By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
The island didn't make headlines for its size. It matters because of what sits beside it: the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the narrowest chokepoints in world shipping. This week Iranian-backed Houthi rebels captured it, part of a broader advance along Yemen's Red Sea coast that has, according to aid workers cited by The Guardian, driven nearly 50,000 civilians from their homes. Entire villages have emptied. Families are trapped near the front lines with food running out.
The timing is not incidental. Saudi Arabia has leaned harder on its East-West pipeline — which runs overland from Abqaiq to the Red Sea port of Yanbu — since the Strait of Hormuz was closed off by Iran earlier in the region's war. On Friday, Saudi authorities shut that pipeline too, blaming drone strikes launched from Iraq. Iraq's government has removed a military commander and opened an investigation into how the attack originated from territory near its border with Iran, the BBC reported.
Put plainly: two of the routes that let Gulf oil reach the world without going through Hormuz are now both under direct threat — one from Houthi forces at sea, one from drones on land. NPR News noted the Houthi advance already threatens Saudi oil exports through the strait.
For Yemenis, this is not new war. It is old war finding new fuel. Aid workers quoted by The Guardian warn the country's long, on-off civil conflict is being pulled into a global contest over shipping lanes and oil routes — one that shows no sign of ending soon, and that leaves displaced families the least equipped to wait it out.
No single outlet has the full picture here; this account draws on Guardian, BBC and NPR reporting, and details on troop positions and casualty figures remain fluid.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE —
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian, the BBC and NPR News.
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