Red Sea becoming messier

Tuesday 16th January, 2024

Washington claims to have shot down a cruise missile fired by the Houthis at a US warship in the Red Sea. The US Central Command has said a US fighter jet destroyed the missile near the coast on Sunday. The Houthis are not likely to stop attacks. They know they will have to be lucky only once. The US will have to remain alert and spend billions of dollars to protect its vessels against missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea.

What Sunday’s incident signifies is that the US and British airstrikes have not put the Houthis out of action, and naval vessels to be deployed by other nations in the Red Sea at the behest of Washington will have to have the same military capabilities as US warships besides being given aircover by fighter jets if they are to be safe vis-à-vis Houthi attacks.

The Houthis are sure to turn on soft targets. They are desperate to sink a warship. This is something the government of Sri Lanka, which is reportedly planning to send a naval ship to the Red Sea to join the US and its allies in neutralising the Houthis, has to bear in mind.

The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe regime is peddling an argument that Sri Lanka has been left with no alternative but to join the US-led naval operations in the Red Sea because it has to help protect international shipping. There is no gainsaying that international shipping routes must be free from disruptions. But the fact remains that the Houthis claim that they are not attacking merchant vessels indiscriminately; they say they are targeting the ships to and from Israel in protest against the ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. In other words, they will stop attacks in the Red Sea if Israel ends its military campaign in Gaza and allows humanitarian aid to reach civilians trapped there. The Houthis announced about two weeks ago that the vessels that declared their ownership and destinations prior to entering the Red Sea would not be attacked. According to data released by ship trackers, such as MariTrace, the oil freighter movement has not been affected in the Red Sea.

The US can tackle the Houthi issue easily by making Israel stop attacks on Gaza. In fact, it should have done so immediately after Israel started attacking civilian targets. Israel’s right to self-defence cannot be questioned, but if Washington had stepped in to prevent excesses committed by Israel in the name of self-defence, thousands of lives could have been saved, and the Red Sea would have been peaceful. Instead, the US chose to give Israel free rein and wreak havoc on Yemen in a bid to tame the Houthis.

Worse, the US is now trying to have other nations clean up the mess it has created and project itself as a defender of global shipping. The countries that back the US-led task force engaged in the Red Sea operations will help legitimise Washington’s backing for Israel, albeit unwittingly.

Economists have expressed fear that disruptions to international shipping in the Red Sea will drive transport costs up, and there will be an increase in global inflation, affecting all countries. The possibility of such a scenario emerging cannot be ruled out. We saw that happen during the Covid-19 pandemic, which crippled ports. The Red Sea traffic has come down 44 percent of what was recorded during the first half of December, and the number of ships taking a longer route around the Cape of Good Hope is on the rise. Unfortunately, there is hardly anything that Sri Lanka can do about it.