Why the Red Sea is witnessing increased pirate attacks
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| Israeli-linked chemical tanker seized in the Gulf of Aden. Source: www.iranintl.com |
During his historic 42-minute speech at Westminster Hall on May 25, 2011, then-US President Barack Obama reiterated America was not and will never be in a religious war with Islam but rather in an unrelenting war with terrorist groups and their extremist allies. But its terrorism wars over the years have continued to be with armed groups inextricably linked with the religion of Islam.
The Houthis, a religio-political Muslim rebel group of 200,000 troops formed in the 1990s as an opposition movement to Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose aim is to govern Yemen and support all external movements against the United States, Israel, the Jews, and sometimes Saudi Arabia, has been America’s headache for two decades now.
In their unrelenting effort to institute Yemen's Shia Muslim minority—the Zaidis—over the years, thousands of Yemenis have died either by fighting or by the hardship that took hold in its wake. But the Houthis endured, with a 2022 shaky truce with Riyadh helping the rebels to be in de facto control of much of Yemen, including the capital Sana’a and the north-west of Yemen, up to the Red Sea coastline where most of Yemen's population live.
The rebel group, formally known as the Ansar Allah (Partisans of God), enjoys a wide network of support sceb beyond religious lines from both state and non-state allies like Syria, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Oman, Hezbollah and Hamas. Because of the Houthis' ideological background, the Yemeni conflict is seen by many as a shy display of the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy war.
Since Israel’s ground operations in Gaza took a sterner tone and dropped thousands dead, the Yemen’s Iran-aligned militant group has launched a series of airstrikes in the Red Sea—through which almost 15% of global seaborne trade usually passes—in a show of support of Hamas, where they primarily targeting ships which are Israeli-owned, flagged or operated, or which are heading to Israeli ports.
However, many of the vessels which have been attacked have no connection with Israel, though many of such attacks have been repelled by a special naval operation coordinated by both the US and the UK, with dozens of retaliatory responses across Yemen against Houthi forces.
Some vessels have had to suspend sail or detour the Red Sea for a rather much longer, costlier journey around Africa while many oil tankers have kept using the route, regardless, and at high freight rates which are passed on to the receiving countries.
On November 19, 2023, the Houthis hijacked a commercial ship in the Red Sea and have since attacked more than two dozen others with drones, missiles and speed boats. In fact, from then till January 24, 2024, the Financial Times has reported a total of 76 incidents involving Houthi that have disrupted trade in the Red Sea.
On Friday, January 24, 2024, the Houthi forces stepped up strikes and hit a fuel tanker operated by Trafigura, a trading firm somehow linked to the UK. The firm said a missile struck the fuel tanker Marlin Luanda and caught fire as it transited the Red Sea. The tanker was carrying Russian naphtha purchased below the price cap in line with G7 sanctions, a Trafigura spokesperson said.
At such a critical time in history where it seems only a few regional allies are bold enough to express or show their support to the diminishing Gazan population amidst endless brutality from the Israeli forces, the Palestinian people have seen a friend in the Houthis.
In late 2023, a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that residents of Gaza and the occupied West Bank ranked Yemen’s military response to the Israel-Hamas war as the most satisfying among regional actors.
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