Your analogy falls flat because, while powerful, cartels are rarely looking to supplant state control. Instead they seek state complicity which is a different thing altogether.

Ansar Allah on the other hand has set up its own governance structures. As I said, most of the populated regions of Yemen are governed under these structures. That’s despite a US backed campaign to bomb and starve them out over most of the last decade.

If the US doesn’t want to recognize the sovereignty of the Ansar Allah led Yemeni government then the US concept of sovereignty is effectively meaningless.