The challenges of peace and security in the Red Sea

The importance of the Red Sea as a strategic gateway from the Mediterranean to open oceans has grown and has become geographic capital shared by riparian countries around the Nile Basin, the Horn of Africa and East Africa.

There are six foreign military bases around the Red Sea, with the oldest belonging to France and a recent one belonging to China. Thus, the Red Sea is experiencing the largest presence and flow of multinational civilian and military vessels.

Each of the world and regional powers stationed around the Red Sea has its own approach to security of the area. Those approaches are often contradictory and always in competition. Now, they converge on a region and environment conditioned by regional and international conflicts, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iranian-Gulf conflict, the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict and the Eritrean-Yemeni conflict. Add to that challenges raised by Turkish and Israeli incursions and the intense rivalry between the major world powers in the region.

The Iranian approach in the Red Sea consists in applying a sort of pincer movement towards Arab countries on either side of the Red Sea by using the so-called Shia Crescent in the north, then expanding on the southern side of the crescent, especially in countries of the Horn of Africa overlooking the Bab el Mandeb Strait.

Iran first ensured its presence in the Red Sea area through its support of the Houthi group in Yemen. In a second step, Tehran is trying to penetrate the Horn of Africa by marking a presence in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia.

Perhaps the best evidence of this is the selection of Asmara as an initial stage for Iranian presence in the Horn of Africa through the signing in 2008 of economic cooperation agreements in mining, agricultural, energy and industry. Those agreements opened the door for obtaining facilities from the Eritrean government for the Iranian Navy in the Gulf of Aden near the Red Sea. Iran has also acquired the rights to develop and maintain the Eritrean Assab Oil Refinery.

Iran secured the establishment of a military base in Assab for six warships that are permanently present in Somali waters under the pretext of protecting Iranian merchant ships. The truth is that the warships participated in training Houthi militias.

The Israeli strategy is based on developing the Israeli Navy to ensure military superiority in the region by focusing on acquiring advanced nuclear submarines. Israel is also calling for the internationalising of security of the Red Sea to deny Arab countries exclusive rights to the security of the Red Sea, which would leave the Israeli port of Umm Al-Rashrash at Eilat vulnerable.

Israel is calling for internationalisation of security responsibility of the Bab el Mandeb Strait as an international navigation corridor. Its goal is to strengthen the status of its third port, which it had turned into an open trade zone in 1985.

Israel’s maritime strategy relies on creating a strategic depth for its presence in the Horn of Africa. Israel is working on developing its cooperation with Ethiopia, South Sudan and Eritrea, especially after the failure of its Two Seas Link project for a canal between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea to raise water levels of the former. Israel could not ensure the cooperation of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority in the project.

The 1965 Jeddah Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen is considered the earliest call for a joint security system in the Red Sea. It was followed in September 1973 by a resolution calling on the General Secretariat of the Arab League to arrange a conference of the Arab countries bordering the Red Sea.

Those calls remained without follow-up and the proposals forgotten because of lack of attention to the Horn of Africa. Recent developments and increasing regional and international threats have revived Arab interests in Red Sea security. They represent the background for joint naval exercises by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Djibouti and Yemen, in addition to Somalia, with the aim of raising combat capabilities and readiness.

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt established more than excellent relations with Eritrea and curbed the Iranian threat by being present in Djibouti and Eritrea and the Turkish threat by being present in Somalia. They moved on more than one axis in the Horn of Africa through mediation between Ethiopia and Eritrea, political and financial support for the new Sudan and preventing Iran’s control of Bab el Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.

This culminated in halting all attempts to transform the geographical environment into zones of logistical support for extremism, terrorism and Iranian and Turkish expansionism.

However, Arab countries need to rely on a much more comprehensive approach for regional security. They must intensify economic and cultural presence in Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia, which are witnessing intensive settlement efforts for foreign bases on their territories.

This calls for intensifying economic, trade and cultural cooperation with Arab countries to offer a long-term vision for developing a local cooperative policy, especially in the security dimension, with the major powers aimed at preserving their historical role in the Red Sea, and create a unified vision that leads to stability in the region.

Written By Hassan Msaddek, https://thearabweekly.com