Mosque damaged by a suspected Indian missile attack yesterday near Muzaffarabad in Pakistani Kashmir
I’m still processing this new and terrifying escalation in seventy-eight years of hostility between the two states born of sunset on the Raj. Such are our times that India’s strikes against Pakistan yesterday echo, however faintly as yet, Israel’s against Palestine – not least because US need to secure India as a strategic ally against China gives Modi’s regime a licence to kill comparable, in kind if not in degree, to that enjoyed by the apartheid state – though there is the far from trifling difference that India, unlike Israel, is not the only nuclear power in the ring.
Modi’s government says yesterday’s attacks were a response to the April 22 terrorist attack at Pahalgam (a place of great personal interest to me in Indian-controlled Kashmir) which killed 26 and in which New Delhi sees, though has produced no evidence of, the hand of Islamabad. For two markedly differing accounts see that of today’s Guardian, which remains deaf and blind to the realities of imperialism, and that on today’s World Socialist Website, which for all its other faults does not:
In reality, the Trump administration’s close relations and strategic partnership with India has only encouraged Modi to respond aggressively against Pakistan, exploiting the April 22 terrorist attack as the pretext. According to Indian officials, national security adviser, Ajit Doval, briefed Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the airstrikes immediately after they had taken place, but the Trump administration undoubtedly knew in advance that Indian retaliation was imminent.
On April 30, Rubio met with India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and denounced the “horrific terrorist attack” inside Indian-controlled Kashmir. While appealing to “de-escalate tensions,” Rubio nevertheless “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to cooperation with India against terrorism”—remarks that only encouraged, not restrained, aggressive Indian retaliation.
The decades-long rivalry between India and Pakistan is a reactionary conflict that is rooted in the catastrophic 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu India. Military conflict over Muslim-majority Kashmir erupted very rapidly after the Hindu ruler of the princely state opted, under pressure from New Delhi, to join with India.
Watch this space. But let me turn to today’s offering. It’s from Andrew Korybko, who frankly and frequently irritates the fuck out of me but whose breadth of focus, and ability to pen short but well informed appraisals of an astonishing diversity of hotspots and flash points, make him a go-to source.
If, like me, you applaud what the Houthis are doing 1 in opposing Israeli/Western genocide in Palestine, you’re likely as irked as I am by his tone …
[Ansar Allah] announced at the time that [its blockade] is in solidarity with the Palestinians and won’t be lifted until after the Israeli military operation in Gaza ends, which the Houthis consider [!!] to be a genocide.
… but it’s a small price to pay when his assessment of a realpolitik in which Ansar Allah – on a mountainous terrain as advantageous to a defender as the moral high ground it also occupies, enjoying a leverage without precedent over one of the planet’s great maritime choke points, 2 and battle-hardened by over a decade of Western backed Saudi assault – is hard to gainsay. 3
Houthi-Controlled North Yemen Is Poised To Become A Regional Power If Nothing Changes
This scenario can only realistically be averted by the Houthis’ enemies collectively shouldering and thus more fairly sharing the immense costs of doing what’s needed to defeat them, which is in all of their interests, but the “prisoner’s dilemma” prevents them from doing so.
The Houthis shocked Israel by penetrating several layers of air defense systems to successfully strike Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday morning. They then threatened to impose an air blockade on Israel by repeatedly targeting its airports, while Israel promised a sevenfold response against the Yemeni rebels. The problem for Israel though is that it’s unlikely to achieve what the US itself couldn’t over nearly the past 18 months of it bombing the Houthis in an attempt to end to their blockade of the Red Sea.
About that, the group announced at the time that this is in solidarity with the Palestinians and won’t be lifted until after the Israeli military operation in Gaza ends, which the Houthis consider to be a genocide. Prior missile attacks against Israel were a nuisance but hadn’t posed a serious national security threat till now. The fact that the Houthis are expanding their naval blockade to include a threatened air blockade of Israel also serves to powerfully defy the Trump Administration’s intensified bombing campaign.
Three reasons account for why the US and Israel are struggling to defeat the Houthis: 1) the partial blockade on Yemen has failed to stop the import of (Iranian?) missile technology; 2) Saudi Arabia won’t intercept Houthi missiles fired towards Israel due to their lack of mutual recognition and fears of reigniting the hottest phase of this decade-long conflict; and 3) nobody – neither the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, nor the last two’s local Yemeni allies – is considering a ground invasion of North Yemen.
Tightening the partial blockade on Yemen could worsen its famine, dangerously place more foreign naval assets in range of Houthi missiles, and risk provoking the group into attacking Saudi Arabia and/or the UAE (whether their energy, military, and/or civilian targets) out of desperation. The preceding point also accounts for why Saudi Arabia won’t help Israel intercept Houthi missiles. As for the last reason, it would entail enormous physical costs that nobody wants to risk, thus perpetuating this dilemma.
If nothing changes, then even if the Houthis lifted their naval blockade of the Red Sea and threatened air blockade of Israel upon Israel ending its military operation in Gaza and the international community de facto accepting their indefinite control over North Yemen, the military threat will remain. Not only that, but it’ll grow due to the Houthis’ predictably continued import of missile technology and the hardening of their mountainous defenses, thus giving them hitherto unthinkable leverage over their enemies.
Such an outcome would revolutionize regional affairs. It can only realistically be averted by the Houthis’ enemies collectively shouldering and thus more fairly sharing the immense costs of doing what’s needed to defeat them, which is in all of their interests, but the “prisoner’s dilemma” prevents them from doing so. Neither trusts the other enough, nor are they comfortable accepting even the comparatively more equally dispersed damage that the Houthis could inflict on each of them, which is why it’s unlikely.
Accordingly, so long as the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the last two’s local Yemeni allies prioritize their self-interests over their shared ones, the scenario of Houthi-controlled North Yemen becoming a regional power is a fait accompli. All the aforementioned would therefore have to accept a future where Houthi missiles are held over their heads like a Damocles’ sword. If that doesn’t soon spur them into collective action, then nothing will, and they’ll just have to adapt to this new strategic reality.
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Here’s how the Guardian reported the US-Houthi ceasefire yesterday …
The US will halt its bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthis after the Iran-aligned group agreed to stop targeting shipping in the Red Sea …
“The Houthis have announced … that they don’t want to fight any more. They just don’t want to fight. And we will honour that, and we will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated”, Trump said. He provided minimal details of the agreement and denied that he had struck a deal.
… here’s Caitlin Johnstone’s take:
In some positive news, the Trump administration has announced that it will stop bombing Yemen, finally accepting the longstanding offer from Ansar Allah to cease attacking US ships if the US ends its bombing campaign.
This is being framed as a victory by Trump and his supporters, with Trump claiming the Houthis “capitulated”, but if anything it’s actually a win for Yemen. Yemeni forces have made it clear that they will continue attacking Israel until it halts its genocidal atrocities in Gaza, which was the only reason the US started bombing Yemen in the first place, and those attacks were the only reason Yemen was attacking American ships. After losing two fighter jets and more than twenty MQ-9 Reaper drones to Houthi attacks, the US is now retreating with its tail between its legs without having gained anything.
Trump Backs Down On Yemen While India Bombs Pakistan
… and here’s that of Tarik Cyril Amar, who first came to my attention through his reporting of Syria after the fall of the region’s last Ba’athist government. While I find his tone too sarcastic – a tool bloggers should employ sparingly and with great care – I agree with his central thrust that Trump’s efforts to paint this halt to bombing as a US victory are indeed “nonsense”:
Donald Trump has announced that the US is stopping its massive bombing campaign against Yemen. (While the US usually clings to the fiction that it is not bombing a country but “merely” a movement it has, de facto, been at war with Yemen, most of which Ansar Allah rules.) This de facto sort-of-ceasefire – which Trump, for some reason, does not want to call a “deal” (for once) – has been engineered with the help of Omani mediation; on the American side, Trump’s inevitable man-for-everything-and-then-some Steve Witkoff played a role.
What exactly the announcement means – indeed whether it has an exact meaning known to anyone – is unclear. Has Ansar Allah agreed to desist from all attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and especially the Bab al Mandab? Or just from attacking US ships? Or merely US military vessels perhaps? An Ansar Allah spokesman has in any case stated that Israeli ships remain targets. Also, as it happened, Trump informed the media first; the US military second, if at all. Even Israel claimed to have been taken by surprise.
Usually, such questions of scope and procedure really, really matter in grown-up-politics but hey, no biggie: it’s probably a little too much to expect from the leadership of the “Indispensable Nation” currently busy getting “great again” by tanking the world economy through a trade war that isn’t merely aggressive but stupid as well as failing on its own very ill-conceived terms. 4
After all, bombing Yemen for seven weeks was just a matter of life and death – and, as usually, other, not Americans deaths: Since the fresh US escalation of violence against Yemen in mid-March, American forces have attacked a thousand targets – according to the US – and they have, as is their wont, massacred civilians, including migrants targeted with bunker-busting bombs, Israeli-style, as it were.
One thing is certain: Trump’s claim that his Yemeni opponents “have capitulated” is nonsense. Ansar Allah declaring, in its turn, that “Yemen defeats America” is not: While rhetorical and hyperbolic – no, Yemen has not sunk an aircraft carrier – that claim, actually, has a large kernel of truth, counterintuitive as that may seem. Here’s why …
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- The indefatigably ridiculous Julie Burchill cites Islamist homophobia, and mediaevalist attitudes to women – as if the Judaism she so admires were free of either! – in her gibes at Westerners who don’t altogether care for genocide, and whom she deems incapable of drawing a clear line between approval of those actively opposed to it, and rejection of their social conservatism. She built a lucrative career on being blatantly ludicrous, but at the subconscious levels where most of our cognitive processing goes on such syllogisms – X is bad, Y supports X, ergo Y may not be supported on any matter under the sun – are constantly drawn, and constantly exploited by the powerful and their apologists.
- The BBC puts traffic through the Red Sea – hence through a Bab el-Mandab choke point just 16 miles wide at its narrowest – at 12% of the world’s total. Shippers Hillebrand GORI, a DHL subsidiary, say 15%: rising to 30% for container ships. From this reality – and those of Yemen’s topography, asymmetric fighting experience, and the vulnerability of aircraft carriers in so confined a sea – Ansar Allah punches way above its weight.
- Re the strength of Ansar Allah’s hand I recommend the first ten minutes of yesterday’s discussion on Nima Alkorshid’s Dialogue Works channel. Yes, the whole thing runs an hour and three-quarters and, yes, since the fall of Syria I’ve been wary of a tendency to wishful thinking by both of Nima’s guests – former US marine intelligence officer/UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, and Iranian academic Mohammad Marendi – but those opening minutes do a good job of nailing Trump’s folly in believing he could succeed against Yemen when every power in the region, plus Britain and three US administrations from Obama onwards, abjectly failed.
- Having written four posts on Trump’s trade war I’m not sure Mr Amar fully understands its aims, so perhaps isn’t best qualified to gauge its success, but he makes the remark as a sideswipe so further inspection would be tangential and overkill.