![\"Bab](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bab-el-mandeb-aster-1280.jpg?resize=780%2C439&ssl=1\")
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Bab el-Mandeb does not need a physical closure to tax the Horn. Commodity traffic through the strait has been stuck near roughly 26 vessels a day in recent readings, against a pre-crisis average around 70, according to Anadolu Agency\u2019s September 11 ship-tracking roundup. Kpler\u2019s 10-day average sat near 27. August\u2019s monthly average of 28 was the lowest in the recent PortWatch-linked series. Those are not abstract maritime trivia for Djibouti, Berbera, or landlocked Ethiopia. They are the daily math of war-risk insurance, Cape diversion freight, and Bab el-Mandeb shipping costs that already price fear into every container and tanker schedule.<\/p>\n
Anadolu\u2019s three-day snapshot was blunt: 25 vessels on one day, 28 the next, 26 the day after, for a short-run average around 26. The longer arc is uglier. World Bank Data Lab calculations based on IMF PortWatch AIS data put pre-crisis Bab el-Mandeb traffic near 71 cargo and tanker vessels a day from early 2022 into October 2023. After Houthi attacks on commercial shipping began in late 2023, the route never fully recovered. Mid-2026 still hovered in the mid-30s before July and August slumped again, with August at 28. The latest Kpler figures suggest September has stayed depressed near those levels.<\/p>\n
The security story behind the AIS lines moved again in early September. A Yemeni government military source told Anadolu that Houthi fighters seized strategic Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the city of Dhubab in western Taiz. FreightWaves, citing Freightos research on September 15, described carriers restoring some Suez and southern Red Sea capacity even as that coastal consolidation raised the risk profile around the chokepoint. Sea Intelligence estimates that more than a quarter of Asia-Europe capacity will transit the Red Sea in September, with Asia-Mediterranean services restoring faster than Asia-North Europe. Spot rates have eased from summer peaks but remain elevated. War-related fuel costs and schedule pain have not gone away just because some liners edged back toward Suez.<\/p>\n
That combination is the point for Horn readers. The strait need not be blockaded with a chain across the water. Insurance markets and routing desks already treat the corridor as a priced risk. When carriers divert around the Cape of Good Hope, voyage days lengthen, bunker burns rise, and effective capacity shrinks. When they return through Suez while Houthis hold more coastal leverage near Bab el-Mandeb, the shorter path comes with a thicker war-risk surcharge and a higher chance of sudden blank sailings. Either way, Djibouti\u2019s gateway role and Berbera\u2019s competing corridor sit inside a Red Sea system that still cannot promise calm.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia\u2019s exposure is structural. As a landlocked economy, Addis Ababa\u2019s import and export stack depends on how reliably goods clear Horn ports and how expensive the ocean legs into those ports become. Red Sea access politics in Ethiopian public debate often sound like a sovereignty slogan. The quieter constraint is logistics math: if Asia-Europe and Asia-Med boxes keep oscillating between Suez return and Cape diversion, Ethiopian shippers inherit higher freight, delayed schedules, and insurance premiums they did not vote for. Abiy Ahmed\u2019s government can talk maritime destiny. Merchants still pay the invoice written in war-risk clauses.<\/p>\n
FreightWaves also flagged why the partial Suez return has not erased cost pressure. Asia-North Europe spot prices were still more than 20% above mid-May pre-peak levels in the mid-September update, while Asia-Mediterranean rates remained more than 50% higher even after sharper weekly drops. Higher war-related fuel and Far East congestion keep schedules brittle. For Horn port economics, brittle schedules mean unreliable berth windows and inventory buffers that raise landed costs inland.<\/p>\n
None of this requires forecasting a total Red Sea shutdown. The data already show a corridor that has been structurally thinner since late 2023, with a second deterioration through July and August 2026 and Houthi gains that make any recovery contingent. Twenty-six ships a day is not normal trade. It is a stressed chokepoint pretending to be a routine lane. Until security risk falls enough for insurers and liners to treat Bab el-Mandeb as ordinary water again, Cape diversion freight and war-risk insurance will keep teaching the same lesson: the Horn\u2019s ports live downstream of a strait that politics has already priced as dangerous.<\/p>\n
Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n Anadolu Agency<\/a> FreightWaves<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bab el-Mandeb does not need a physical closure to tax the Horn. Commodity traffic through the strait has been stuck near roughly 26 vessels a day in recent readings, against a pre-crisis average around 70, according to Anadolu Agency\u2019s September 11 ship-tracking roundup. Kpler\u2019s 10-day average sat near 27. August\u2019s monthly average of 28 was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":601942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7911,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bab-el-mandeb-aster-1280.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2wAL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601946,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601943\/revisions\/601946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}