On May 6, Oman announced it had brokered a cease-fire between the United States and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Within hours, President Donald J. Trump declared the Houthis – who had been targeted by a U.S. air campaign since mid-March – had “capitulated.” But inside Yemen, the Houthis continued to do what they’ve always done in moments of pressure – tighten control, not loosen it. There was no public statement and no acknowledgment of compromise. Through the Midri campaign, Yemeni slang for “I don’t know,” the Houthis have turned the absence of information into a governing principle. In a war where narratives are as potent as weapons, Midri is not a retreat. It is the regime’s most effective form of resistance.
Like Iran’s clerical establishment or North Korea’s Kim dynasty, the Houthis understand that power depends on monopoly of narrative. When citizens can independently document events, the regime no longer retains control over the narrative. This isn’t merely about managing public opinion; it’s about preventing other realities from being witnessed at all. The Houthis’ Midri campaign is transforming Yemeni citizens into either complicit participants in collective denial or enemies of the state.
The Architecture of Imposed Ignorance
The Houthis’ information control has deep roots in Yemen’s past. Imam Yahya, king of Yemen from 1918-48, suppressed secular learning, restricting education to religious instruction. This wasn’t merely an educational policy but a strategic governance move to isolate Yemenis from outside ideas. When Ahmad Numan founded a school to teach mathematics in the 1930s, his school was labeled “un-Islamic” and placed under religious supervision. This deliberate restriction of knowledge preserved the Zaydi elite’s power – a historical precedent for today’s Houthi Midri campaign against citizen awareness.
For the Houthi leadership’s grip on control, the most threatening weapon isn’t necessarily the guided missile but the civilian smartphone. Each captured image risks exposing the gulf between revolutionary rhetoric and reality, revealing weapons caches in residential neighborhoods, the diversion of humanitarian aid to fighters while civilians starve, or the lavish lifestyles of commanders amid Yemen’s economic collapse.
What began as whispered directives to avoid discussing U.S. airstrikes has hardened into policy. On March 17, Houthi Minister of Information Hashem Sharaf al-Din issued a directive with three critical components: first, a prohibition on publishing any images of U.S. airstrikes; second, a ban on sharing information about casualties from these strikes, including even names of victims; and third, restrictions on identifying locations affected by military operations. Around the same time, pro-Houthi media figure Sultan al-Sadah amplified this message, recasting “I don’t know” as not merely self-protection but as a patriotic duty.
The Weaponization of Silence
On April 20, a Houthi missile misfired, crashing into a crowded market in Sanaa’s Shuub district, killing 12 people and wounding more than 30 and damaging nearby homes. According to multiple sources, the missile was launched from a Houthi-controlled air defense site west of the capital. Rather than take responsibility, the Houthis unleashed a crackdown. More than 30 citizens suspected of recording the aftermath were arrested. Official media initially made no mention of the explosion or the casualties, but later the Houthi’s health ministry blamed the blast on a U.S. airstrike.
There are also reports that the Houthis have even begun suppressing funeral ceremonies for their own dead, a paranoid calculus where acknowledging loss is deemed dangerous because it is seen as giving the United States valuable information. Beyond domestic control, this is a counterintelligence strategy to complicate U.S. and regional assessments. The silencing of mourners serves both to intimidate the living and to reduce the verifiable effectiveness of enemy strikes.
Yet, where the regime demands Midri, some Yemenis are responding with irony, transforming the dictated phrase into its own subversion. On social media, Yemenis are asking questions that answer themselves: “Who embezzled public salaries?” Midri. “Who turned neighborhoods into weapons depots?” Midri. “Who answers to Tehran, not the people?” Midri.
Narrative Warfare
The Houthis’ “Midri” campaign is narrative warfare, calibrated to obscure facts, disorient analysts, and erode accountability on the international level. By suppressing imagery, prohibiting funerals, and quieting firsthand testimony, they seek to dominate not only the domestic discourse but also to influence perceptions in Washington, Riyadh, and Brussels. This manipulation of reality poses a direct challenge to governments and organizations trying to effectively respond to the conflict.
The Houthis’ Midri campaign nests well with their earlier, sustained arrest campaign aimed at United Nations workers, underway since mid-2024, and their more recent accusations of an alleged “American-Israeli spy network” that they said was embedded within international organizations and U.N. agencies. While the Houthi emphasis with the arrest campaign and action against a purported spy network has been more focused on de-legitimizing credible outside actors and counterintelligence, these goals buttress the Midri campaign effort to recast basic witnessing of events as foreign-directed espionage.
For U.S. policymakers, the lesson is clear: Airstrikes alone will not change Houthi behavior. Washington should integrate narrative warfare into its military strategy to preserve Yemeni voices and testimonies that the Houthis seek to silence. This means investing in robust open-source verification networks that can document strikes and abuses in real time while simultaneously supporting local journalists and civilians through partnerships, emergency assistance, and secure platforms. Success cannot be measured by the absence of evidence; policymakers should develop assessment frameworks that account for the Houthis’ strategic information blackouts.
The Midri campaign is the systematic strategy of enforced blindness. However, in their obsession with control, the Houthis forgot the oldest rule in the book: The moment a regime tells people not to look, everyone starts watching.
