FLASH
Shkruar nga Paolo Garimberti
For the second time in less than three years, the Suez Canal becomes impassable, putting international traffic and world trade in crisis. In the second half of March 2021, when the world was struggling to recover from the Covid 19 pandemic crisis, a wind and sandstorm caused the passage of a giant cargo ship, Ever Given, blocking navigation for several days and causing skyrocketing of prices, from crude oil to vegetables.
Today, the unusability of a strategic passage, traversed annually by 22,000 ships, 30 percent of international maritime traffic and 15 percent of world trade, is not caused by the forces of nature and the overload of a merchant ship, but by the risk of attacks of the Houthis, otherwise called the Partisans of Allah, the Yemeni rebels armed and financed by Iran, who since November 9 of last year, when they seized the cargo ship Galaxy Leader, with a spectacular landing by descending from helicopters, have carried out a total of 27 actions against ships transiting from the Bay of Bab al Mandab.
The immediate effects are the same. Reduction in sea traffic: 91 percent for containers, as of yesterday the international association of oil ship owners also advises its members to stay away from Bab al Mandab, major container companies such as Maersk and MSC, to consider the route of the Cape of Good Hope, 10 days longer than that of Suez. Prices have risen immediately, starting from those of crude oil (4% in just one day), to the prices of food supplies.
But this time, the stakes are much higher and more dangerous than that of unpredictable natural events. And the risk may be longer term than a sandstorm. It is about the universal right of freedom of navigation and opposition to piracy, which is masked behind support for the "Palestinian cause", for the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Indeed, it is not even too late for the Houthis for the Palestinians. They just need it as one more argument for negotiations to put on the table of peace talks with Saudi Arabia, which began after the fragile truce of 2022. As an expert from Chatham House, the London-based authoritarian think tank, has said, Houthi are "very skilled military businessmen", who are capitalizing on the chance given to them by the Israeli offensive, which followed the terrible massacre of Hamas on October 7: "Defend Palestine, attack Israel, denounce the hypocrisy of other Arab countries. Therefore, as long as the war in Gaza continues, the Houthis will continue to escalate in the Red Sea."
Precisely to avoid this "escalation", in addition to restoring the right to freedom of navigation, the US and Great Britain have launched a massive attack on the bases of the Houthis in Yemen, supported by a heterogeneous coalition, consisting of Canada , Australia, Bahrain and the Netherlands, the only member from European countries.
Perhaps because the principle of freedom of the seas is rooted in the memory of a seafaring people and a country that had been a great maritime power: in their golden years, around the 1670s, the India Company had 150 ships and 40 warships.
The Houthis had been underestimated, as if they were a small and less dangerous formation, at least in Western optics, in the Iranian-led Shiite "axis of resistance" consisting of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
Indeed, they have developed a great military capability, which has been growing along with their territorial expansion in Yemen and at the expense of government forces, replacing old Soviet weapons with modern instruments of war: from missiles to drones, which they exhibited last year in a large military parade in the capital Sana'a, together with the slogan "Death to America, death to Israel". And their political credibility has increased thanks to their skillful mystification of support for the "Palestinian cause".
The risk of an expansion of the conflict in the face of a strong Anglo-American reaction is real, even though the Iranian puppets of the "axis of resistance" seem very careful and selective in moving the strings, in the walrus they want to tighten around Israel. But the consequences of a disruption of world trade would be far more severe if the Houthis were allowed to continue their piracy under the pretext of a "just cause". / La Repubblica- Bota.al
Lini një Përgjigje