The Red Sea: Time for India’s Modi to step in

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO.

A second attempt to rescue the Greek tanker Sounion is currently underway.

If the tanker, which was struck by the Houthis in the Red Sea last month, isn’t towed to safety, the one million barrels of crude oil in its hold risks causing the worst oil spill since the Exxon Valdez. Let’s hope the Houthis will guarantee the safety of the salvage crews. But a global authority needs to read the Yemeni militia the riot act — and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the man for the job.

The Yemeni militia’s campaign against Western shipping has already claimed several lives — those of four non-Western seafarers. And on Aug. 21, the Houthis hit the Greek-flagged Sounion in a particularly fierce attack as it sailed through the Red Sea. The projectiles weren’t just numerous but powerful — so powerful the Sounion lost steering, and the crew had to be evacuated by the EU’s EUNAVFOR Aspides mission.

But that wasn’t the end of the Houthis’ recklessness. After rendering the oil-laden tanker rudderless, fighters then boarded the ship and blew up explosives on board. It’s been ablaze and drifting in the Red Sea ever since — and it’s a miracle the blaze haven’t reached the oil barrels it’s carrying.

The world can’t count on miracles, though. And to prevent an environmental disaster even worse than when the Exxon Valdez spilled a quarter-million barrels of crude in Alaskan waters 35 years ago, the Sounion must be towed to safety.

Aspides had promised to escort the tugboats needed for this perilous mission, and everyone thought the Houthis had agreed to halt their attacks until the tugs and their crews completed their task. Aspides and the private salvage companies that declared themselves willing to execute the job even started on their mission when, two days later, they had to stop because the Houthis declared they had, in fact, not promised to halt their attacks. Indeed, one day into the operation, the militia struck two more tankers, one of which was carrying twice as much oil as the doomed Greek ship. Unsurprisingly, the salvage companies decided it would be reckless to let their crews work under such conditions.

Now, though, there’s a second salvage attempt underway. Once again, private salvage firms are conducting this highly complex and risky operation, and once again, Aspides is protecting them. Will the Houthis refrain from attacks? We don’t know.

Onboard the ships still traversing the Red Sea every day are thousands of seafarers, all facing harm to life and limb simply by doing their jobs — and a lot of them aren’t from Western countries.

Of the world’s nearly 1.9 million seafarers, 13 percent come from the Philippines, almost 8 percent come from Indonesia and 6 percent come from India. Russians make up more than 10 percent of the world’s seafarers, and Ukrainians make up 4 percent. By contrast, only slightly more than 3 percent are from the U.S., just over 0.6 percent are from Germany, and Greece — the world’s top seafaring nation measured in vessel ownership — contributes a mere 1.6 percent.

The crew of the Galaxy Leader, which the Houthis seized last November, for example, includes 17 Filipinos as well as sailors from Ukraine, Mexico, Bulgaria and Romania. All are still being held along with their ship. And in March this year, a Houthi attack struck the Barbados-flagged bulk carrier True Confidence so badly, three crew members subsequently succumbed to their injuries — two of them Filipino, one of them Vietnamese. The crew also included one Indian, three other Vietnamese and 15 other Filipinos, as well as two armed guards from Sri Lanka and one from Nepal.

As long as the Houthis continue their attacks, more seafarers from these and other emerging economies will lose their lives. And as is painfully clear by now, nothing the West says or does — not even American missile strikes against Houthi territory — will persuade the militia to stop its campaign. Russia and China, for their part, have seen their vessels spared and are, in fact, benefiting from the campaign against Western shipping.

There is someone who has both the motivation and the standing to intervene though — and that’s India’s Modi.

Indian nationals stand to lose their lives to missiles, drones and explosives launched for no reason other than the fact that the Houthis want attention. That’s a serious concern for a country that has more than 113,000 men — and they’re almost exclusively men — at sea. Given this reality, it’s fitting that the Indian Navy has recently conducted several daring missions to shore up order on the high seas. In March, for instance, it rescued the Maltese-flagged bulk carrier Ruen in a daring and flawlessly executed mission, saving all 17 crew members and seizing all 35 pirates.

Modi is a man keen on conducting foreign policy independent of global alliances. What’s more, India’s economy today is far larger than it was during the times of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, another leader who was keen to turn the country into a serious and independent global player. This lends weight to Modi’s foreign policy, and makes him perfectly positioned to read the Houthis the riot act. The Indian leader need only stress the obvious by reminding the Yemeni rebels that their campaign mostly harms innocent non-Westerners and is disrupting the lives of many more.

So, prime minister, the stage is yours. If you can help stop the attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the whole world will be grateful — and none more so than India’s own seafarers.