Critique of the Proxy War Discourse in Explaining Islamic Resistance Movements The Case of Yemen’s Ansarallah Movement

Extended Abstract

Introduction:In recent decades, the Middle East has witnessed the expansion of Islamic resistance movements that have mobilized against occupation, foreign domination, and structural discrimination. However, the dominant security discourse of the Global North predominantly represents these movements as “Iranian proxy forces,” thereby erasing their historical and local agency. Focusing on Yemen’s Ansarallah movement, this study seeks to demonstrate that the concept of “proxy war” is not a neutral descriptive category but a discursive construct serving the epistemic and political order of the Global North. The article aims to critique this discourse and to reconceptualize Islamic resistance through Southern theory as a form of anti-hegemonic, coalition-based politics.

Methods:This research adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach grounded in Foucauldian discourse analysis. The data consist of selected texts from major Western think tanks and mainstream media—including the Atlantic Council, Chatham House, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, CNN, and The Guardian—produced between October 2023 and October 2025, alongside official statements and speeches of the Ansarallah movement and relevant prior studies. The analysis proceeds in two stages: first, identifying linguistic patterns and discursive articulations through which Ansarallah is portrayed as an Iranian proxy; second, comparing these representations with the indigenous discourse of resistance in Yemen, drawing on Southern theory and the concept of security orientalism.

Findings:The findings indicate that within Northern security discourse, Ansarallah is systematically depicted as an instrument subordinate to Iran’s regional policy, with terms such as “Iran-backed group,” “proxy war,” and “terrorist network” employed to negate its local agency. This representation, rooted in the logic of security orientalism, removes Yemen’s historical, social, and religious contexts while legitimizing external intervention. In contrast, analysis of the indigenous discourse reveals that Ansarallah is grounded in Yemen’s long-standing experiences of political marginalization, sectarian discrimination, and social resistance. Its relationship with Iran is less hierarchical and proxy-based than discursively aligned and tactically coalition-oriented within a broader framework of anti-domination resistance. Discursive and empirical evidence further points to Ansarallah’s political agency and independent decision-making at both national and regional levels.

Conclusion:This study demonstrates that the concept of “proxy war” in the security literature of the Global North functions not merely as a descriptive tool for understanding regional conflicts, but as a discursive mechanism that reproduces epistemic hierarchies, naturalizes foreign intervention, and erases the agency of the Global South. The case study of Yemen’s Ansarallah movement reveals that its portrayal as an “Iranian proxy” is shaped less by Yemen’s historical and social realities than by the logic of security orientalism and dominant Northern epistemic frameworks. By contrast, the indigenous discourse of resistance highlights Ansarallah as an actor emerging from lived experiences of marginalization, structural discrimination, and social struggle, operating in interaction with the Islamic Republic of Iran not through a hierarchical relationship but through discursive alignment and a tactical anti-hegemonic coalition. From this perspective, Islamic resistance should be understood as a form of coalition politics in the Global South, characterized by agency, initiative, and independent decision-making. At the theoretical level, by integrating Southern theory, postcolonial studies, and Foucauldian discourse analysis, this research offers a critical alternative to dominant security knowledge and demonstrates that moving beyond the discourse of “proxy war” toward an understanding of “autonomous indigenous resistance” is a necessary condition for the production of independent, plural, and non-hegemonic security knowledge in the Global South.