The article “To Fight the Houthis, Work with the Somaliland and South Yemen Coast Guards” argues that the international community’s focus on maintaining the unified states of Yemen and Somalia is hindering efforts to combat the Houthis and protect Red Sea shipping.
The author, Michael Rubin, proposes a strategy of working directly with Somaliland and South Yemen (the Southern Transitional Council), providing them with resources and training to bolster their coast guards.
The author believes that the international community’s insistence on the unified states of Yemen and Somalia is unrealistic and ineffective. He suggests that prioritizing diplomatic niceties over practical solutions is costing lives and resources.
Rubin advocates for direct engagement with Somaliland and South Yemen, which he considers to be distinct entities with histories of self-rule. He proposes providing financial and logistical support to their coast guards to prevent weapons smuggling to the Houthis and other militant groups. He also suggests establishing a US military presence in Aden (South Yemen) and Berbera (Somaliland) to secure shipping.
The author argues that Somaliland and South Yemen are more capable of securing their coastlines and preventing the flow of weapons than the central governments of Somalia and Yemen. He highlights the success of Somaliland’s coast guard with limited resources. He views the current policy as a waste of resources and an impediment to effectively addressing the Houthi threat.
The author urges the US government to break from its traditional diplomatic approach and implement this strategy, suggesting it would be a cost-effective way to counter the Houthis and protect international shipping.
The complete piece is as follows:
To Fight the Houthis, Work with the Somaliland and South Yemen Coast Guards
The International Community Can No Longer Afford to Prioritize Diplomatic Virtue Signaling over Effective Strategies
By Michael Rubin
Ask any diplomat and he or she will tell you that the purpose of diplomacy is to save lives. In Yemen and Somalia, though, the State Department’s policies are getting hundreds of people killed just so U.S. diplomats can promote the niceties that the two countries are unified and should remain so. Call them the “Axis of the Underappreciated,” but there cannot be a solution to the Houthi problem until the United States works separately with Somaliland and South Yemen, or South Arabia, as many in the region prefer to call their land, harkening back to a name during the period of British colonization.
Somaliland and South Yemen are countries apart. Both have a longer history of self-rule than unity with the states into which the State Department and the international community seek to subordinate them.
Call them the “Axis of the Underappreciated,” but there cannot be a solution to the Houthi problem until the United States works separately with Somaliland and South Yemen.
The British formed the protectorate of Somaliland in 1884, co-opting a local tribal system that had governed the region for decades, if not centuries. In 1960, the United Kingdom gave Somaliland its independence, and 30 countries, including the United States and the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council recognized it.
Within days, though, Somaliland entered a voluntary merger with the former Italian Somaliland to form what eventually would become Somalia. It was a marriage made in hell, and by 1991, Somaliland had had enough and ended the marriage. It has been independent, even if unrecognized, ever since. Even if 1960 is taken as its start, Somaliland has been independent from Somalia longer than it was ever a part. Eighty percent of Somaliland’s population was not alive during the Somalia interlude.
South Yemen’s situation is similar. The British arrived in Aden in 1839 and established control for subsequent decades over what would become South Yemen. North Yemen, meanwhile, was under the control first of the Imamate, the religious precursor of the Houthis, and then under Arab nationalists; it developed a different identity from the south.
After the British left, communists took over the former British protectorate for just over two decades. They built infrastructure, but they imprinted neither their economic philosophy nor worldview. With the collapse of the Cold War, North and South Yemen unified but their differences were too great, and after just four years, South Yemen sought to reassert its independence. It lost the subsequent war; southerners consider themselves occupied ever since. But even if the international community considers Yemen whole, Sanaa controlled the south for only 14 years out of more than 140.
Today, diplomatic smoke-and-mirrors or not, the Southern Transitional Council is the government of South Yemen, while the Internationally Recognized Government essentially plays make-believe from Cairo and Riyadh.
The cost to such a fiction measures billions of dollars. The United States (at least until the current Trump administration) and the international community dumped tens of billions of dollars into Somalia and Yemen in failed efforts to buy legitimacy and build capacity, but both Somalia and northern Yemen remain morasses of corruption and state failure, if not hotbeds of terrorism.
With the renewal of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, the international community can no longer afford to prioritize diplomatic virtue signaling over effective strategies.
Draining Houthi supply and protecting shipping need not cost billions of dollars.
Draining Houthi supply and protecting shipping need not cost billions of dollars. With a negligible budget, Somaliland’s small coast guard has managed to secure the country’s 500-mile Gulf of Aden coastline to weapons smugglers and terrorists, at least when its few patrol boats have fuel. South Yemen’s coastline is rugged and often isolated.
In areas such as the Hadramawt, where the Muslim Brotherhood has a presence, smugglers can land weaponry and transport it inland to areas of Houthi control. A few million dollars, training, and perhaps upgraded patrol boats could help the Southern Transitional Council prevent weaponry reaching the Houthis, Al Qaeda, and Islah militants, all of whom increasingly work in concert.
The United States could go further by basing its own patrols in South Yemen’s capital, Aden, and Somaliland’s commercial capital, Berbera, two port cities that would welcome a skeleton U.S. air and sea presence to secure shipping. The only impediment is self-inflicted reticence from a State Department prone to promoting Mogadishu’s and Sanaa’s interests over Washington’s.
For more than two decades, successive U.S. administrations have ignored the obvious solution. As someone who prides himself in breaking diplomatic constraints, it is time for President Donald Trump to embrace a simple and inexpensive solution and order Secretary of State Marco Rubio to draw up plans to help train and fund the Somaliland and South Yemeni coast guards. Delaying will only enable the Houthis and their terror partners to continue to arm and threaten hundreds of billions of dollars of international cargo.
About the Author:
Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre-and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics. He can be reached at X (formerly Twitter) @mrubin1971
