Yemeni Gov’t forces say they retook Mokha and the Bab el-Mandeb coast, raising stakes for Djibouti and Ethiopia

A U.S. Navy sailor mans a machine gun aboard the destroyer USS Jason Dunham in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Djibouti and Yemen, 7 October 2018 (U.S. Department of Defense, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain) [file photo]

Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces said on Monday that they had retaken the coast around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait up to the port city of Mokha, pushing the Houthis out of most of the ground they seized in September, while the Houthis rejected the claims and said they had struck targets in Saudi Arabia. The fighting on the Arabian side of the strait matters directly to the Horn of Africa, where Djibouti and Eritrea face Yemen across a waterway only about 32 kilometers wide, and landlocked Ethiopia depends on the route for most of its trade.

Yemen’s army said forces of the Nation’s Shield, the Giants Brigades and the Tihama Resistance took Mokha on Monday afternoon after heavy fighting, backed by Saudi airstrikes, BBC Amharic reported. The Yemeni army’s media account (@Yemenarmyeng) wrote that the forces, “supported by the Popular Resistance,” had taken control of Mokha, west of Taiz, “following fierce battles against Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist militia.” Four government sources told Reuters only that the forces had reached the outskirts of the city late on Monday and that Houthi fighters were retreating into the highlands, while the Defense Ministry said the city had fallen. Reuters said it could not independently verify the extent of the gains.

Government sources told AFP, “Our forces have taken control of the Dhubab camp and cut the road from Dhubab to Bab el-Mandeb,” according to BBC Amharic. Officials who spoke to the Associated Press said forces had also retaken the coastal towns of Bab and Hadeid, and witnesses said they saw government tanks entering them. The offensive, called Operation Dawn of Yemen, is led by the Presidential Leadership Council, whose head, Rashad al-Alimi, vowed on Sunday to fight “until the country is liberated from the grip of the terrorist militia.” Mokha lies about 75 kilometers north of the strait, CNBC noted.

Saudi Arabia is carrying much of the weight. The coalition spokesman, Turki al-Malki, said 100 fighter jets were supporting government forces and that the coalition had secured “air protection” over the strait, the AP reported, and the coalition said it had destroyed 324 “high value” targets, according to BBC Amharic. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan agreed at an emergency meeting in Riyadh on Monday to rapidly deploy forces in the kingdom under their Mecca defense pact. Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman (@kbsalsaud) wrote that the meeting “reaffirmed the solidarity and unity of our countries in confronting the heinous attacks against the Kingdom and the holy sites.”

The Houthis called the government’s claims baseless and said they had struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, an Aramco refinery in Rabigh, Abha airport and the Khamis Mushait military base, Reuters reported. Those claims could not be verified. Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority (@ksagaca) issued a statement on Tuesday about attacks targeting Jazan and Najran airports. The Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam accused Saudi Arabia of committing massacres and said it must be held accountable, BBC Amharic reported. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia deeply worrying and a sign of escalation.

The Houthis are not finished. They gained sections of a mountain road near Taiz, leaving the city of more than half a million people surrounded, according to five government military sources quoted by Reuters, though one source denied the road had been cut. The UN migration agency said 184,000 people had been displaced since the war resumed. Middle East Brief (@MEBriefNews), an account that tracks regional news, wrote on Tuesday that the Houthis, who call their movement Ansar Allah, had published footage of attacks on trucks and forces of the Presidential Leadership Council and that, if confirmed, it would show government forces being hit as they withdrew. The footage had not been independently verified.

Markets were watching closely. Brent crude traded at about $100 a barrel on Tuesday, CNBC reported, with ING strategists saying the market “remains nervous about potential supply disruptions from the region.” Fernando Carvajal, a former adviser on Yemen to the UN Security Council, said, according to Gulf News, that holding Mokha would be a “vital sign” of whether government forces could consolidate their advance.

For the Horn, the stakes are practical. Ethiopia moves 90 to 95 percent of its trade through Djibouti, according to estimates cited by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies and Asia Times. Ships bound for Djibouti must pass the southern Red Sea, and weekly transits through the strait fell sharply after the Houthis resumed missile strikes in July, according to IMF PortWatch data cited by the Africa Center. More than 3,700 people fleeing the fighting in western Yemen had crossed to Djibouti’s northern shores by late September, Asia Times reported, and nearly 1,000 government soldiers stationed on the Hanish and Zuqar islands fled to Djibouti after a Houthi attack last month, Al-Monitor reported, citing Yemen Shabab TV.

The waterway is also at the center of the rivalry between Ethiopia and its neighbors. On Monday, a day after Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia declared at New Alamein that only coastal states should govern the Red Sea, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told Parliament that Ethiopia could not fully modernize without access to the sea, which he said it would seek by peaceful means. In July, Saudi Arabia hosted talks at which at least 14 countries, including Egypt, Djibouti, Sudan and Somalia, formed a Multinational Maritime Defence Alliance that leaves out Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, Asia Times reported.

On X, France’s embassy in Sudan (@FranceauSoudan) wrote on Tuesday that it had held “frank, positive and friendly” talks with Yemen’s ambassador to Ethiopia, covering regional issues and especially “the latest developments in Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea.” The historian and journalist Martin Plaut (@martinplaut) shared a BBC report early on Tuesday that government forces had taken the strait and Mokha. On the Ethiopian side of social media, Simon Jigna (@SimonJigna) wrote in Arabic that the war in northern Ethiopia “is not a civil war, but a proxy war waged by Egypt to crush a rising Ethiopia.” Egypt denies backing the armed groups fighting in Ethiopia.

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Yemeni Gov’t forces say they retook Mokha and the Bab el-Mandeb coast, raising stakes for Djibouti and Ethiopia

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