[Interview] Ex-UK envoy to Yemen: Houthis using Gaza to mask own agenda

“This can be a excellent instance of behaviour that may solely be put down by pressure,” he instructed EUobserver on Tuesday (16 January).

He spoke the identical day Houthi rockets hit a Greek cargo ship crusing from Vietnam to Israel, inflicting minor harm.

He additionally spoke days after the US and UK bombed Houthi bases as a part of a US-led naval operation dispatched to the area.

The Houthis, who’re getting arms and cash from Iran, say they’re appearing in solidarity with Gaza, however have additionally focused ships with no Israeli hyperlinks.

The EU is aiming to ship three warships to the world by March.

“This may be a helpful contribution. The Pink Sea isn’t a really large physique of water, so any further eyes and ears are prone to make a distinction,” Fitton-Brown mentioned.

However naval energy Spain has mentioned it is staying out of the EU mission, whereas voicing criticism of Israel’s killing of hundreds of civilians in Gaza.

Some segments of the Arab and Muslim inhabitants additionally see the Western naval build-up as a “pro-Israeli coalition”, the EU overseas service mentioned in its proposal for the EU mission.

And that was “muddled pondering” based mostly on a romantic view of the Yemen warlords, Fitton-Brown indicated.

“I’ve had lots of expertise speaking to the Houthis and it wasn’t very rewarding … I discovered them reasonably disagreeable and really, very hardline, frankly merciless folks,” he mentioned.

Fitton-Brown’s Houthi diplomacy dates again to negotiations on the Yemen battle in Kuwait, Oman, and Switzerland in his time as British ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017.

And his portrait of them stood in stark distinction to their noble Gaza speak.

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“We had a peace settlement [on Yemen] in Kuwait in 2016 they usually walked away from it. They walked away to some extent as a result of they like combating,” Fitton-Brown mentioned.

“Plenty of their subject commanders most well-liked to struggle as a result of they gained wealth, respect, and satisfaction from it. If you put to them an settlement by which they grow to be civil servants, that is really not such a gorgeous package deal,” he mentioned.

“What they’ve morphed into in recent times is a free-fighting outfit. They like to struggle. They get pleasure from battle,” mentioned the ex-diplomat, who’s now an adviser to the Counter Extremism Undertaking, a non-profit group based mostly in Germany and the US.

“They’re additionally deeply chauvinistic — they [the Houthis — a Shia Muslim sect] have a completely nauseating contempt for the Sunni Muslim inhabitants of Yemen, which is almost all,” he mentioned.

“Then you definitely add into this the peculiar Yemeni behavior of chewing gat. As a result of they’re gat-chewers, which is not useful: If you happen to’re already fired with spiritual or militant fervour, you chew gat, it makes you much more fervent,” he added.

And all that led to the irony that they had been extra prefer to obtain sympathy in badly knowledgeable Western capitals than in Arab ones, Fitton-Brown mentioned.

“If you happen to ask an extraordinary Egyptian, they do not suppose: ‘They [the Houthis] are my hero for standing up for Gaza’. They’re seen as brutal thugs and oppressors,” he mentioned.

The British knowledgeable predicted the Houthi Pink Sea aggression will proceed as long as there may be Gaza combating — however solely as a result of it is not within the group’s mentality to confess defeat.

“Their assaults will grow to be much less frequent and fewer efficient because the degradation of their capabilities and arsenals goes on,” he mentioned.

“However the Houthis will solely cease once they can declare they’ve gained — most clearly if the Israelis draw daybreak operations in Gaza and there comes a degree they [the Houthis] can say they’ve achieved their aims within the Pink Sea”.