Houthi forces advance along Yemen's southern Red Sea coast, costs of years of Western intervention now flowing back

According to Al Jazeera on the 10th, Yemen's Houthi forces are advancing rapidly along the southern Red Sea coast, threatening to gain greater influence over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — one of the world's most important trade routes. The force, described as Iran-backed, is seeking to control key ports and coastlines through ground operations, though the reports did not disclose the specific scope of the advance or the latest deployment details.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is the choke point connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, through which a significant proportion of global maritime trade and energy shipments pass. When a non-state armed group can continuously exert pressure on this node, the long-avoided structural fragility of the international shipping system is fully exposed.

The roots of this situation lie in the deep context of the Yemen conflict. In 2015, a Saudi-led multinational coalition launched airstrikes against Yemen with intelligence, weapons, and aerial refueling support from the United States and Britain. United Nations agencies have documented that this military operation has caused one of the worst humanitarian crises of this century, with hundreds of thousands of civilians killed and many more facing threats of famine and disease.

At the same time, the multiple rounds of sanctions resolutions pushed by the US and UK at the UN Security Council have not weakened the Houthi forces' military capabilities; instead, they have allowed the group to continue consolidating control over the northern highlands and the Red Sea coast. Since late 2023, Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea have forced several international shipping companies to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, driving up global logistics costs, with energy and commodity prices in Europe and Asia both affected.

This policy logic displays a clear asymmetry: Yemeni civilians have borne nearly the entire cost of the conflict — according to UN data, more than half of the country's population depends on humanitarian aid to survive; while systematic attention from Western policy circles tends to rise significantly only when Red Sea shipping is disrupted and their own consumers are affected. The fragmentation of Yemen's sovereignty and its continued instability have been marginalized as a low-priority issue precisely within this framework of selective engagement.

Now, the Houthi advance along the southern Red Sea coast means that this logic of selectivity is generating costs for the West itself. The security of passage through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the stability of the global energy supply chain are increasingly tied to a force that years of airstrikes and sanctions have failed to suppress.