Everyone but the Saudis
Recently: Who really controls the greenback? Brendan Greeley’s new book, The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful Money.
Today: An island in the middle of the Bab al-Mandab changes hands, and the Yemeni forces who’d been holding it are gone. … The last power to take this ground, building a lighthouse on it in 1861, was the British Empire.
For members—from the weekend despatch: What’s in the ruins of Gaza? Standpoints from Gilead Sher, Pat Griffiths, and Lana Barreto. … &c.
+ New music from Wesley Stace …
Developments / global
South of Mecca
On Tuesday evening, Saudi air defenses destroyed a Houthi drone south of Mecca, before it reached the restricted airspace over the city. The coalition spokesman, Turki al-Maliki, announced it the next day: The security of the Two Holy Mosques and the pilgrims, he said, is “a red line.” The Houthis’ military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said there was no threat from Yemen to the holy sites, and that his forces were aiming at oil facilities and military bases. On Thursday, debris from a different intercepted drone fell on Taif, killing one man, a Yemeni, and injuring two others, a Saudi woman and a Pakistani resident.
Still moving
The Houthis—the Iran-aligned movement that has held northern Yemen since 2014 and began firing on Red Sea shipping in 2023—took Mokha and crossed to Mayyun, the island that splits the Bab al-Mandab in two, on September 10 and 11. The government's forces had withdrawn, and nobody has reported taking it back. At the U.S. embassy in Muscat on September 13, Houthi representatives told American diplomats they’d let any ship through the strait except Saudi ones. According to the shipping firm Windward, traffic fell from 35 transits a day to 25 after the advance. Valentin d’Hauthuille, who tracks the fighting for the conflict monitor ACLED, says the Houthis’ focus is on Saudi-linked shipping for now—but that they may widen what counts as Saudi-linked “to increase pressure on both Saudi and the global economy.”
‘Not anymore’
Arnaud Orain explores what happens when navies can no longer guarantee freedom of the seas. In the 1990s, Orain says, the U.S. Navy could reopen any strait it wanted: “Not anymore.” He cites a French admiral’s account of serving in that decade—shorts, tennis on the warships—and says it’s over. The proto-states Orain describes, organized forces inside countries, operate in the Gulf of Guinea, the Strait of Malacca and the waters off the Horn of Africa, with weapons that cost very little. If navies can’t protect merchant ships, he says, the ships will have to go back to carrying guns. … See “Imperial silos.”
Lit from Aden
The Bab al-Mandab is about 29 kilometers across at its narrowest, and in December 1856, London instructed Aden to take the island in the middle of the strait. The next year, the British Resident at Aden organized the occupation of Mayyun—the British called it Perim—and didn’t meet any resistance then either. On April 1, 1861, Britain opened an 11-meter lighthouse there. Perim was attached to Aden, and Aden answered to the government of British India.
Meanwhile
A gold mine collapses in Sudan’s West Kordofan, killing at least 67 people; the rescuers have one forklift. … Guinea bans France 24 after a presenter called President Mamadi Doumbouya a “putschist president.” … Greece’s parliament strips the immunity of one of its own, Dimitris Avramopoulos—a former European commissioner—enabling Belgian prosecutors to investigate him for corruption. … Peru’s defense minister proposes holding undocumented migrants on unused army land, starting with an old armored school. … & Researchers at UCLA have measured a Tyrannosaurus rex’s body temperature from the enamel off two of its teeth: 36 degrees, about the same as us.
Thoughts? concierge@thesgnl.com.
The weekend despatch
Yet to be uncovered
What’s in the ruins of Gaza? Standpoints from Gilead Sher, Pat Griffiths, and Lana Barreto.
Features
- An anti-war party banned from Russia’s elections for copyright infringement? Garry Kasparov on why Vladimir Putin needs his opposition not just beaten but gone.
- What’s getting American teenagers off their phones? Ioakim Boutakidis on the strategies parents are using to help kids unplug.
Books
- Has the Global North gotten rich off the Global South? Friedrich Lenger, The Price of the World: A Global History of Capitalism.
Music
- Who’s Wesley Stace?
- & New tracks from the artist formerly known as John Wesley Harding, The War on Drugs, Nate Mercereau, Underworld x Ki/Ki, & Westside Cowboy.
+ Weather report
- A typhoon approaches Tokyo, on Japan’s busiest travel weekend in a decade …
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Music
‘One Last Heist’
If you’re a fan of crime novels, you know the setup Wesley Stace is working here. He’s hoping for one last score—before he might ride off into the sunset …
