Human rights activist Huda al-Attas has on Tuesday wondered about the fate of the revenues of Bab al-Mandeb, a narrow sea strait that flows between Yemen and Djibouti and connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and thus to the Arabian Sea and wider Indian Ocean.
Al-Attas explained that the accident of the ship Evergiven in the Suez Canal led to the suspension of hundreds of commercial ships stuck in the Canal, and that Egypt makes billions annually from the canal.
She noted that the incident in Suez revealed the “astronomical figures of funds due to the proceeds of navigation in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, without navigation and logistics operations.”
Al-Attas said in a press statement that thousands of ships pass through the Bab al-Mandab and the Gulf of Aden annually. In fact, in order to reach the Red Sea and thus the Suez Canal from the east requires one to pass through Bab al-Mandeb first.
“Where did Bab al-Mandab’s revenues go, you thieves?” Huda al-Attas wrote.
The Bab al-Mandeb is one of the most important shipping routes for exports such as Persian Gulf oil in the world, and see around 60 ships passing every single day. Some geopolitical analysts believe that the strategic importance of the strait is one of the reasons being the US-backed Saudi-led invasion of Yemen and the UAE colonisation of the nearby island archipelago of Socotra.
