Red Sea crisis unlikely to see early end

Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd)

Former chief of Naval Staff

IMPERILLED sea lanes have suddenly returned to public and media consciousness after many years, thanks to the dramatic attacks by Yemen-based Houthi rebels on US Navy warships and international shipping traffic transiting through the narrow Red Sea. The last such disruptions to merchant shipping emerged at the turn of the century when the Horn of Africa saw Somalian fishermen taking to piracy for a living and hijacking ships for ransom.

Our Navy was among the first to react to the Houthi threat, swiftly deploying warships in the Red Sea.

While the poverty-stricken Somali pirates saw piracy purely as a lucrative business proposition, the Houthi group, also known as Ansar Allah, claims that its actions have ideological underpinnings. The stated aim for the Houthi drone and ballistic missile attacks is to persuade Israel to end its three-month-old indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza, which has resulted in over 22,000 civilian deaths, including those of women and children.

The Houthis claim to be targeting only those ships which are either flying the Israeli flag or are bound to or from Israeli ports or have any Israeli ‘linkage’. However, the current practice of ships being registered under ‘flags of convenience’, having owners and charterers of different nationalities and carrying mixed international crew, would make it difficult to discriminate between ‘Israeli-linked’ and other ships. While the Indian Navy has responded with alacrity, deploying warships and patrol aircraft in the Red Sea, the Houthi threat is likely to be widespread and random, and we need to reflect on its implications for India.

Few of us living in the hinterland realise that given its geophysical location and geopolitical environment, India is virtually an island. The seas that surround the peninsula, apart from offering a source of food, mineral resources and energy, provide a vital lifeline of sea lanes through which India can undertake worldwide trade and commerce. The uninterrupted flow of shipping traffic has a critical bearing on India’s economy and industry because it carries raw material, finished goods and energy supplies to and from our ports. Shipping also impacts the common person’s wellbeing because it is a vital link in the supply chain for food, medicines and consumer goods. Moreover, hikes in cargo tariff and marine insurance rates, resulting from disruptions of shipping, are borne entirely by him/her.

A few statistics will bring home the importance of shipping for India’s economy. In 2022-23, export and import of merchandise amounted to $1.2 trillion, constituting over 35 per cent of India’s nominal GDP of $3.1 trillion. Almost 95 per cent of this trade by volume, and 80 per cent in terms of value, was done using cargo ships, container carriers and oil/natural gas tankers.

What is true for India with regard to dependence on the seas is equally true for China and other Indo-Pacific economies. Nearly 100,000 merchantmen transit through Indian Ocean sea lanes annually, carrying 80 per cent of the world’s oil and 10 trillion tonnes of cargo to ports worldwide. There is growing realisation in the region that the roots of economic prosperity lie in the safety of trade and energy lifelines, which can only be ensured if ‘good order’ at sea receives due importance from maritime powers like India.

Against this backdrop, we need to remember that ‘commerce warfare’ or interdicting seaborne trade has historically been an attractive option for coercing, compelling or blackmailing trading nations. While pirates have been preying on trade for pecuniary gain for centuries, the belligerents in both World Wars employed submarines to attack shipping in an attempt to starve the enemy’s industry of fuel and resources and people of food.

During the 1971 war, a commerce blockade was the strategic penalty imposed by the Indian Navy on East and West Pakistan. The eight-year-long Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s, too, saw the ‘tanker war’, in which both Persian Gulf belligerents targeted crude oil shipping with missiles and mines in order to exert economic pressure on each other.

Features like straits, canals or capes, where geographical constrictions cause shipping traffic to bunch up, are termed ‘maritime choke points’. One such choke point is the 26-km-wide Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the tip of Yemen, which forms the eastern entrance to the Red Sea. It is this maritime arena that the Houthis have chosen to prey on ships. The 2,250-km-long Red Sea forms a link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. Currently, shipping traffic between European and Indo-Pacific ports has two options; it can either sail through the Red Sea, running the Houthi gauntlet and relying on naval protection, or it can play safe and round the Cape of Good Hope, adding 14-20 days of sailing time as well as extra fuel and insurance costs.

Our Navy was among the first to react to the Houthi threat, swiftly deploying four-five warships in the Red Sea. This was in keeping with India’s self-assigned roles of regional “preferred security partner,” and sent out a message of reassurance. However, affording protection to international shipping from ballistic missiles and drones would be a different ballgame altogether. Last month, the US, bound by its deep political linkages with Israel, launched an international naval initiative to protect Red Sea shipping, but it has failed to evoke the expected response from even its NATO partners.

The Houthis, like the Hamas and Hezbollah, are proxies of Shia Iran in its twin conflicts — with Sunni Saudi Arabia for regional/Islamic leadership, and with Zionist Israel over its occupation of Palestinian lands. Recent history has witnessed the immense resilience of Iran and the remarkable survivability/endurance of its proxies. If it took over a decade of concerted action by multinational navies to subdue Somali pirates, one may infer that the Houthi threat in the Red Sea is unlikely to see an early end, and the world may have to pay a heavy price for Israel’s continuing obduracy.

Perhaps an easier and more humane resolution would be for the global community to persuade Israel (and the US) that adequate retribution having been visited on Palestinians for the Hamas savagery of October 7, 2023, it is time to stop the killing of innocents in Gaza.

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