New Foothold in the Red Sea

YemenExtra

Y.A

Americans are increasing their direct presence in the Yemeni arena. A new military base are being secretly and rapidly built in the largest Yemeni islands in the Red Sea

On the largest Yemeni islands in the Red Sea, two US military aircraft carrying various equipment, including eavesdropping and intelligence monitoring, landed. The site is the island of Hanish al-Kubra (130 km from the city of Hodeidah and 40 km from Al-Mukha), after the countries of the coalition controlled the islands of Socotra in the Arabian Sea , Mion in Bab al-Mandeb and Zaqr in the Red Sea.

Special sources said that a number of American experts, immediately after arriving in the island, sought to install radar devices. Hanish had been subjected to aerial bombardment during the first year of the war, early December 2015.

Since that day, Hanish has become a closed military zone. The island might have been chosen because it has been free of the population, in addition to its vital location and the military installations built by the Yemeni army  in the early 1990s. It had already been occupied by Eritrea at the end of 1995 before returning to Yemen after the international arbitration.

In conjunction with the arrival of the two US military transport planes to the island last Tuesday, the coalition forces prevented all their forces operating in the rest of the islands, as well as those near the coasts of Yemen, from approaching Hanish, without revealing the reasons for the ban .But, it was clear that the goal was to maintain the confidentiality of the US military move, which comes in the context of the media of the «coalition» statements  about the imminent approach of a major military operation which aimed at controlling the port of Hodeidah

American Soldiers Pave the Terrains for a Military Base

The same sources said the two US planes landed on a recently expanded earth runway, while other teams began to fence sites ,with rocky heights (430 meters above sea level), in the island.

In a related context, the actual control of the Emirates on Socotra (an island at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean) has opened the appetite of Saudi Arabia to control other islands in Arab and Red seas. Regarding of what Miyoun represents, overview of Bab al-Mandab, Saudi Arabia decided to build a military base in the island before Yemeni leaders ,loyal to it, began to force the people of the island to leave, through methods of encouragement and intimidation, to evacuate the area and start building the walls of the military base.

Meanwhile, UAE naval vessels keened to stay in the straits near the island.

Zeker, one of the islands of the archipelago- Hanish, was among the targets of the coalition countries where there are currently hundreds of new recruits, as well as officers from different nationalities who managed the military operations of the island and performed other tasks related to monitoring navigation.

Zaker is one of the nearest sites of Bab al-Mandab. It overview of  three navigational lines and had been subjected to Israeli occupation before the 1973 war, according to various historical sources.

Zaker and Hanish were among the most important islands with a strategic location in which Washington has tried to expand the Yemeni-Eritrean dispute in the mid-1990s, aiming at  internationalizing these islands and placing them under the administration of the United Nations.

The importance of the Yemeni islands was in the Red Sea of being  overview of international shipping lines and being near to the important strait,  Bab al-Mandab, as well as including  various terrain and multiple marine resources.