The Houthis have completed their takeover of Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline, capturing the port city of Mocha and overrunning the strategic island of Mayyun (Perim) over the weekend.

Houthi forces are now positioned just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the African coast and essentially control the strategically significant Bab al-Mandeb strait, a chokepoint for Red Sea maritime traffic.

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While there are no indication that the Houthis would intervene outside Yemen’s borders, the war is already being felt on the African continent.

More than 2,000 people have fled Yemen to Djibouti over the past 24 hours, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Sunday.

Yemenis arriving in Obock, a Djibouti city only about 20km (12 miles) from Yemen’s coast, are being provided with food and water, but the IOM warned that “more support is needed”.

Maritime bottleneck

Bab al-Mandeb handles roughly 12 percent of global trade, including 11 percent of maritime oil and 8 percent of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

It comes as the Houthis’ ally, Iran, maintains a level of control over the Strait of Hormuz, where around a fifth of the world’s energy supplies passed through before the United States and Israel’s war on Iran began on February 28.

Houthi politburo member Hazem al-Assad insists that “freedom of navigation and international trade in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb are safe and orderly” and Iran insists that their Yemen allies are an independent group.  But global shipping lines have reacted with extreme caution to recent developments in Yemen.

Maritime security expert and former naval officer Alexandru Cristian Hudisteanu told Al Jazeera that the Bab al-Mandeb strait is narrower than the Strait of Hormuz.

While their gains do not “fundamentally alter the Houthis’ overall capability”, it does make “targeting [ships] simpler for them than before”.

An illustration of this was a video that has circulated of a Houthi commander on the coast, saying that artillery could be positioned in the area to strike targets in the waters off Yemen.

Data from IMF PortWatch indicates a drop of between 50 percent and 55 percent in shipping volume and tonnage through the Red Sea between 2023 and 2025, when tensions in the Red Sea last escalated after Houthi attacks on shipping. Major shipping operators continue to reroute vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding more than 20 transit days and driving up global freight costs.

The European Union-led Operation Atalanta task force, which provides maritime security in the Red Sea, might also be too tied down by mission restrictions to act if another bout of attacks on Red Sea traffic broke out.

“Many navies use Djibouti as a port of call to facilitate fleet logistics in the region, particularly the US, China, and others. However, ships deployed under existing missions – like Operation Atalanta – have specific mandates, making it difficult to go beyond their defined scope due to bureaucratic delays in updating mission mandates,” Hudisteanu said.

“That said, I would not say ships are present merely to protect themselves … [this makes] it difficult to go beyond their defined scope due to bureaucratic delays in updating mission mandates … latency and inactivity in responding to threats send the wrong signal to prospective actors.”

Ironically, the pivot of naval assets towards Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz during the war on Iran has created security gaps off the coast of the Horn of Africa, with organised maritime crime groups taking advantage of the vacuum.

“We have observed a resurgence of piracy, particularly along the Somali coast, which is linked to the redirection of international naval focus toward the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb during this multi-layered crisis,” Hudisteanu warned.

Egypt’s dilemma

Despite the Houthis’ assurances that maritime traffic in the Red Sea will not be affected, Saudi-linked ships have been targeted by the group in recent weeks.

Between November 2023 and mid-2025, the Houthis also attacked more than 100 commercial vessels in the Red Sea that it claimed were linked to Israel or its allies.

The sharp decline in Red Sea transit affected Egypt’s economy, which relies heavily on Suez Canal tolls as a key source of foreign currency.

Egypt lost approximately $7bn between 2023 and 2024, or about 60 percent of the Suez Canal’s revenues, according to official data.

“It’s fairly easy to look at the damage created by [this] Houthi campaign and its aftermath. A lot of the shipping passing through the Red Sea stopped altogether for a period. Even after the Houthis concluded this campaign and stated they would stop attacking ships, many companies still decided to reroute via the Cape of Good Hope and did not return,” said Hudisteanu.

Badr Hassan Al-Shafei, a professor of African studies and conflict resolution expert, said that Egypt demonstrated strategic restraint during this period, despite its losses.

“Egypt follows a policy of distancing itself from military intervention in what is happening in Yemen specifically; and this position – as we know – is a fixed Egyptian position since the Gulf intervention in Yemen in 2015,” Al-Shafei told Al Jazeera.

“Despite the Houthis threatening navigation in the Red Sea through Bab al-Mandeb, intercepting ship operations, and firing some missiles towards Israel, Egypt did not intervene, although it lost a lot.”

The Yemenis’ new position as gatekeepers to the Red Sea has given Eritrea, also across the Bab al-Mandeb strait from Yemen, a key geostrategic role.

Under Eritrea President Isaias Afwerki’s rule, which has emphasised self-reliance, the country has had little interaction with the outside world.

In recent years, Afwerki has utilised Eritrea’s strategic position on the Red Sea to break out of international isolation, including improving relations with the US and Israel.

“Afwerki pretends to distance himself [from events in Yemen], but in reality, he benefits a lot from what is happening in the Red Sea,” al-Shafei said.