Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Helpers of God (Ansar Allah) or Houthis in Yemen are proving a bigger challenge for the Biden Administration’s attempt to run interference for the Israeli atrocities in Gaza than Washington had expected. Just Monday morning the Yemeni forces fired a ballistic missile at the US-owned and -operated M/V Torm Thor, an oil tanker, but it fell short. The leadership say they are hitting Red Sea traffic as a protest against Israel’s war against Gaza. Enormous crowds in the hundreds of thousands have demonstrated in Sanaa and other cities against the Israeli campaign against Gaza, which the International Criminal Court has ruled may be a genocide.
On Saturday, the US and Britain had flown a fourth round of bombings, directed at 18 Houthi military targets. The BBC says that they were directed at “storage facilities, drones, air defence systems, radars and a helicopter of the militant movement.”
A Houthi government spokesman downplayed the impact of the bombings and asserted that there was nothing the US could do about the movement’s Red Sea attacks.
If the US Air Force and the Royal Air Force commanders really think that a few bombing raids can knock out the Houthi capabilities, they haven’t been paying attention. The Saudis, the UAE and other members of a coalition bombed Yemen intensively from 2015 until 2021, as Sarah G. Phillips pointed out. At the end of the war the Houthis were still in control of 80% of the Yemeni population of some 33 million, who live on about a third of the land area of the country. They have certainly hidden away most of their munitions, having had to operate under aerial bombardment for almost a decade, and the targets being hit by the US and the UK are likely inconsequential.
Nationalist troops of the internationally recognized government of President Rashad al-Alimi have contained the Houthi forces to the south and the east but were never able to push them out of the most populous regions of the country in the north. I recently published a paper on how the United Arab Emirates worked with southern secessionists to establish control of the littoral of the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but that is a thin sliver of southern territory.
[By the way, broadcast journalists, Houthi is pronounced like “who the” in English — Arabic has a “th” sound. I don’t know why the Americans keep saying Hootie.]
Reuters reports that about $1 trillion of goods is transported through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal annually, on some 19,000 vessels. That is about 30% of global seaborne trade, and it comes to about 12% of total world commerce. About 10% of global energy supplies go through this route.
The volume of goods transported through the Red Sea has fallen between 42% and 66% since the Houthis began attacking container ships. Many ships are going around the Cape of Good Hope and up the coast of West Africa, adding some 10 days to the journey from Asia to Europe, and upping the cost. Countries in the region have taken an economic hit. Egypt has suffered a 40% fall in Suez Canal revenues.
UNCTAD says that “Average container shipping spot rates from Shanghai in early February 2024 more than doubled – up by 122% compared to early December 2023. The rates from Shanghai to Europe more than tripled, jumping by 256%.”
China’s $1.8 billion in investments in Africa has also been placed in jeopardy, and the Chinese portion of Djibouti port has been idled.
The Israeli port of Eilat has apparently been idled, and occasionally has to fend off Houthi ballistic missiles. About 5% of Israel’s imports by sea used to come in through Eilat.
The easiest way to stop this economic disruption, which could have an impact on supply chains and prices that echoes the COVID-19 era of 2021-2023, is for President Biden to cut off arms and ammunition to the mad bomber, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Rising prices and supply chain problems would not be good for Biden’s reelection bid.
The Helpers of God militia is supported by many Yemenis of the Zaydi Shiite persuasion, a form of Shiite Islam that is closer to Sunnism and which does not have ayatollahs or some of the distinctive rituals of the Iranian and Iraqi Twelver Shiism. The militia’s leader is Abdul Malik al-Houthi, who announced this past week an escalation of attacks on Red Sea shipping.
Although the Houthis receive some money and arms from Iran, from all accounts it is a minor factor. They are an Arab, Yemeni movement with their own motivations and they have a weapons-making capacity of their own. The Helpers of God have become the de facto government of most people in Yemen and they tax them for revenue. It is not at all clear that an energy exporter like Iran would want Red Sea shipping disrupted.
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