UAE building air base on volcanic island off Yemen
UAE is building a new air base on a volcanic island off Yemen that sits in one of the world's crucial maritime chokepoints for both energy shipments and commercial cargo, an Israeli military intelligence website has claimed.
Calling it UAE's "military project," Debkafile – a
news site known to be close to the intelligence agency Mossad – said an attack
helicopter base on the island, also called Perim Island, will give Abu Dhabi's
Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Ziyad "means of controlling oil tanker
and commercial shipping through the Red Sea's southern chokepoint and up to the
Suez Canal."
"It will also give the Emirates a jumping off pad for
rapid deployment forces to reach Yemen, although they withdrew from the civil
conflict there during 2019-2020," Debkafile said.
Isareli Debkafile that offers analysis and commentary on
military and international relations said UAE's vessels loaded with heavy
engineering equipment, building materials and troops have been sighted putting
into the island since May, "raising rumours of a mysterious air facility
which no country has claimed."
While no country has claimed the Mayun Island air base in
the Bab al Mandeb strait, shipping traffic associated with a prior attempt to
build a massive runway across the 5.6-kilometre island years ago links back to
the United Arab Emirates.
'UAE behind the project'
Officials in Yemen's internationally recognised government
say the Emiratis are behind this latest effort as well, even though the UAE announced
in 2019 it was withdrawing its troops from a Saudi-led military campaign
battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
"This does seem to be a longer-term strategic aim to
establish a relatively permanent presence," said Jeremy Binnie, the
Mideast editor at the open-source intelligence company Janes who has followed
construction on Mayun for years.
It's "possibly not just about the Yemen war and you've
got to see the shipping situation as fairly key there."
US Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, called
the base "a reminder that the UAE is not actually out of Yemen."
Base can host heaviest bombers
The runway on Mayun Island allows whoever controls it to
project power into the strait and easily launch air strikes into mainland
Yemen, convulsed by a yearslong bloody war. It also provides a base for any
operations into the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and nearby East Africa.
Satellite images from Planet Labs Inc. obtained by The
Associated Press showed dump trucks and graders building a 1.85-kilometre
runway on the island on April 11. By May 18, that work appeared complete, with
three hangars constructed on the tarmac just south of the runway.
A runway of that length can accommodate attack, surveillance,
and transport aircraft. An earlier effort begun toward the end of 2016 and
later abandoned had workers try to build an even-larger runway over 3
kilometres long, which would allow for the heaviest bombers.
'UAE never left Yemen'
Military officials with Yemen’s internationally recognised
government, which the Saudi-led coalition has backed since 2015, say the UAE is
building the runway.
The officials, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity
as they didn't have authorisation to brief journalists, say the Emirati ships
transported military weapons, equipment and troops to Mayun Island in recent
weeks.
The military officials said recent tension between the UAE
and Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi came in part from an Emirati
demand for his government to sign a 20-year lease agreement for Mayun.
Emirati officials have not acknowledged any disagreement.
The initial failed construction project came after Emirati
and allied forces retook the island from Iranian-backed Houthi militants in
2015.
By late 2016, satellite images showed construction under way
there.
UAE traces seen
Tugboats associated with Dubai-based Echo Cargo &
Shipping LLC and landing craft and carriers from Abu Dhabi-based Bin Nawi
Marine Services LLC helped bring equipment to the island in that first attempt,
according to tracking signals recorded by data firm Refinitiv.
Satellite photos at the time show they offloaded the gear
and vehicles at a temporary beachside port.
Echo Cargo & Shipping declined to comment, while Bin
Nawi Marine Services did not respond to a request for comment. Recent shipping
data shows no recorded vessels around Mayun, suggesting whoever provided the
sealift for the latest construction turned off their boats' Automatic
Identification System tracking devices to avoid being identified.
Construction initially stopped in 2017, likely when
engineers realised they couldn't dig through a portion of the volcanic island's
craggy features to incorporate the site of the island’s old runway.
The building restarted in earnest on the new runway site
around February 22, satellite photos show, several weeks after President Joe
Biden announced he would end US support for the Saudi-led offensive against the
Houthis.
The apparent decision by the Emiratis to resume building the
air base comes after the UAE dismantled parts of a military base it ran in the
East African nation of Eritrea as a staging ground for its Yemen campaign.
While the Horn of Africa "has become a dangerous
place" for the Emiratis due to competitors and local war risks, Mayun has
a small population and offers a valuable site for monitoring the Red Sea, said
Eleonora Ardemagni, an analyst at the Italian Institute for International
Political Studies. The region has seen a rise in attacks and incidents.
"The Emiratis have been shifting from a
power-projection foreign policy to a power-protection foreign policy,"
Ardemagni said.
It increases "their capacity to monitor what happens
and to prevent possible threats by non-state actors close to Iran."
Mayun island
Mayun, also known as Perim Island, sits some 3.5 kilometres
off the southwestern edge of Yemen. World powers have recognised the island's
strategic location for hundreds of years, especially with the opening of the
Suez Canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
The British kept the island up until their departure from
Yemen in 1967. The Soviet Union, allied with South Yemen's Marxist government,
upgraded Mayun's naval facilities but used them "only infrequently,"
according to a 1981 CIA analysis.
That's likely due to needing to bring water and supplies
onto the island. That will affect the new air base, as well as Mayun, has no
modern port, said Binnie, the Janes analyst.
The base still may interest American forces, however. US
troops operated from Yemen's al-Anad Air Base running a campaign of drone
strikes targeting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula until the Houthi advance
forced them to withdraw in 2015.
The Defense Department later acknowledged on-the-ground
American troops supported the Saudi-led coalition around Mukalla in 2016.
Special forces raids and drones also have targeted the country.
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