Houthis heat crucible of conflict

Bab Al Mandeb narrows are 25 kilometres across. Now, one of the world’s choke points is increasingly volatile as rebels threaten shipping and delay aid, reports

ABU DHABI // As the war in Yemen enters its third year and fighting intensifies along the country’s western coastline, the conflict is spreading into both sides of the Bab Al Mandeb, threatening traffic through one of the world’s maritime choke points and impeding delivery of aid to the needy.

The Saudi- led coalition and local forces are fighting to take key ports along the Red Sea coast, but since the end of last year the rebels have been using increasingly sophisticated weapons and tactics that analysts say are partly the result of Iranian training and equipment for use against maritime targets, including anti- ship cruise missiles, sea mines, speedboat attacks and drone boats loaded with explosives. “There hasn’t been those kind of attacks, at these levels, anywhere in the world in years,” said Cmdr Jeremy Vaughan, a US naval officer who is a fellow at the Washington Institute, whose views do not reflect the official policy or position of the US military or government.

The evolving maritime dimension to the war has threatened to internationalise the conflict to an even greater degree, and the US administration is reviewing its support for the coalition, possibly with a view to increasing assistance or even direct military action against the Iranbacked Houthis and their allies.

After a cruise missile hit a UAE vessel last October, followed by US air strikes in retaliation for the targeting of two US warships, a Saudi frigate was hit by an unmanned speedboat, killing two sailors. Two more drone boats were reportedly disabled or turned back by gunfire.

Last month, the US dispatched a destroyer to the strait and might send at least two more warships to patrol the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

“We’re certainly concerned about it and we’re doing prudent planning, not just ourselves but with our allies and partners in the region,” said Vice Adm Kevin Donegan, the commander of the Bahrain- based US Fifth Fleet, which also provides security in the Bab Al Mandeb, in Defence News last month.

“We’re really concerned now more than before because of this spillage into the maritime,” he said, regarding the Houthi threat.

This month, the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) warned commercial shipping companies that it believed Houthi forces have also laid floating mines around Mokha port, which Yemeni forces backed by the coalition captured in January but where intense fighting has restarted. Two Yemeni coastguard members were killed recently when their patrol boat hit one of the mines near the strait.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of vessels pass through the Bab Al Mandeb – more than 80,000 in one month alone last year.

The US Energy Information Administration estimated that 4.7 million barrels of oil were transported through the strait daily in 2014, mostly headed to Europe. The new threats emanating from the Yemen conflict are driving up security and insurance costs for shipping companies. Lawlessness on the coast means greater risk not only from mines and missiles but also from militants, criminal gangs and pirates taking advantage of the chaos.

In its latest weekly incident report, the ONI said armed men in skiffs approached commercial ships on March 7 and 9, but were scared off by on-board security.

On March 13, however, Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden captured a UAE-managed oil tanker in the first successful pirate attack since 2012. After a four-day ordeal, the crew were rescued by the Puntland maritime police force.

In October, an attack on a gas tanker in the strait was probably the work of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap), security specialists have said, although no group had claimed responsibility. Aqap is not known to have a presence there.

Even with an increased interna- tional naval presence, maritime security experts say that the threat posed by the rebels and other violent outlawed elements will not be snuffed out easily.

“Geography is the biggest challenge. The size of the Yemeni coastline and volume of water to be patrolled by a relatively small Saudi, Emirati, Yemeni naval and coastguard force makes security very difficult,” said Cmdr Vaughan. “Secondly, the probable use of mobile launchers make coastal defence hard to find and hard to eliminate.”

James Pothecary, an analyst with Allan and Associates, a security risk management consultancy, wrote on the website of the Centre for International Maritime Security: “The economic and security risks to shipping companies are compounded by the difficulty naval forces will have in neutralising the threat in the Bab Al Mandeb.”

Managing two usually orderly lanes of shipping passing each way through the 25 kilometre-wide strait is one thing – keeping track of a large number of small boats carrying contraband and other goods between the Horn of Africa and Yemen is quite another, even without the security vacuum in the coastal regions.

“The use of speedboats, which are quick, difficult to detect and hard to interdict, presents challenges to even major naval powers operating in the region,” Mr Pothecary wrote in November.

Cmdr Vaughan said the significant maritime traffic passing through the Red Sea and Bab Al Mandeb complicates efforts to find bad elements.

“It is possible for ships to withhold their position and smaller vessels – the ones that could pose a problem – often do not have the necessary equipment installed or operating,” he said. “Small boat traffic is significant, fishing is important throughout the region, as is legal coastal shipping and illegal smuggling.”

Rebels in coastal areas are also highly mobile and can fire rockets and missiles, or launch drone boats, and retreat into ungoverned territory before naval or other military forces are able to respond.

“It is unlikely a military solution will be sufficient in itself to quickly neutralise the attackers and restore security,” Mr Pothecary said.

Coalition forces continue to press on towards the ultimate goal of capturing Hodeidah, the major port for food and fuel coming into rebel-held Yemen, where most Yemenis live. The coalition is also convinced that the rebels get their weapons from Iran through Hodeidah.

The maritime spillover has forced aid organisations away from Hodeidah. With 60 per cent of Yemenis – or 17 million people in the country – on the brink of starvation, this could prove the tipping point in the humanitarian crisis.

The International Red Cross is among the aid agencies no longer using the port.

“Nobody from our list of suppliers wants to go to Hodeidah,” said Robert Mardini, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s regional director for the Near and Middle East. “This is problematic.”