Al-Houthi terrorism on the Dabba port threatens to starve Yemenis

English - Monday 24 October 2022 الساعة 07:18 pm
Hadhramaut, NewsYemen, private:

 Statements of condemnation by Western countries shed light on one of the most important risks arising from the attack launched by the Houthi group against the Dabba oil port in Hadhramaut Governorate last Friday.

The condemnation statements issued by the United States and the European Union indicated that the attack represented endangering freedom of navigation through the waterways in the region, impeding access to Yemeni ports, and what this meant by rising prices of basic commodities, which compounded the suffering of Yemenis. 

This hadith reminds one of the most important causes of the economic crisis that Yemenis have been experiencing in the liberated areas and in Houthi-controlled areas since 2015, represented by the high prices of imported goods due to the high costs of marine insurance on ships arriving at Yemeni ports as a result of their classification as “high-risk” as a result of the war. 

A rise that reached about 16 times what it was before the war, according to the Minister of Transport, Abdulsalam Saleh Hamid, who recently revealed that Yemen pays about 250 million US dollars, annually, for marine insurance on goods transported by ships.

The minister’s speech came in the context of his meeting last Thursday, in Aden, with the advisor of the United Nations Development Program, Abdulrahman Azaizi, to discuss efforts to reduce the costs of shipping insurance to Yemen, within meetings and moves that the government has been conducting for months in this file with the support of the United Nations.

The government is seeking to conclude agreements with a coalition that includes marine insurance companies, to reduce insurance premiums and return them to their previous status before 2015, and in this context, it issued a decision to place an insurance deposit in the Protection Club in London.

Experts and observers fear that the recent Houthi attack will represent a blow to these efforts, by raising the level of risks on the ports and raising the insurance fees for ships, which will compound the suffering of Yemenis.

What is remarkable was the complete absence of this point in the context of the government’s and the Presidential Council’s reactions to the recent Houthi attack on the Dabba port, despite its importance in describing the risks of the attack and its consequences on the humanitarian situation and the lives of Yemenis, to condemn Houthi and expose his allegations and outbidding in this aspect.