Feb 1, 2024 4 min read

What’s up with the Houthi rebels and how it could affect us

By Nick Jacobs

Let me begin with a disclaimer. This deals with nuances and subtleties, tribal conflicts and geopolitical challenges that I don’t fully understand. I’m just trying to help us all figure out who’s on first and how that’s going to challenge the price of goods in the spring.

Let’s start with who the Houthi rebels are, and why we should care. So, we’ve been hearing a lot about the Houthi rebels lately for one primary reason – they’re interfering with the shipping traffic in the Suez Canal. What are the potential ramifications of these disruptive endeavors? I’ll try to explain.

But first, we need to know where the Houthi rebels originated. In 1990, North and South Yemen came together to form one country, but that unifying effort did not result in any type of sustained stability. Then in 2011, when the Arab Spring hit, the president of Yemen stepped down and his vice president took over.

By 2014, the Houthi rebel movement took hold, and here’s where religion comes into play. Even though the majority of the population of Yemen is Sunni, the Houthis are a Zaydi Shia religious group. They went on to capture the capital, Sanaa, and forced the new president of Yemen to flee to Saudi Arabia.

Not so coincidentally, like the majority of those living in Yemen, the Saudis are Sunni Muslims, which is the more conservative and puritanical sect. So, the conflict between the Sunni Saudis and the Shia Houthi rebels caused devastation that resulted in a severe humanitarian crisis.

Even though 15 of the 19 hijackers from Sept. 11, 2001, were from Saudi Arabia, oil is still king, and the United States has a major presence there. Because of that, we chose sides and gave indirect support to the Saudi attacks on Yemen.

Next comes Iran, which is primarily another Shia sect. So, Iran is backing the Houthi rebels who are doing everything they can to attack the shipping routes through the Suez.

Do you get the picture? We haven’t even started talking about Israel and Palestine, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite Hezbollah, the Sunni Egyptians, or the Jews and Christans yet.

In order to disrupt the shipping in the Suez Canal, Houthi rebels are launching rockets and sending ships to threaten the shipping companies. As a result of this, more of our troops have been deployed to Djibouti, which is located northeast of Yemen and near the critical maritime bottleneck connecting the Suez Canal to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean.

Djibouti has several foreign military bases from the U.S., France, and China. One of those bases, the largest and most recognized U.S. military base in Africa, is Camp Lemonnier. This location allows quick access to the conflict zones in the region which includes Yemen, and maritime security for the Suez Canal.

Regardless of the increased fire power there now, the shipping companies are starting to avoid the Suez route and are heading down around the Cape of Africa. That journey adds time and a ton of additional costs to the trip.

How does all of this conflict impact your life? Well, the additional days of travel on this southern route, which sometimes can be a week or more, increases the cost of our consumer goods, and not unlike what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain will be disrupted.

Consequently, if inflation starts to rear its ugly head again in the spring, thank the Houthi Rebels, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel, Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, the United States, and all of those bureaucrats who decided to break up the Middle Eastern religions and tribes after World War I, when Syria and Lebanon came under French control and Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine came under British control.

The other alternative is to take the easy way out and just blame President Biden or former President Trump.

Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.