Perim Island may be a small lump of windswept volcanic rock at the entrance to the Red Sea but its capture by Gulf Arab forces from Houthi fighters was a welcome victory for Yemen’s government and its allies yesterday.
Gulf Arab troops swooped in from air and sea to take back Perim, which sits on one of the world’s most important sea lanes.
The successful action denied Iran, the Houthis’ main ally, a symbolic foothold astride trade routes as the Saudi-led Gulf Arab states and Tehran vie for influence across the Arab world.
“The island has now been completely secured by the coalition and the resistance forces from among its people,” Rami Fahmy Mayuni, a tribal chief of the island’s original inhabitants and commander of its militia fighters, told reporters flown to Perim by United Arab Emirates forces for a tour yesterday.
In 2013, more than 3.4 million barrels of oil per day passed through the 20 km wide Bab al-Mandab Strait linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, according to the US Energy Information Administration, a big reason why Egypt and the US vowed to defend the security of shipping there as the Houthis descended upon it. The warring parties appeared to receive the message and oil tankers and cargo ships continue to heave along, untroubled by the ground combat grinding up Yemen’s western coast.
“A return to normal life still faces huge obstacles,” Mayuni, the local leader, said yesterday.
“The Houthis planted dozens of landmines to hinder our ability to take it back. The battle was violent and took a couple hours, but the power plant is destroyed, and there’s no way to pump water,” Mayuni said.
A Yemeni gunman holding the Emirati flag stood behind him and Gulf troops prepared to fly out again by Blackhawk helicopter. As combat raging throughout Yemen and daily air strikes have killed over 5,400 people during its war, hunger and disease have spread through the already impoverished nation.
The Houthis have condemned the coalition for alleged war crimes and say their seizure of the capital, Sanaa, in September and spread throughout the country was part of a revolution against a corrupt Yemeni government beholden to Gulf monarchies and the imperialist West.