Houthis Seize Bab el Mandeb, Djibouti Seeks Aid

Djibouti’s Interior Minister, Omar Abdi Said, appealed today for urgent international assistance, saying the small Horn of Africa nation of under 1.2 million people is being overwhelmed by refugees fleeing Yemen. The story might look far removed from Belgrade, but the strait at the center of the fighting, Bab el Mandeb, is one of the world’s main arteries for seaborne oil transport. Any disruption there, combined with the already blockaded Strait of Hormuz amid the war with Iran, pushes directly on global crude prices and, through them, on fuel prices in Serbia.

In brief

• Since September 3, Houthi forces have seized the whole of Yemen’s Red Sea coast
• Since last Thursday, more than 2,500 people have arrived in Djibouti, with another 10,000 expected
• UNHCR: more than 100,000 people displaced along Yemen’s west coast
• The Markazi camp in Obock has room for only 5,000 new refugees

“The influx of migrants has already exceeded our national capacities, and we are facing mounting pressure as international funding declines,” Said said, according to Al Jazeera. He said more than 2,500 Yemenis had reached Djibouti since last Thursday and that he expects the number to approach 10,000 in the coming weeks. Most are arriving in Obock, a small town on Djibouti’s northern coast just 20 kilometers by sea from the Yemeni shore. The Markazi camp there, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), has room for only 5,000 more people.

Why the Houthis now hold the entire strait

The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel movement, launched an offensive on September 3 and redrew the map of western Yemen in just over two weeks. On September 10 they took the districts of Hays and al-Hawak in Hodeidah governorate and the port of Mokha in Taiz governorate. By mid-September they had also taken Perim Island, which sits inside the Bab el Mandeb strait itself, followed by Greater and Lesser Hanish, an archipelago 160 kilometers north of the strait. According to Yemeni officials, government forces withdrew from Hanish without significant resistance. The Houthis now control the entirety of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and effectively straddle the strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, one of the chokepoints for cargo traffic bound for the Mediterranean. Al Jazeera reported today that government forces are reporting fresh clashes with the Houthis near the strait itself.

The numbers shift from day to day

Figures on the displaced change daily, and sources do not fully agree. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday that more than 100,000 people had been displaced along Yemen’s west coast. In a weekly report cited by the Jerusalem Post and based on its Displacement Tracking Matrix, the IOM put the number of newly displaced at over 85,000, of whom 82,164 had been displaced since the start of September. A few days later, according to IBTimes, the IOM was citing a figure of 93,864 newly displaced. Of those, 9,280 households, or nearly 56,000 people, were displaced in Taiz governorate near the port of Mokha, while roughly 19,000 were displaced in Lahij governorate. More than 60 percent of the displaced are women, children and elderly men, the IOM says.

Estimates for Djibouti diverge in similar fashion. Al Jazeera reports that more than 2,500 Yemenis have arrived since last Thursday, while the Jerusalem Post, citing UNHCR, puts the figure at over 2,400. IBTimes, citing the IOM, says more than 2,000 people had crossed into Djibouti by September 14, while a day earlier, on September 12, then-Minister of Economy and Finance Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh said 1,400 refugees had arrived in just 24 hours. The state news agency Agence Djiboutienne d’Information reported on September 13 that 3,400 people had arrived in 48 hours, including more than 2,000 rescued at sea off Obock.

Reactions from humanitarian organizations

IOM Director General Amy Pope warned that the figures conceal the personal tragedy behind each one. “Behind every number is a family that has lost everything. Many have been displaced more than once,” Pope said in a statement from the agency. UNHCR’s representative in Djibouti, Sandrine Desamur, said people are arriving exhausted after a grueling sea crossing, and that the response is already stretched thin, warning that additional support is urgently needed before more families arrive. On the Yemeni side, Presidential Leadership Council member Sultan al-Arada described the collapse of government forces in Mokha and elsewhere along the west coast as “painful and regrettable,” while council chairman Rashad al-Alimi tried to portray the setbacks as isolated incidents, insisting the government remains committed to restoring sovereignty over the entire country.

Since September 3, according to Yemen’s Ministry of Human Rights, cited by Euronews, about 150 civilians have been killed and more than 200 wounded in the fighting. This is a conflict our outlet has not previously covered at this scale; the last report was on a drone Saudi Arabia shot down near Mecca, which the Houthis denied launching.

What comes next

For now there is no sign the United Nations or Western governments will respond to Omar Abdi Said’s appeal before another 10,000 people reach Djibouti, as expected in the coming weeks. The Yemeni government, for its part, says its forces are regrouping for a fresh attempt to retake part of the coast, while the Houthis simultaneously say they will keep attacking Saudi Arabia. Whether the counterattack materializes will decide how long the strait linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden stays in rebel hands.