Houthi indoctrination camps flout Yemen peace efforts

ADEN -- As the United Nations continues to promote a Yemen-led effort to bring an end to the war, the Iran-backed Houthis appear to be headed in the opposite direction as they double down on efforts to indoctrinate Yemeni youth.

Each summer since they seized control of Sanaa and other parts of the country in a September 2014 coup, the Houthis have held summer camps in schools and mosques that are widely seen as a vehicle for indoctrination and recruitment.

This year, instead of reining back these programmes in the spirit of rapprochement, they are accelerating them, with the addition of long, residential camps that target impressionable youth.

On April 29, the Houthi-affiliated "supreme committee for summer activities and camps" launched summer camps in Sanaa and provinces under Houthi control.

According to a Houthi official involved with the organisation of the programme, the number of male and female students enrolled is expected to rise to 1.5 million this year -- a significant increase from last year's numbers.

The summer camps will be held in 9,100 separate facilities, according to Al-Thawra newspaper, and will employ 20,000 staff members and teachers.

In addition to the regular summer camp programmes, the Houthis will be running a series of residential summer camps this year.

Students participating in these two-month, live-in camps will be provided with food and drink, clothing and bedding, and will remain at the camps for the duration of the programme.

Those familiar with the residential camps told Al-Mashareq they are simply venues where the Houthis can groom and prepare new fighters for their ranks, and bear a strong resemblance to the Houthis' recruitment camps.

While the Houthis' regular summer camps "prepare and condition participants to accept the precepts promoted by the Houthis", political researcher Adel al-Shujaa said, the residential camps take it to another level.

The residential camps focus their attention "on those who have been prepared to be part of the Houthi ideology", he told Al-Mashareq.

As in previous years, the Houthis have used all possible means to encourage parents to send their children to these camps, he said, sending text messages and even distributing food baskets among families.

Undermining peace efforts

The summer camps set up by the Houthis in the areas the group controls aim to draw in hundreds of thousands of children, Yemeni Information Minister Muammar al-Eryani warned.

These camps reveal the Houthis' true position on the ongoing peace efforts, and show them working to create a generation of fighters who pose a threat to Yemen and to regional and international peace and security, he said.

In a May 6 statement posted on his Twitter account, al-Eryani said the summer camps are centres for filling students' brains with extremist terrorist ideas and slogans of death and hatred that are alien to Yemen and imported from Iran.

He accused the Houthis of exploiting the peace efforts to buy more time to recruit more fighters, including children, whose rights they have consistently violated, as fodder for upcoming battles.

Political analyst and researcher Abdullah Ismail described the camps as "terrorist factories, given the sectarian and terrorist ideological material that is taught".

Abdul Aziz al-Sultan, head of the Yemeni Teachers' Syndicate in Taez, said the Houthis also use financial means to attract teachers to the summer camps, preying on professionals who have not been paid for months.

Houthis' edict in al-Hodeidah

In Yemen's al-Hodeidah province, the Houthis have ordered the suspension of the activities of private technical and vocational institutes during the summer, and are encouraging students to attend their summer camps instead.

In a memorandum addressed to the directors of private educational centres, Houthi leader Hassan Abdel Bari al-Ahdal asked the directors to cease promoting their centres and encourage students to participate in Houthi summer camps.

Political analyst Mahmoud al-Taher said the order, issued by the Houthi-controlled local office of the Ministry of Technical Education and Vocational Training, shows parents are reluctant to send their children to Houthi camps.

It also shows the determination of the Houthis and the Iranian regime to groom the next generation of fighters, he told Al-Mashareq.

He noted that the residential camps are intensive training centres that employ instructors from Iran and Lebanese Hizbullah, who instill more complex sectarian concepts in the minds of the youth who attend.