Red Sea cable damage not likely to be Houthis’ work, expert says
▶ Rebels blame British and US military for disruption, but do not offer evidence to support allegation
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia are unlikely to be responsible for damage to underwater communications cables in the Red Sea where they have been attacking commercial shipping, an expert on maritime security has said.
Four fibre-optic cables carrying data between Asia and Europe were cut, Hong Kong telecoms company HGC Global Communications reported on Monday.
The cables damaged were Asia-Africa-Europe 1, the Europe India Gateway, Seacom and TGN-Gulf, which affected 25 per cent of the data flow through the Red Sea, the company said, without specifying where or how they had been severed.
It described the Red Sea route as crucial for data moving from Asia to Europe and said it had begun rerouting traffic.
There has been concern about the cables being attacked in the Houthi campaign, which the rebels describe as an effort to pressure Israel to end its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis have denied attacking the lines, however.
They blamed the disruptions on British and US military operations, but did not offer evidence to support the allegation.
Seacom said that “initial testing indicates the affected segment lies within Yemeni maritime jurisdiction in the southern Red Sea”.
It said it was rerouting the traffic that it was able to change, though some services were down.
Pooja Bhatt, a researcher in maritime security with the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in New Delhi, said the cables lay too deep for them to be damaged easily.
The cables “are not very thick but [they are] encapsulated in watertight sheets,” Ms Bhatt told The National.
“They lie in the deep ocean
and are not easy to cut.” She said the cables could only be damaged by diving down to the sea bed to cut them, as a result of storms or by a ship’s anchor.
“We can very well understand Yemenis should not have the capability to dive down that deep to physically damage cables,” she said.
“We don’t have many details at the moment.”
Indian company Tata Communications,
which has tieups with Seacom, confirmed that there was a “snag” with the undersea cables but said communications were not affected as they were “automatically rerouted to other services”.
The cables, which are about the same diameter as a garden hose, are usually laid along the sea floor at depths of up to 4,000 metres.
However, the Red Sea is far
shallower, with an average depth of about 500 metres.
Damage to these cables in the past has caused worldwide disruption to communications, such as in 2008 and 2011 when they were damaged in the Mediterranean, Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
In December last year, a social media account linked to the Houthis posted maps of international cables passing
through the Red Sea, prompting fears that the group was planning to attack them.
Since the underwater cable infrastructure is commercial, incidents of attack or sabotage could prompt countries to send in their militaries to protect them, Ms Bhatt said.
“Such activities will bring a lot of geopolitical focus on these issues,” she said.