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SOCOTRA ISLANDS UAE / ISRAEL ... Yemen collaboration for the militarisation of Socotra and confrontation with Iran 
A Soviet-era tank rusts on the coast of the Yemeni island of Socotra. (Photo credit: AFP) Original article: https://thecradle.co/Article/news/7758 Burgess COMMENTARY I became aware of the strategic importance of Socotra in the 1970s. From 1974 to 1978 I had been the CFO of a US company called Continental Seafoods Inc (CSF). We had a fleet of almost 100 shrimp trawlers deployed in various countries around the world and were always looking for new opportunites. In the 1970s Yemen was organized as (1) the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) with its capital in Sanaa and (2) the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) wioth oits capital in Aden. CSF carried out a combination research project / fishing viability project for FAO (Food and Agriculture Organzation) of the the Un ited Nations (UN). We operated a commercial trawler from the port of Hodeieda in YAR combining commercial fishing with the collection of fisheries resource data. After more than a year of data collection and analysis it was concluded that perhaps two trawlers of the type we were operating could be commercially viable based out of Hodeieda. Our company CSF had already concluded that for a fishing company like ours to be economically viable we had to be operating a fleet of at least 6 trawlers, this was not an opportunity that was of interest to us. A few years later, I was invited to join a regional study for the World Bank on investment performance and possibilities for PDRY and YAR. It turned out that the World Bank was financing a 16 trawler project for YAR based in Hodeieda which was based on the resource work CSF had done several years before. Our report was very clear. There was not a sufficient shrimp resource in this part of the Red Sea that woiuld support a 16 vessel fisheries project. It turned out that the CSF report in English had not been translated into Arabic in its totallity but only the Executive Summary, and local decisions at the Government level were being made based on this Executive Summary ... but worse, the translation had confused the resource bio-mass with sustainable yield and had essentially concluded that a fleet of trawlers could completely fish out the totallity of the fish every year !!!!!!! But there was worse. The project was not only hopelessly unviable, but it was also mired in political corruption and pay-offs. While I do not read or speak Arabic, I know the numbers used in Aerab speaking business, and when I was given the opportunity to look at the project accounts it became clear that the pricing for most of the major inputs was massively inflated including the price of the trawlers. The 'oversight' of this project was being done by the World bank, with Danida the major source of international funding. Our (WB) oversignt team recommended that the project financing was immediately terminated to cut losses and this was agreed over the phone with WB and Danida headquarters prior to the decision being communicated to the YAR government. At that time it was customary for a World Bank team like ours to hold a debriefing meeting with Government officials ... but when the Government learned that we were recommending the termination of this project, things got ugly. Our debriefing meeting in Sanaa, the YAR capital, was postponed and eventually cancelled. The YAR President Ali Abdullah Saleh became involved and read the riot act ... eventually arguing to the World Bank that because we had not conducted a formal debriefing meeting that our analysis work was invalid, or even could not exist. As a result of Saleh's intervention the funding of this completely corrupt and uneconomic project was continued. My own reputation suffered because it became obvious that at an institutional level the World Bank itself was incapable of standing up for what is right. My work had also demonstated that the World Bank's analysis work had been third rate, rather than being the best in the world. This may not have mattered if this was the first and only time I had been critical of a World Bank project, but it was actually one of many. In addition to the WB projects in YAR, this evaluation team also did work in PDRY where I became more aware of the area geography and the associated geo-politics. PDRY had Soviet connections and there was also growing Soviet activity in Somalia which had potential strategic consequences for the free flow of oil tankers into the Red Sea and on to Europe. It was reported that the island of Socotra ... part of Yemen (PDRY) was going to host a Soviet submarine base which would have changed global balance of power substantially. I believe this had something to do with the realignment of US interests in the Horn of Africa, with the US becoming aligned with Somalia and The Soviet Union becoming aligned with Ethiopia. The news below is recent ... 2022. A lot has happened from the 1970s to the 2020s ... rather little of which has been anything like as good as it should have been. Peter Burgess | ||
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UAE / Yemen collaboration for the militarisation of Socotra
A UAE-backed construction project is being developed on Yemen’s Socotra Island for the purposes of hosting Israeli soldiers, officers, and other military experts and personnel, according to a report by Yemen News Portal on 8 March. The report, citing anonymous sources, states that the joint Emirati-Israeli base on the strategic island will have housing units built for Israeli officers under the auspices of the Khalifa bin Zayed Institute. This is allegedly part of a plan to turn the Yemeni island into a center for regional espionage as well as increasing military control over maritime routes. In September 2021, Yemen News Agency reported that the UAE and Israel were setting up a military outpost on Socotra Island. The purpose of this joint outpost would be to gather intelligence for the Israeli military. Their joint cooperation includes allowing the Israeli air force an intelligence center in Socotra Airport. Socotra Island recently made headlines due to the controversy of Israeli tourists visiting the Yemeni island under a UAE-issued visa. Socotra is a strategic island located near the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The strait is a flashpoint for potential confrontation between Israel and Iran. In December 2020, the Washington Institute published an analysis titled ‘Submarine Movements on Iran’s Doorstep,’ examining how Israeli submarines, which have the capability of being armed with nuclear warheads, are able to pass through the Suez Canal and then, from positions in the Persian Gulf near Yemen and Oman, can strike Iran with conventional or nuclear warheads. Israel’s advanced Dolphin II submarine can remain submerged for up to thirty days owing to its air independent propulsion (AIP). It can also reportedly carry cruise missiles with an unconfirmed range of about 1,500 kilometers, armed with conventional or nuclear warheads. In theory, then, the vessel could threaten inland targets near Iran’s coast while standing off in the Arabian Sea, or even the sensitive Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities if it risked sailing further north into the Gulf of Oman. Israel chose to send its submarine through Suez, which requires surfaced transit, to avoid circumnavigating Africa. The timing of the journey may have been coordinated with the [USS] Georgia’s transit, but more likely not, given the highly secretive nature of US submarine operations. Another possibility is that Israel timed the move to coincide with the Iranian navy’s change of guard in the Gulf of Aden. Iran’s Task Force 70 had already returned home, and Task Force 71 had just set off on December 19 to take its place, leaving the Gulf of Aden and northern Arabian Sea without an active Iranian naval asset for a few days. One of the stated duties of Iranian naval task forces is to monitor potentially hostile activities in these waterways and the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Increasing military presence in the Bab al-Mandab Strait could help bolster Israel’s naval capabilities to potentially enable an attack against Iran.
| The text being discussed is available at | https://thecradle.co/Article/news/7758 and |