Sa’dah Old city

Sa’dah, Yemen

Coordinates:16.950900, 43.747800

Nearby Places

• Al hadi mosque, Sa’dah 2.26 Km SE (126°)
• Twin house 83.02 Km S (163°)
• Shaharah Village, One of the most remote and isolated villages on the Arabian Peninsula 84.90 Km S (183°)

Sa’dah is the capital city of Saada Governorate in north-western Yemen at an elevation of about 1,800 meters. Its population in 2004 was estimated at 51,870. It was formerly identified with Qarn, the kingdom of the ancient kingdom of Ma’in, which is now known to be identical to the ancient Qarnawu near the modern Ma’in in the Al Jawf Governorate.

Houthi movement

The Houthi movement officially called Ansar Allah “Supporters of Allah” and colloquially simply Houthis, is an Islamic political and armed movement that emerged from Sa’dah in northern Yemen in the 1990s.

The movement was called Houthis because its founder is from the Houthi tribe. They are of the Zaidi school of Shai Islam.

Under the leadership of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the group emerged as an opposition to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, whom they charged with massive financial corruption and criticized for being backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States at the expense of the Yemeni people and Yemen’s sovereignty. Resisting Saleh’s order for his arrest, Hussein was killed in Sa’dah in 2004 along with a number of his guards by the Yemeni army, sparking the Houthi insurgency in Yemen. Since then, except for a short intervening period, the movement has been led by his brother Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

Conflict in Sa’dah

Since June 2004, violent conflict has taken place in Saada, killing several thousand and displacing 250,000 people countrywide. A ceasefire brokered in June 2007, was followed by a peace agreement in February 2008. By April 2008, however, the peace process was in jeopardy as each side of the conflict accused the other of failing to implement the peace agreement. Analysts suggest that renewed conflict will damage the humanitarian situation in the region. In May 2008, it was estimated that there were 77,000 internally displaced persons in Sa’dah due to the conflict.

As of 2013, the Houthis, as the Zaidi rebels are called, were firmly entrenched in Sa’dah, and were also active in several neighboring governorates.