The five-second epistemology of “who dis” : How did the Houthis become the Houthis – a story
This great story from an awesome writer on X, who calls himself Donald J Gorbachev:
A current note before the story:
Who dis.
Who dis is running the Red Sea. The Bush League is running from who dis. The Bush League does not know who who dis is. Who dis does not need the Bush League to know. Who dis is named for God. God does not care whether the database has the right name. The missiles do not care whether the database has the right name. The database is the problem. The database has always been the problem. The database was never going to survive contact with a theological adversary because the database does not have a column for theology. The column the database does not have is the column that is winning the war.
Some empire. Some database. Some who dis.
Day 45. Still closed. Who dis is running the Red Sea. Day 45.
ذكية، كاملة. هوشمند، کامل.
The five-second epistemology of “who dis”
True story, or true enough to be told the way all good CIA stories are told, which is mostly.
Sana’a, mid-2000s. A junior CIA analyst is sitting in a room on the second floor of a building that is technically not a CIA building, across a desk from a local contact who technically does not know the analyst is CIA. The contact is a young man with a phone and a cousin in Saada. The analyst is drinking tea he does not like because the tea is the price of admission. The analyst is holding a yellow legal pad. The contact is trying to tell the analyst about a movement in the northern highlands that has been gathering strength since the first Saada war and is now organized enough to have a name. The analyst wants the name. The analyst wants the name because the cable back to Langley has a blank field labeled group designation and the field needs filling.
The contact says: Ansarallah.
The analyst does not look up from the legal pad. The analyst says: Who’s that?
The contact, whose English is functional but not native, whose ear for American English is formed by watching dubbed reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on a satellite feed his uncle runs out of a shop in Sadah, hears the question and thinks the analyst is asking him to repeat the name. He repeats the name. He says it slightly slower, slightly louder, the way you say a name to a foreigner who has not heard it before. He says:
Who dis.
The analyst writes it down. Who dis. Spells it H-O-U-T-H-I because that is what who dis sounds like when an American is writing Arabic phonetically with a Bic pen on a yellow legal pad in a room with a ceiling fan. The analyst thinks huh, that’s a funny name, must be tribal. The analyst circles it twice. The analyst writes tribal movement, northern highlands, Zaidi, anti-government next to the circle. The cable goes out that night. The cable hits the Langley desk the next morning. The desk officer who reads the cable has never been to Yemen. The desk officer files Houthi in the database. The database becomes the State Department brief. The State Department brief becomes the Reuters style guide. The Reuters style guide becomes every wire story every reporter has ever written about the group for the next twenty years.