[imagesource:gencraftai]

It’s easy for the conflict in the Red Sea to become background noise when we are dealing with our domestic issues. Unless you have emotional or financial skin in the game, the attacks on cargo ships by rebels seem like an unwelcome side-effect of the Israeli problem – which in a way it is.

But the Houthis and their issues have been part of the “axis of resistance” since the early 1990s, and are now part of the fight against Israel and everyone else who cross their path.

The Houthis are (supposedly) Iranian-backed rebels that throw in with other groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement – and they pretty much shoot at anyone who looks American, British, or any nationality that falls under ‘Western”. Formally known as the Ansar Allah (Partisans of God), the group is named after the movement’s late founder, Hussein al-Houthi. His brother, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, currently serves as their leader.

In the early 2000s, the Houthis launched a rebellion against Yemen’s long-time ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to seek more independence for the group’s ancestral home in northern Yemen. The chaos of the 2011 Arab Spring allowed them to seize control of the northern Yemen territory of Saada before sommer taking over the Yemeni capital – thanks to a sketchy alliance with the security forces still loyal to ex-President Saleh, who was forced to hand over power during the uprising.

In 2015 they went on to take control of most of western Yemen, causing the Suadi Arabians to stress out about an Iranian-backed group being so close to its borders. The Saudi Arabian government put together a so-called ‘coalition of Arab countries’ to repel the Houthis, but despite bombing the hell out of the region, the Houthis stayed put, until an exasperated Saudi Arabia eventually asked the UN to help parlay a truce. 160,000 deaths later, the fighting with Saudi Arabia eventually stopped in April 2022.

But the Houthis still hated Israel, so when the events of 7 October 2023 set Gaza on fire, they vented their anger at their arch-nemesis by attacking every ship with a connection to Israel.

Rebels don’t concern themselves with collateral damage all that much though, so their targets have now included several ships with no affiliation to Israel, including a British-linked tanker, which the Houthis said was in response to “American-British aggression”.

Since America has been itching to take a swipe at Iran, they accused the Iranians of supplying the Houthis with weapons, which are used to disrupt traffic in an important shipping route – almost 15% of global seaborne trade passes through the Red Sea and major shipping companies are now forced to go the long way round southern Africa instead.

Citing the “threat to trade and freedom of navigation”, the US and UK began bombing Houthi targets in Yemen on 11 January, and since then it’s been a tit-for-tat while Iran and the US sharpen their blades for each other to the sound of bombs dropping on Gaza.

The Houthis are another fuse in the ideological dirty bomb that has been kicked around the Red Sea for a long time. Considering the lives of the poor people living in that area, our South Africa issues seem tame.

[source:bbc&sanaacentre.org]