's the real reason they did it. I am guessing they were under political pressure to do so as everyone was pointing out how dumb this whole situation was. This was a PR move by the Biden White House and mostly nothing else. As with so many things in this administration, Biden is doing things because of bad PR, not because it's the right thing to do. 

It's also kind of absurd that we are going to continue to give them humanitarian aid. If we actually wanted to deter them, cutting off food and medicine might actually do something. But it's crazy that we are bombing the Houthis and giving them help at the exact same time. Sure, there is the argument that Yemeni civilians are not the same as the Houthis but I've always thought it's a dumb argument. 

I'd also like to point out that the picture I used for this post shows that the Houthis are very fond of Khat, a drug common in the region. That's why their cheeks are puffed out like that. The fact that many Houthis are basically drug addicts does not bode well for our war against them. They are a lot less likely to care about being bombed if they are all on drugs.