HOUTHIS LAUNCH ATTACK ON UNDERSEA INTERNET CABLES DISRUPTING COMMS BETWEEN EUROPE & ASIA
February 27, 2024LOOKS LIKE THE HOUTHIS WEREN’T BLUFFING!!
Just weeks after reports first suggested that Houthis might begin attacking critical undersea internet cables in Red Sea near Yemen, news has emerged of as many as 4 fibre-optic cables suffering damage in the area between Saudi Arabia and Djibouti. The reports in Israeli media said that Gulf countries and India are among the worst affected.
The successful targeting of the four cables, which are believed to belong to the AAE-1, Seacom, EIG, and TGN systems, marks a serious disruption of communications between Europe and Asia.
They follow a series of ongoing attacks by the US and UK on Yemen including bombarment of the capital Sanaa, over the weekend.
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English Script:
Just weeks after reports first emerged that the Houthis might attack undersea Internet cables, the Yemeni group appears to have started this next phase of its offensive. After already disrupting commercial shipping traffic, the Houthis are reportedly setting their sights on holding global communication systems to ransom. At least four important undersea Internet cables were recently damaged, according to reports in Israeli media. These cables were damaged in areas between the Middle Eastern country of Saudi Arabia and East African nation Djibouti, according to news outlet Globes. The report said that the damage to the cables had caused severe disruption of communication between Europe and Asia and the biggest victims have been Gulf countries and India.
One of the damaged undersea systems is the AAE-1, which connects East Asia to Europe. It links China to the West via countries like Pakistan and Qatar. Then there is the Europe India Gateway, or EIG System, which links Europe to Asia and Africa. The cable connects Southern Europe to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, the United Arab Emirates and India. Another damaged cable is the SEACOM which links European, African and Asian countries like South Africa and India. The fourth damaged cable is the TGN, which was deployed in 2001 by American company Tigo and sold in 2005 for $130 million to Indian form VSNL, which is now Tata Communications. The Globes Report has said that while the damage is severe, the situation is not yet critical. This is because many other cables pass through the same location connecting the three continents.
But repairing the damaged cables might be a difficult and dangerous task. Firstly, the repair work is expected to take many weeks at least eight weeks or two months, according to some estimates. Secondly, communication companies might find it difficult to hire firms to repair the cables because of the threat of Houthi attacks. This would make the work costlier as they would charge a higher risk premium. Reports about the damage have emerged just weeks after Yemen’s internationally recognized government first raised an alert about the Houthi plan. The Yemeni government, which is fighting a civil war with the Houthis, had cited a telegram channel linked to the Houthis. The Telegram channel had posted a map purportedly showing the location of undersea Internet cables running near Yemen. The caption on the map had a sinister message, saying that Yemen is in a strategic location with Internet lines connecting not just countries, but entire continents passing near it.
Reports suggest that cables in the Red Sea carry around 17% of the world’s Internet traffic. When the Houthi threat force grabbed headlines, experts were skeptical about whether the Yemeni group would be able to carry out the attacks. This is because these fiber optic cables lie hundreds of meters below the surface. So divers cannot reach them. Countries like America and Russia have deep sea submersibles which are deployed from a mothership. The submersibles then dive to the cables and literally cut them with tools which work like a giant pair of scissors. While it’s not clear whether the Houthis have such submersibles, the US military did make a chilling announcement on February 18. The American military said that it had destroyed an unmanned underwater vessel on a drone submarine in Houthi controlled territory.
The US forces said that this was the first known use of a drone submarine by the Houthis since they began their attacks in the Red Sea over the Gaza war. The attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea have already caused severe disruption of maritime trade. The Red Sea route accounts for around 15% of global shipping traffic, and many companies have decided to avoid the route and sail all the way around Africa instead. But this has severely increased costs and also caused delays in shipments. Even regular air strikes since January by America and some of its allies have failed to deter the Houthis. Now, if they are attacking global communication infrastructure, it would mark a serious escalation of the conflict. Recently, the leader of the Ansarullah or Houthi Group, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, denied that he had any plans to start attacking undersea Internet cables. Al-Houthi called the earlier reports, confusion and distortion of his plans. But if any fiber optic cables near Yemen have suffered damage, the needle of suspicion would immediately swing towards the Houthis. This also carries the risk of drawing other affected countries into the conflict. Just two days after Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s claim, the chief of the Indian Navy said that Indian warships deployed near Yemen are tracking Houthi missiles and drones and stand ready to respond if threatened.
