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Right, so Saudi Arabia has spent years backing the government-aligned side in Yemen. Part of the promise was that its side could rebuild things, run things and offer people something other than permanent war, that of course the Saudi’s themselves in no small part have caused. Mocha port was supposed to be part of that. And then along came the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia channels much of this rebuilding work through the Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen, which was established in 2018. It collaborates with the recognised Yemeni government and local authorities to fund roads, ports, power stations, hospitals, schools and water projects, while also aiming to strengthen government institutions. The political idea is fairly clear: make the Yemen controlled by Riyadh’s allies appear stable, governable and economically productive. Make them the good guys because they are Saudi aligned. Mocha was supposed to be part of that demonstration.
Except now, the evidence is, quite literally, now burning.
Mocha port. Smoke rising. Boats damaged. Expansion machinery hit.
The port director reports that commercial and maritime operations have been suspended after repeated Houthi attacks. Seven people killed, he says. Around sixteen million dollars in losses. Some 1,300 workers are now without their income.
It was meant to be expanding, not auditioning for the lead in Yemen’s version of the Towering Inferno.
Instead, it is now not even operational.
Back to square one, then.
Now, Mocha is held by forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognised government, the side Riyadh has spent years supporting as the legitimate, stable, functioning alternative to Ansarallah, the Houthis.
But that claim does depend rather heavily on the whole ‘functioning’ part of that sentence, which is, well, let’s say missing.
You can recognise a government. You can give it weapons, money, uniforms and another office with a big flag behind a very grand desk. It doesn’t necessarily put you in control and when the Houthis control Yemen’s literal capital, that kinda gets underlined.
When it comes to the ports though, if you are truly in power, truly the government capable of governing, then eventually they have to do the unremarkable, but nonetheless rather important: actually open in the morning. But this one certainly right now cannot do that.
Operations suspended.
The commercial and maritime work has flatlined more than a soap opera extra.
A port that can no longer do what a port is supposed to do.
Saudi Arabia needs places like Mocha because the government-aligned part of Yemen has to look like more than just the territory left over after years of war. It has to offer something.
A bit of trade would be helpful, wouldn’t it?
Jobs would be welcome.
A port that can actually remain open is a pretty low bar all things considered, but apparently it’s still too high.
The port director says six wooden vessels and a dredger were damaged.
Now, dredgers are not exactly anyone’s dream machines.
Mohammed bin Salman is unlikely to build a futuristic city around a dredger. You cannot ski on it, you cannot host the World Cup inside it, and you definitely cannot put it into a glossy video and pretend it is the future.
But ports need them.
They clear and deepen the water. They help maintain access. It’s basic infrastructure. Its belts and whistles. They are part of how you expand a port so larger vessels can reach it and more trade can pass through.
So Mocha’s dredger was very much tied to the expansion work.
That makes it a rather important piece of machinery in this unfortunate story in which case. The port was not supposed to just sit there and survive like a washed-up contestant on I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here. It was supposed to grow. It was supposed to actually become useful.
Instead, the equipment that would have helped it grow has been damaged, and the director has suspended operations.
Ports are awkward like that. All the talk about reconstruction eventually come down to whether the basic machinery still works.
Here, it does not.
And then there are the 1,300 workers that suffer the knock-on effects, now deprived of an income.
That is 1,300 people who believed they would get paid for working at that port, now not knowing if or when they will ever be able to return, and would they want to?
Some may find work elsewhere. Perhaps operations will resume soon. We don’t know.
What we do know is their income has stopped, in a country where years of war have already made daily life feel like a sentence from a judge with a personal grudge. The Saudi war has made Yemen one of the most poverty stricken states going.
But it is also where all the military talk does some heavy lifting too, trying to cover up the mess with some impressive sounding jargon.
Say “military target,” and suddenly the worker ends up disappearing.
The damaged boat disappears.
The wage packet disappears.
Everyone is expected to focus on the intended target and politely pretend the rest of the wreckage is just background for the main event.
Unfortunately, the family needing food next week cannot eat the intended target.
So what of the Houthis here then? They’re causing hardship to their own people here aren’t they?
Ansarallah says it was targeting military concentrations, weapons depots and boats.
That is their claim. You might expect them to say that, certainly Saudi Arabia has given them good reason to have beef with them right now, certainly you can imagine a Saudi aligned port might be useful to get weapons and stuff into Yemen to deal with Ansarallah, or at least try for the umpteenth time, so it is at least plausible.
Certainly I cannot tell you from the footage what every structure contained or what every missile hit though. I do not have a secret satellite intelligence service hidden down the back of the sofa, perhaps ask the cat though, she looks a bit shifty.
Nor, despite his impressive confidence, does Barry from Facebook, or those keyboard warriors like him, who apparently spends their spare time acting like they’ve suddenly transformed into Scott Ritter.
Fundamentally, despite some claims, we do not yet have proof at time of writing anyway, that every object struck was civilian.
But shouting ‘military target’ does not make the commercial fallout disappear in a puff of smoke either, no matter how many times it might get said.
The port director says operations are suspended. He says people were killed. He says vessels and the dredger were damaged. He says 1,300 workers have lost income.
Those are the established facts.
‘Military target’ is not some catch-all phrase you can chant to make that mess go away either.
But this is where the story turns back to the Saudi-backed project itself.
Saudi Arabia entered Yemen promising to restore the recognised government.
Then came years of war, air strikes, blockades, negotiations, ceasefires, failed initiatives, and enough empty statements about stability to wallpaper every palace in Riyadh twice.
That was always their justification. War with the Houthis failed to deliver on that though, a war that lay dormant, that they have now reactivated probably won’t change anything either.
And still the basic test remains painfully simple.
Can the side Saudi Arabia supports make the places it controls work? There is only so much the Saudis can do themselves here, pinned in place by the Houthis as they are.
Mocha was one place where it could point to something concrete. A commercial port. Jobs. An expansion plan. A facility that might bring in trade and, you know, other useful things.
So when Mocha stops operating, Saudi Arabia cannot suddenly treat it as an irrelevant little provincial facility.
It cannot have it both ways.
When the port is working, it is proof that government-held Yemen can rebuild.
When the port is burning, apparently it is just another local incident with nothing much to do with the wider project.
Oh no. If you want the credit for the shinier of the two models here, you have to take the embarrassment on the chin too, when it turns into a bonfire.
Only days before the port suspension was announced, the UN envoy for Yemen warned that the country faced its most serious risk of returning to large-scale war since the 2022 truce the event that put this war too sleep, it never ended it, but it did lay dormant, in the sense that Vesuvius was dormant the day before it blew away Pompeii.
The truce did not create peace. It just put the war on hold, and Yemenis have lived with that ever since.
Everyone simply stopped shooting quite as much. Progress, if you look hard enough.
Now the shooting is increasing again, after the Saudi aligned Yemeni government tried to stop Houthi figures returning from the funeral of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by blowing up a runway, and Mocha shows how quickly that spreads beyond whichever military target you care to name instead.
So now a port stops, a dredger is damaged and workers have lost their income.
Then each side produces another explanation for why the next attack is absolutely necessary, uniquely justified, and definitely someone else’s fault. Round and round it goes, like a bloody carousel ride that nobody can get off.
Saudi Arabia has already poured years of money, military effort and political credibility into Yemen.
What does it have to show for all that effort? Spoiler alert: not much, unless you count a collection of burnt-out dreams.
A recognised government that still cannot rule the whole country. A conflict it could not win before and given how even more heavily armed and technologically advanced the Houthis are now, as opposed to then, is arguably even less likely to succeed now.
And now a port its allies need has suspended operations after the very machinery meant to expand it was destroyed. MBS loves a giant project. The bigger, shinier, and more implausibly rendered, the better. Cities in straight lines. Ski resorts in the desert. Stadiums that look like they were airlifted in from a bad sci-fi movie.
But Mocha is the kind of project that genuinely matters. No flying taxis. No golden launch ceremony. Just the boring business of keeping a port open, which still seems to be a step too far.
That is what lies beneath all the talk of missiles, military targets and strategic success.
Seven people killed, according to the port director.
Commercial and maritime operations suspended.
Six vessels and a dredger damaged.
Around sixteen million dollars in losses.
And 1,300 workers without income.
Nobody should be celebrating that. Those workers are not Mohammed bin Salman. Their families did not design Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and they should not be treated like disposable pieces on someone else’s scoreboard.
But the political consequence still belongs to the project that needed this port to work and those backing it.
Saudi-backed Yemen was supposed to prove it could offer something beyond war. A functioning coast. Trade. Jobs. Reconstruction.
But as a political argument, it is now just another smouldering crater as a war that couldn’t be won before, kicks off again now and the people of Yemen, still impoverished from last time, can only look on in dismay.
For more on the messes kicking off across the Middle East right now, do stick with the channel for more such as this story here.
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