Podcast here: https://soundcloud.com/user-280580802/210-yemen-and-the-threat-to-international-shipping
Ever since Israel’s ground operation in Gaza to remove Hamas resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Gaza residents, the Houthis in Yemen have vowed to side with Hamas and has attacked ships that carry goods across the Red Sea. The Red Sea connects to the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb. That strait handles about 12% of global trade. Global shipping companies have pulled their ships from the Red Sea following these attacks, forcing them to sail around the Horn of Africa, which adds up to two weeks to shipping times. This would be bad news for global economic recovery. Supply lines already had to adjust to the temporary disruption under Covid and the economic sanctions on Russia following the Ukraine War. Shipping prices have spiked over fourfold within a week, so there is a threat to inflationary pressure.
The US wants to safeguard global shipping and announced a naval coalition with nine other countries, including Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the Seychelles and the UK. Many of the European nations have been flaking off from the coalition, citing other important commitments (like in Ukraine), and Bahrain is the only Middle East country to join the coalition. The Saudis have been leading the proxy war against the Houthis with the military backing of the US and have been engaging in peace talks with the Houthis since March 2022. After being unable to dislodge the Houthis since they seized power in late-2014 via direct military intervention and suffering from Houthi strikes against Saudi oil facilities, the Saudis now want to to extricate themselves from this bloody war that has resulted in the famine death of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis that were harmed by the Saudi-led economic/ naval blockade. The Saudis do not want to join the US naval coalition and thereby threaten the peace process with the Houthis. The Houthis are backed by Iran, the traditional archenemy of Saudi, but the Saudis and Iranians have become more friendly with each other, following a brokered agreement with the help of China that trades heavily with both countries. Only UAE is interested in taking a more hardline approach on the Houthis but they have departed from the Houthi conflict in 2020 and do not want to return to it (Schaer 2023).
The Houthis are quite content with the Saudis staying out and they think that the attacks on shipping will increase western pressure on Israel to stop its brutal Gaza campaign. The Israeli port of Eilat has lost 85% traffic as a result of the Red Sea closure (Times of Israel 2023). The Houthis are unlikely to be able to destroy Israel or expel the Jews from the Middle East, as their main slogan demands. The much bigger issue is that they are a nuisance to international trade, and that the US is the only power that would keep the Red Sea open. China is the biggest beneficiary of international trade and has operated a military base in nearby Djibouti since 2017, but has not joined the US naval task force. China takes the resolute stance of not intervening militarily in other countries, accusing the US of meddling too much in other countries affairs (Kine 2023). It is quite noteworthy, however, that the Chinese are also not opposed to the US intervention against the Houthis, because they want their trade vessels to be safe from attack. China wants to be more influential in global politics but is not willing or ready to take on the hegemonic role. It is gradually expanding yuan currency swaps, e.g. with Russia or Saudi, to trade with other countries and bypass the US dollar, but does not fully subvert the US dollar. As of now, the international order is maintained by the US military which is funded by the vast domestic resources (third largest global population, abundant natural resources, advanced technologies, biggest military, growth-oriented rule of law) and the foreign purchase of US treasuries, especially by Japan, China and UK.
The Biden administration faces the difficult choice of how hard to hit the Houthis. Biden’s main foreign policy accomplishment was the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, so the signal was that the US is no longer interested in doing excessive policing work, especially not in an election year when Trump is driving home the US isolationist message. Even when the Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria were attacking US bases, Biden did not promptly respond and only recently ordered airstrikes against the attackers (Waldenberg et al. 2023). If Biden goes hard against the Houthis, it could create a quagmire that is reminiscent of the Saudi-led coalition which failed miserably in its regime change attempt in Yemen, mainly because they so heavily relied on airstrikes rather than a full-on ground invasion in the mountainous home base of the Houthis. But doing only the minimum, i.e. vessel convoys, using air defense to shoot down Houthi missiles and drones, will be very expensive and can be a prolonged problem. The Middle East is a high tension region that can only be managed.
Let’s dig into Yemen’s history to detect the source of the Houthi’s rise. Large human settlements in Yemen go back to 5,000 BC. Being in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula it is on the border between western and eastern civilization. It was separated from Mesopotamia (Iraq and Syria) only by the Arabian desert. The Arabian desert and the lack of rivers made political consolidation difficult compared to places like Iraq or Egypt. Most of the water drawn for agriculture or pastoralism were drawn from groundwater or from the seasonal rainfalls (spring and summer). The most common crops are cereals (millet, corn, wheat, barley, sorghum), potatoes, chickpeas, and fruits like bananas, figs, apples, citrus. Since the 16th century, coffee trade has been an important source of revenue. Yemen also produces khat, a drug that grows on shrub. Oil and gas have been discovered in the 1980s and became the biggest foreign exchange.
The early empires were Minaean, Sabaean and Himyarite. The Romans under Constantin attempted to bring Christianity to Yemen. The Jewish warlord Dhu Nuwas (521-527) led a campaign of violence against the Christians in his domain. The Byzantines under Justin I led a coalition with the Aksumite and Arab Christians to defeat Dhu Nuwas. Another religious change occurred with the Prophet Muhammad, who spread Islam through Middle East and North Africa. Yemen being on the Arabian peninsula (Islam began in Saudi Mecca) was an early adopter of Islam. Prophet Muhammad sent his son-in-law as governor of Yemen. In the 9th century, the Zaydi sect from Iraq (Shia) settled in the mountainous highland of Yemen and became a significant Shia minority in Yemen. This factional division between Sunni and Shia became a source of conflict, as the Houthis mainly draw from Shia/Zaydis. Islam came to dominate Yemen, and the relatively smaller groups of Jews and Christians who stuck to their religion had to pay jizyah (tax on non-Muslims) to stay in Yemen. Islamic empires like the Rashidun, Umayyad or Abbasid Caliphate ruled over Yemen, but in practice it was ruled by local rulers like ibn Ziyad from 819 to 1018. Further dynasties were Sulayhid (1047-1138), Ayyubid (1171-1260), Rasulid (1229-1454), Tahiride (1454-1517) and the Ottomans (1538-1918).
The discovery of coffee and the growth in ship trade among the European and other Arabic powers made Yemen an important arena of conflict for domination beginning in the 15th century. The Portuguese, for instance, wanted to control trade via the Red Sea, Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean and, therefore settled all along Yemen as well. The Ottomans sent a large fleet from Egypt to conquer Yemen in 1538, storming the port city of Aden. Capturing Yemen was difficult resulting in high troop losses, and administering it was even harder in the highlands of the interior. It was Ozdemir Pasha, who finally conquered Sanaa, the major town in the interior, and ruled over Yemen from 1552 to 1560. The Yemeni Zaydis rebelled under Turkish rule and defeated several Pasha-led Ottoman armies until Sinan Pasha defeated the Zaydi army under al-Mutahhar, who died in 1572. The Zaydis had a strong sense of identity and were reviled by the Ottomans, who accused the Zaydis of being infidels. By 1627, Al-Mu’ayyad Muhammad organized a Zaydi army to remove the Ottomans from Yemen and five years later he sent an expeditionary force to seize Mecca but lost that battle to the Ottomans. Al-Mu’ayyad’s successor was his son al-Mansur al-Qasim, who founded the Qasimid state, which covered much of today’s Yemen and Asir and Najran in Saudi Arabia.
The Qasimid state itself was undermined by the Sultanate of Lahej which seized control over Aden and ran an independent kingdom. The Ottomans were also keen to push back the Qasimid and retook the coastline in 1833. In 1839, the British conquered Aden. They wanted to have a coal depot to refuel their ships that sailed between Suez, Egypt and India, their main colonial possession. When the Suez canal was built and completed in 1869, the Red Sea became an even more important sea route connecting the European Mediterranean with the Asian Indian Ocean. The British expanded their possession to the Aden hinterland covering much of what was known as South Yemen, while the Ottomans retained control over North Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. The Ottomans did not regard Yemen as high priority until the completion of the Suez canal at which point they re-captured the Arabian coast in the Red Sea. There were occasional Ottoman-British border clashes that were resolved in a 1904 agreement to demarcate South and North Yemen. The division of the country by external powers has relevance well into the twentieth century, when the country was briefly united from 1990 until the civil war in 1994 and from 2014 onward.
Under British rule, Aden became a global city attracting migrants from India, East Africa and Southeast Asia, the other British colonial possessions. Both the British and the Ottomans were ultimately harmed by World War I, but the Ottomans much more so. The Ottoman empire collapsed after World War I and by 1918 they ended the occupation of Yemen. Imam Yahya al-Mutawakkil had ruled the northern highland independently from 1911 onward. When the Ottomans retreated, he had the plan to capture the Greater Yemen similar to his Qasimid ancestors. The British put a check to Yahya’s ambitions. They had the superior airplanes to prevent Yahya’s forces from conquering Aden and pushing out the British. Ibn Saud became another power in Arabia and fought a war with Yemen. Ibn Saud was backed by the British, and in 1934 the Saudis and Yemenis agreed on a ceasefire. Yahya was forced to accept British sovereignty over the Aden protectorate, which lasted until 1963. Aden was the most industrialized part of Yemen. It had the second-busiest port after New York City. It had labor unions, and increasingly attracted Yemenis to work as port laborers.
1962 was an important year because Imam Ahmad bin Yahya, the ruler of North Yemen, died. His son Muhammad al-Badr became imam, but the military generals who hated imam rule overthrew the new ruler. Al-Badr rallied the North Yemen tribe unleashing the North Yemen civil war (1962-1970). The military junta led by Abdullah al-Sallal rallied for Egyptian support, which was run by the Arab socialist Gamal Abdel Nasser. More support came from the Soviet Union. With Nasser’s help the junta declared the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and chased out the imam al-Badr, who was backed by Saudi Arabia. The Saudis decided to backstab al-Badr in 1970 and recognized the Yemen Arab Republic. Al-Badr had no choice but go to exile in England, where he died in 1996. Here we observe an interesting pattern: the Saudis feel free to intervene in Yemen, but if the Saudis get tired, they give up and accept whichever political power rules in Sanaa. The Saudi decision to abandon al-Badr purchased them influence in Yemeni politics but generated Zaydi resentment which was the basis for the Houthi takeover many decades later.
South Yemen was also undergoing dramatic change in the 1960s. The National Liberation Front (NLF) agitated for independence from Britain which commenced in 1967, leading to the founding of the People’s Republic of South Yemen. Neither the Arab neighbors nor the west were interested in helping out this newly founded and impoverished country. It received backing from the Soviet Union and founded a Marxist state. There was a brief border war between North and South Yemen in 1972, but the country was ultimately unified in 1990. The decision to unify was based on the simultaneous discovery of oil revenues that both sides did not want to fight over, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union eliminated South Yemen’s external backer. Reunification with the North was perceived as the only way to survive. But unification was not a happy marriage.
The North was ruled by Ali Abdullah Saleh since 1978. He was a military general in his previous career. Saleh was a savvy politicians who could make the various tribes loyal to him, while he enriched himself massively from the increasing oil riches that were discovered in the 1980s. His greed, corruption and the monopolization of resources and positions for the military officers, tribal sheikhs and northern businessmen close to him alienated significant portions of society, such as the Houthis and the southerners, which undermined national unity and increased centrifugal tendencies.
Saleh became the president of the united Yemen, which is a tenure he held until he was toppled in 2012. The vice president was Ali Salem al-Beidh, the last leader of South Yemen. Even during Saleh’s rule, there was discontent in the south due to perceived marginalization of the southerners. In 1994, there was an attempt by the southerners to declare independence. al-Beidh quit the vice presidency, returned to Aden and declared the Democratic Republic of Yemen. Saleh mustered the forces to crush southern independence and stayed on as patrimonial ruler of Yemen. Al-Beidh fled to exile in Oman and supported the continued insurgency for an independent South Yemen. Following the civil war, the Yemeni Socialist Party, the stronghold in the south, no longer played a major political role in Yemeni politics.
Saleh had a hard time in holding the country together due to the quickly deteriorating economy. Much of the economy consisted of Saudi and Gulf state foreign aid and remittances from Yemeni workers in the Gulf states. Yemen decided to remain neutral following Saddam Hussein’s decision to annex neighboring Kuwait. Saudi promptly responded with severe economic sanctions by cutting all foreign aid to Yemen and deporting the Yemeni workers back home. The economy quickly declined and sectarian discontent resulted in the Yemeni civil war of 1994. Political ties to Saudi was restored in 2000, when both sides agreed to fixate the territorial boundaries and Saudi ended the economic sanctions by allowing Yemeni workers to work in Saudi.
A much more serious threat to Saleh’s rule was the Shia Zaydi insurgency that commenced with the arrest of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the Zaydi religious leader, in 1994 and intensified after his murder in 2004. The Houthis accused Saleh of corruption and being backed by Saudi Arabia and the US. The Saudis were promoting Wahhabism, which the Houthis opposed. The Houthis gained popularity by promoting Islamist welfare-oriented positions along with armed militancy to gain Yemeni independence from US and Saudi. Saleh’s regime, in turn, accused the Houthis of receiving financing from Shia-based Iran and wanting to replace the republic with an Islamic state. The Houthis had the longer breath. The 2011 Arab Spring built mounting pressure against Saleh to step down, an assassination attempt incapacitated him for several months, and he finally relented by handing the presidency to his vice president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, a southerner. Hadi was backed by Saudi and US, but he was no more legitimate within his country than his predecessor.
Hadi’s government was weak and besieged by the Houthis, Al-Qaeda and the southern separatists. Hadi announced unpopular austerity measures including cuts in fuel subsidies to comply with IMF demands to balance the budget. The biggest threat were the Houthis who finally gathered enough forces in September 2014 in their northern stronghold in Sadah and swept toward the capital Sanaa, thereby dislodging Hadi’s central government. Hadi had to flee to Aden, where he was pushed out just a few months later. Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, in turn, decided they had to intervene militarily to push out the Houthis and restore Hadi’s rule. We can see here that the weakness of the Yemeni central state allows for smaller, alternative powers to rise up and seize control over territory, and for the bigger Saudi neighbor to intervene whenever it felt opportune.
With Saudi help, Hadi returned to Aden but the Saudi coalition could not dislodge the Houthis in the western highlands that also harbor 75% of the Yemeni population. The Saudis were brutal in their methods, killing many civilians and imposing an embargo that resulted in mass starvation in the Houthi-controlled regions. In 2017, there were internal rifts between Hadi and the Aden governor Aidarus al-Zoubaidi. Hadi accused Zoubaidi of being too close to UAE and sacked him. Zoubaidi was a popular governor, so he declared the formation of a Southern Transitional Council (STC), which seized Hadi government buildings. Zoubaidi was backed by UAE, while Hadi was backed by Saudi, and both forces were fighting each other while both claim to continue fighting the Houthis. In 2020, STC declared self-governance, but the Saudis were finally able to convince UAE and STC to join a new governing body, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) putting STC and the Yemeni government together. To achieve that goal, Saudis pushed Hadi to resign. Rashid al-Alimi became the president and Zoubaidi became the vice-president of the newly formed PLC in 2022.
The only light point is that al-Qaeda remains a relatively small faction, but at one point al-Qaeda was contesting for space with STC, Government of Yemen (later PLC) and Houthis. Since the Houthi’s successful insurgency in 2014, the ex-president Saleh became a Houthi supporter, hoping to find a way to return to power. But by 2017, Saleh and the Houthis fell out with each other, and as Saleh was about to escape Sanaa to join forces with the Saudis, he was assassinated by the Houthis. The stand-off between Houthis and PLC (Yemeni government) remains unresolved, although if the Saudis reach an agreement with the Houthis the partition of Yemen could result in an end to the conflict. This would save many civilian lives as the Saudi embargo on food shipments to Houthi areas will also stop.
Let us recap the key ingredients for Yemen’s political troubles that led to the rise of the Houthis, who are, in turn, threatening the safety of international trade: (1) the natural geography involves a lack of rivers that disfavor political consolidation and favors fragmentation. (2) While Yemen is Islamic, the sectarian division between Shia Zaydis and Sunnis is relevant and is reflected in the current conflict between the Houthis and the Yemeni government. (3) Weak central governance made Yemen into a pawn of major foreign powers such as Ottoman Turks and British in the past and US, Saudi, Iran at present. (4) The economy is quite agrarian and poor, which lowers government stability during bad economic times and that favors civil wars. (5) Even the discovered oil riches do not automatically imply shared prosperity because Saleh’s regime was patrimonial and corrupt, benefiting a narrow economic and social elite close to himself, and leaving out other groups who can be mobilized to oppose the central government.
All that is to say, the chaos in that region will continue and internal and external powers will contribute their share to that chaos.
Further readings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%93present)
https://www.britannica.com/place/Yemen/Agriculture-forestry-and-fishing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Leadership_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Transitional_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_in_the_Arabian_Peninsula
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Abdullah_Saleh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Salem_al_Beidh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdrabbuh_Mansur_Hadi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aidarus_al-Zoubaidi
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