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Some believe the Houthis of Yemen are having a moment.

The scrappy rebel Shiite group that has been fighting the government of Yemen for years and has terrorized major international shipping lanes has changed with the times.

“The Houthis have morphed from sandal-wearing fighters to rock stars,” Michael Knights, who studies Iranian influence in the Middle East with Militia Spotlight, told Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. “These are people who you want to be associated with right now.”

Knights was referring to how the Houthis have transformed from a group of ragtag Shiite fighters into an organization allied with the most successful militant groups in the Middle East.

Since they led an uprising that ousted Yemen’s Sunni-Muslim-led government from the capital of Sanaa in 2014, the Shiite Houthis have been fighting a civil war against Yemeni government forces who have turned to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states for support, reported Voice of America. A few years ago, as World Politics Review noted, people didn’t pay too much attention to this fighting in a small corner of the Arabian peninsula, though the Houthis occasionally garnered headlines for piracy along this major shipping route.

Now – numbering 350,000 members, 10 times their strength in 2015 – the Houthis are enmeshed with global terrorist organization Al Qaeda, al Shabab, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Hamas in Gaza and Iran, according to a recent 537-page United Nations report cited in the Arab News.

The Houthis have been helping Al Qaeda acquire and deploy drones to strike at Yemeni troops. They have perfected their piracy, which has made the crucial Red Sea among the most dangerous trade routes in the world: About 12 percent of all global trade, amounting to $1 trillion of goods per year, passes through the Suez Canal at the northwestern edge of the Red Sea. At the same time, the Houthis are reported to be earning about $180 million a month from illegal safe-transit fees paid by unnamed shipping agents to secure safe passage through the Red Sea.

Meanwhile, the Houthis have also amassed a significant business operation that includes the illicit trade in antiquities, racketeering, drug smuggling, and other criminal trades. These provide funds that have been crucial to their success in developing partnerships with others.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and pro-Iran groups in Iraq have also been aiding the Houthis as they have become more robust, the Times of Israel added. The Houthis, in turn, have launched missile and drone strikes against Israel and attacked shipping vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Israel and the US have struck back, attacking ports and other Houthi facilities in response, Al Jazeera reported. These attacks clearly were meant to degrade the Houthis’ ability to fight and extend their reach in the region.

But the Houthis are also building a relationship with Moscow at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for allies to help counter the West’s opposition to his invasion of Ukraine, wrote the Soufan Center, a think tank. Russia is a major exporter of advanced weaponry.

Meanwhile, the country is in limbo: Fighting between Houthi rebels and the Saudi coalition that backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government has largely subsided even though the UN-brokered ceasefire expired in 2022. Even so, concrete progress remains elusive, wrote the Council on Foreign Relations.

Analysts believe that over the next few years, the Houthis will end up as power players in the Yemeni government – they already hold large swathes of territory and wealth in the country and are the dominant military force.

But as all this plays out, Yemen remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the UN says, estimating that 60 percent of the almost 400,000 deaths in Yemen between 2015 and today have been the result of indirect causes of the conflict, such as food insecurity and a lack of accessible health services. Two-thirds of the population, or 21.6 million Yemenis, remain in dire need of assistance.

“It’s almost as if ongoing conflicts have become an accepted part of the everyday realities of life in the region,” said Hanan Balkhy of the World Health Organization. “It’s important to step back and remember that hungry children, disease outbreaks, hospitals shutting down … these are not to be normalized.”