To Save Yemen, Destroy Its Ports?

ADEN, YEMEN—The resumption of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping should surprise no one.

The Houthis do not believe the international community is serious about countering them, and they approach ceasefires more as tactical pauses to regroup and rearm than as space to seek peace.

Attacking shipping selectively advances the Houthi objective in two ways. First, the Houthis can dissuade ships owned by Israel or docking in Israel from the fast, cheaper route through the Suez Canal. This is as much a threat to the Port of Haifa as the occasional rocket or drone. Second, the Houthis can charge protection money for ships to pass unmolested. Here, the plan is simple: Ships planning to transit the Bab el-Mandeb must pay a toll at a certain arbitrary point on the sea lanes; if they do not, they get attacked.

The Houthis Won’t Stop Attacks

The Houthis have reason to believe both that their strategy is effective and that the international community is not serious about countering them.

Take the December 2018 Stockholm Agreement. Crafted by the United Nations to prevent a battle for Hodeidah, the Red Sea port through which both the international community imported humanitarian assistance and the Houthis imported most of their weaponry, the Stockholm Agreement was all smoke and mirrors.

Rather than stop Houthi weapons acquisition, it provided diplomatic cover with a purposely ineffective inspections regime.

The Stockholm Agreement made inspections voluntary; a ship that docked in Hodeidah without formally declaring itself could offload cargo without triggering inspections.

While the Stockholm Agreement was meant to remove the Houthis from control over the port, the United Nations turned another way to allow Houthi workers to change uniforms and feign independence.

This was the same tactic that Hezbollah used to maintain its control over Beirut’s international airport years after an agreement to disentangle the militia’s control over a major source of its smuggling and revenue.

Trusting the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM) to inspect ships that do dock at Hodeidah or the smaller port of Salif 40 miles to the north, is as foolish as believing the United Nations Relief and Works Administration could be serious about countering Hamas tunnels.

In reality, UNVIM is yet another multimillion-dollar failure, one whose presence has done nothing to resolve the problem it was meant to address, and whose existence may have actually exacerbated the situation.

In reality, rather than resolve Yemen’s precarious humanitarian situation by ending Houthi control over Hodeidah even at the cost of a two-week pause in port operations, the Stockholm Agreement worsened it; more Yemenis are dead today because the agreement preserved Houthi control than might have perished had military action temporarily paused food delivery.

Time for A Get-Tough Approach

Rather than kill Yemenis in slow motion or engage in occasional Whac-A-Mole with Houthi positions, the Trump administration should simply end Hodeidah and Salif’s ability to function.

Blockades are dangerous as participating ships would be targets or Houthi missiles and drones. Instead, the United States should—unilaterally if necessary—destroy all port facilities and make its docks unusable.

The international community can then redirect all shipments through the ports of Aden and Mukalla. Smaller traffic that might once have used Salif could use Mocha. Not only would such a policy bypass the Houthis and resolve the problem of their resupply by sea, but it would also right a historical wrong.

Aden was for centuries the region’s major port. The British initially colonized Aden in 1839, attracted by its natural harbor and the British Navy’s need for a coaling center. For decades, Aden was the region’s chief port between Mumbai and Mombasa. Djibouti was still a small fishing village, Dubai a hub for smuggling, and Bahrain a small pearling port. Aden’s decline and Hodeidah’s growth hinged on two elements, one temporary and the other systematic. First, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen—a Communist-inspired pro-Soviet state that existed in South Yemen between 1967 and 1990—temporarily removed Aden from most international traffic.

Aden might have recovered, had it not been for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s deliberate attempts to undermine South Yemen and starve the region of state resources. In essence, Saleh—a northerner who was born on the outskirts of Sana’a—sought to divert all traffic from Aden to Hodeidah to punish the south. Hodeidah never made much sense economically, however, and was always a poor substitute for Aden.

I have visited many of the ports in the region—from the Persian Gulf states to Somaliland —and have spent time in Mukalla, Aden, Mocha, and Hodeidah, although my visit to the latter was admittedly before the Houthi takeover. Aden has the capacity today to take over all humanitarian and cargo traffic into and out of Yemen.

The Southern Transitional Council controls Aden and can allow free passage for the United Nations to transport goods anywhere in Yemen; if the Houthis obstruct aid or seek to tax it, then the United Nations should cease transport until U.S. or allied drones can take out the Houthi checkpoints interfering or seeking to profit from international humanitarian assistance.

Starved of resources to purchase patronage and the weapons transiting Hodeidah, such Houthi resistance will be short-lived. Bluster may cause United Nations officials to soil their pants, but it does not pay Houthi salaries.

Rather than double down on a failed strategy and embrace the fiction that the Stockholm Agreement works, it is time to recognize that keeping Hodeidah open does not save lives; it costs them. A Yemen free from Houthi tyranny requires Aden resuming its rightful place as the gateway to South Arabia and Yemen.

About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The opinions and views expressed are his own. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. The views expressed are the author’s own.