A dead cleric and a terrorist turned statesman are the unexpected protagonists of the past year. The novelty was in the Middle East, where old leaders who were leading the war against Israel disappeared, such as Hassan Nasrallah and Ibrahim Aqil, the head of Hezbollah and the commander of his elite corps Radwán; Ismail Haniye and Yahya Sinwar, the two heads of Hamas, and the Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, who was at least able to save his skin by fleeing like a rat from Damascus to Moscow.
In the rest of the world, in terms of leaders in conflicts there was nothing new under the sun. Xi Jinping casting his menacing shadow over Taiwan and over the islands and seas of Vietnam and the Philippines; Vladimir Putin advancing into Ukrainian territories that Volodimir Zelensky tried to retain under the blue and yellow flag, while Joe Biden and several European leaders tried to discourage Russia from expanding its territory to the West.
2024 was a year marked by two unknowns to the rest of the world. One is a Zaydi cleric who died two decades ago in a marginal country in the Middle East and whose name is heard and written all over the world because he baptized the militiamen who are simultaneously in war against the Israelis, Americans and British. The other is a jihadist who emerged from the bowels of Al Qaeda who conquered power in Syria, one of the most important and strategic Arab countries in the region.
Only in Yemen and in some corners of Saudi Arabia are there Zaidi Muslims, who, paradoxically, are the Shiites closest to the Sunnis. Zaidism is a branch of Shiism that emerged in the 8th century, which differs from the rest of the Shiites by recognizing Zaid bin Ali as the fifth imam, the promoter and leader of an immense rebellion against the Umayyads. Having confronted the powerful caliph Hisham al Malik turned his descendants into indomitable warriors against corrupt rulers.
From these struggles arose the Zaydi Imamate of the 16th century from which descends the clan that, in the last decade of the 20th century, began a rebellion against the corrupt government of Yemen presided over by Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Twenty years ago, the forces of that regime assassinated the cleric Hussein Badreddin al Houti, with whose name the Zaidi militias that he had created and led were renamed, and which ended up overthrowing Saleh and then his successor, Mansur al-Hadi, occupying Sana’a. , the capital, and consolidating its control over northern Yemen.
What was born as a frayed militia with little training and old weapons became a force equipped with high war technology, since Iranian General Qassem Soleimani incorporated them into the “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and its North American allies.
Hussein Badreddin Al Houti had baptized his movement Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) but today in the world the name that resonates is “Houtis”, the followers of the cleric and soldier who started the last great rebellion of Zaidi Shiism, because they are the ones who , with the help of Iran, resisted against the forces of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, then attacking Israeli territory with drones and missiles and also cargo ships crossing the Sea Red heading to the port of Eilat.
Many thought that the weakness of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah would stop the Houthis, however they maintained their belligerence. They even continued to attack European and North American cargo ships even after receiving heavy Israeli bombing and attacks from American and British military ships.
Nor did anyone’s calculations include the belligerence of Jhabat al Nusra al Sham (People’s Victory Front of the Levant), an arm of Al Qaeda that had been hiding in its stronghold in the Syrian province of Idlib for years.
It was unthinkable that the militia created by the organization that launched planes over Manhattan, Washington and Pennsylvania, announcing to the world the beginning of global jihadism, could bring together the Sunni militias that Turkey armed and financed.
The Hayat Tahrir al Sham (Committee for the Liberation of the Levant) was integrated with the pro-Turkish militias, the coalition organized and commanded by the leader of Al Nusra who, with a lightning offensive, defeated a dynastic regime that had been in power for more than half century, in just ten days. And if Ahmed al Sharaa was able to form that coalition blessed by Reccep Tayyip Erdogán, it was because he announced in 2017 the break with Al Qaeda and his move towards the political-religious center, proposing a proposal for a multiethnic State that would also respect everyone. its neighbors, including Israel.
In Iraq and Syria he became known by the nom de guerre he adopted when he joined the ranks of Al Qaeda, Mohamed al Golani, a nomination that put Israel as the target of his jihad (holy war), referring to the Golan Heights. , the Syrian territory where his family lived until it was occupied by the Israelis in 1967.
The Syrian Ahmed al Sharaa swears that he has stopped being a jihadist of the Sunni Salafism that Al Qaeda professes, abandoning the religious, cultural and political ideology that he had acquired when he went to Iraq, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, to fight Americans and Shiites in the ranks of Al Qaeda Mesopotamia (AQM). That would imply that the only ones the new regime will fight are the isolated pockets of ISIS that remain in Syria.
What he did not say is what he will do with the peshmerga, Kurdish guerrillas who are considered arch-enemies by Turkey and whom Recep Erdogan warned must “lay down their weapons or they will be buried with them.”
Will the Kurdish proto-state that, under the name of Rojava, was formed in northeastern Syria thanks to the courage of the peshmergas and the support they received from North American forces, survive?
Will Al Sharaa keep its promise to respect minorities and neighboring states?
The only certain thing is that, while in the rest of the world the conflicts of 2024 were carried out by old acquaintances, in the Middle East, the past year leaves two unthinkable protagonists: the Houthis of Yemen and the post-Al Qaeda leader of Syria, Ahmed al Sharaa.
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