By Faisal Abu Bakr | 2024-09-23

ADEN -- The Houthis plan to use a new "religious tourism" program as a cover for bringing military experts and fighters from countries like Iran and Lebanon into parts of Yemen under the group's control, sources in Yemen said.

Yemen's Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism Muammar al-Eryani has warned of the Houthis' plan to bring in tens of thousands of "religious pilgrims" from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iraq.

Visitors are to be brought in "under the guise of visiting religious shrines and tombs," he said.

The so-called "religious tourism" project is a dangerous development, he said, noting that it is not simply a plan to stimulate tourism, but rather a spurious means to bring in foreign military experts and fighters.

This would deepen the Iranian regime's hegemony and strengthen its grip on the country's resources, he said.

Decade of Iranian meddling

The "tourism" initiative comes after a decade of Iranian meddling in the Yemen conflict, said Fahmi al-Zubairi, director general of the human rights office in Sanaa.

It is a deplorable attempt by the Iranian regime to further its expansionist goals and spread chaos, he said.

The aim of bringing in foreign militia elements is "to conduct recruitment," Abaad Center for Strategic Studies director Abdul Salam Mohammed told Al-Fassel.

New elements are needed in order to execute the Houthis' plans of "targeting sparsely populated areas in eastern Yemen, such as Shabwa, Hadramaut and al-Mahra," as well as Saudi Arabia, he said.

The Houthi militias "are pushing those recruited from outside Yemen to the borders, islands and desert" where they intend to use them to assist in smuggling Iranian weapons into the country, Mohammed said.

They also plan to use the foreign infiltrators "to fight as mercenaries," and are settling them in strategic parts of Yemen to alter the sectarian balance of those areas and "destabilize the countries of the region," he said.

The Houthis have seized a number of Yemeni planes belonging to Yemenia Airways, economist Abdul Aziz Thabet told Al-Fassel.

They are using the planes for "religious tourism" and to bring in fighters and experts from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hizbullah, he said.