Yemen’s Ambassador to Pakistan Raises Houthi Red Sea Attacks in Islamabad Talks

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Yemen’s ambassador to Pakistan, Mohammed al-Ashabi, has used a meeting with a senior Pakistani foreign ministry official to argue that attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are a global problem rather than a purely Yemeni one. Al-Ashabi met Ambassador Farhat Ayesha, director general for the Middle East at Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for talks that ranged across bilateral cooperation and the wider regional security picture. Yemen’s foreign ministry said the two sides reviewed ways of strengthening relations between the internationally recognised government and Islamabad.

Briefing on developments at home, al-Ashabi set out what the government describes as the work of the Presidential Leadership Council and the cabinet to rebuild state institutions and move toward a durable settlement. The council, chaired by Rashad al-Alimi, was formed in April 2022 when President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi transferred his powers to an eight-member body, and it remains the executive authority recognised by the United Nations and by Yemen’s main international partners. Its stated priorities — restoring public services, paying salaries and stabilising the currency — have proved difficult to deliver while the country remains territorially and administratively divided.

The ambassador told his Pakistani counterpart that the Iran-backed Houthi movement continues to obstruct peace efforts, a characterisation advanced by the Yemeni government. The Houthis, who seized the capital in 2014 and have held much of the north since, reject that account and present themselves as the country’s legitimate authority. The government in Aden says the group’s strikes on commercial vessels amount to a direct threat to maritime security and to international trade — a point al-Ashabi asked Pakistan to weigh, given how much of its own seaborne commerce moves through the same waters.

The record of the past two and a half years gives that argument weight. Houthi forces began striking merchant ships in November 2023, and more than 100 vessels have since been targeted in the southern Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. Four ships have been sunk, one was seized along with its crew, and at least eight seafarers have been killed. Two vessels were sunk in the southern Red Sea in early July 2025 alone, and a missile strike on a Dutch-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden that September killed another mariner.

The commercial consequences have been severe and are still being felt. Carriers rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly ten days as well as substantial fuel and insurance costs to voyages between Asia and Europe. Suez Canal traffic collapsed as a result: a route that once handled around 80 container ships a week was down to roughly 26 by January 2026. Egypt’s canal revenues fell sharply, and shipping lines have been slow to return even during quieter stretches, because underwriters and crews continue to price in the possibility of a sudden resumption.

That risk has not disappeared. A relative lull held from late 2025 into early 2026, with no sustained, confirmed attacks on merchant ships attributable to the group for several months, and some operators began cautiously testing the corridor again. But the Houthis have tied any renewed campaign to regional developments, particularly escalation involving Iran, the United States and Israel, and have said they are prepared to resume strikes. Naval advisories covering Bab al-Mandeb, the Gulf of Aden and the wider Arabian Sea remain in force, and the corridor is still treated as high risk.

Yemen’s humanitarian position formed the other half of the picture the ambassador described. The United Nations estimates that 22.3 million people — the large majority of the population — need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2026, and that 18.3 million face acute food insecurity. Aid agencies asked donors for $2.16 billion for the year, including $1.6 billion for prioritised life-saving work, but by May only about 12.7 per cent of the appeal had been funded. That gap has forced agencies to cut or suspend programmes rather than expand them, even as assessed needs rose.

Disease adds to the strain. Outbreaks of cholera, measles and diphtheria persist in districts where water systems and clinics have been damaged or left without staff and supplies. Relief partners have delivered supplies to close to 3,200 primary health care facilities and supported 15 treatment centres as part of the cholera response, and have trained local health workers to extend coverage. But that work depends on both funding and access, and humanitarian officials say both have narrowed over the past year, leaving high-severity districts exposed to larger public health emergencies.

Relations between Yemen and Pakistan are long-standing, and Yemen’s embassy in Islamabad traces them to centuries of trade, migration and religious exchange across the Arabian Sea. Recent contacts between the two foreign ministries have focused on consular matters, education and the security of shared shipping routes.

For Pakistan, the maritime file is not abstract. Its trade with Europe and much of its energy import traffic pass through the same corridors, and its ports are exposed to any sustained increase in freight and insurance costs. Islamabad has generally kept a cautious public line on Yemen while maintaining close ties with the Gulf states that back the government in Aden. Meetings of this kind rarely produce announcements, but they are one of the ways Yemen’s diplomats keep the maritime and humanitarian files in front of governments whose support may matter in any future settlement.