Houthis Threaten Shipping, But Blackmail Earns Them Little
Speculation continues regarding reports that the Houthis are successfully blackmailing ship owners to pay fees for guaranteeing safe passage through the Red Sea.
Quoting the annual and normally authoratitive UN Panel of Experts on Yemen letter to the Security Council - but in draft before it was published - analysts speculated that ‘the Houthis’ earnings from these illegal safe-transit fees to be about $180 million per month’, amounting to more than $2 billion a year in income. But when the report was finally published, its authors noted they had ‘not been able to independently verify this information’.
The UN Panel’s primary source appears to have been an anonymous Yemeni website for which there are no contact details, but which tends to back official Yemeni government positions and is hostile to both the Houthis and the Emirati-backed Southern Transition Council. The website quotes ‘western diplomats’ as the source for its story, but provides no further identification or corroborative information with which to establish its credibility.
Analysis carried out by Deutsche Welle’s Cathrin Schaer, multiplying the number of non-Chinese and Russian ships risking transit of the Red Sea against the potential extra fuel costs of taking the Cape route instead, concludes that even if some ships might make payments to secure safe passage, the potential revenues would be a very small fraction of the $180 million per month claimed. It is possible for shipping companies to communicate with the Houthis via their so-called ‘Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center’, set up in February 2024 to coordinate attacks on shipping. But any shipping company thinking of paying such fees using the halawa informal banking system risks being detected and then being subject to heavy US Treasury and EU penalties for breaching sanctions.
Emails sent by the Houthi’s ‘Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center’, using the email address operations@hocc.gov.ye, threaten shipping companies and order them to cut Israeli links - but do not offer the option of avoiding attack by paying fees. The Houthis have also attempted to use the London-based UN International Maritime Organization to disseminate threats to shipowners.
Nonetheless, the Houthis are specialists at this style of fund-raising. The Houthis routinely charge telecommunications, LPG distribution, haulage and other companies "protection money" as a levy on commercial activity in areas they control, as a means of raising revenue for arms purchases. The Houthis also send out mass text messages demanding money for “air force” and “coastal defence forces” purposes, and expect a range of private and public institutions such as schools to meet funding targets.
The UN Panel’s report collates information from many official and open sources on the Houthi’s anti-shipping operations. Between November 15, 2023 and July 31, 2024, 134 Houthi attacks on shipping were recorded. The report also lists US Central Command battle damage assessment figures, indicating the US and UK strikes on the Houthis since counter-attacks began have destroyed 15 ballistic missiles, 172 anti-ship missiles, 382 one-way attack drones and 66 unmanned surface attack boats, as well as 7 anti-shipping command posts and 10 ammunition storage areas. 66 anti-ship missiles, 35 one-way attack drones and 5 unmanned surface attack boats have been brought down by the US Navy during attacks on shipping.
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