DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The United Arab Emirates is dismantling parts of a military base it manages in East African country Eritrea after withdrawing from the violent war in neighboring Yemen, satellite photos analyzed by the Associated Press show.
The United Arab Emirates built a port and expanded an airstrip in Assab from September 2015, using the facility as a base to transport heavy weapons and Sudanese troops to Yemen while fighting alongside a Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels supported by Iran.
But the country once touted as “Little Sparta” by former US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis appears to have found the limits of its military expansion in the Yemen stalemate, experts say. After withdrawing troops from the conflict, the satellite photos show that he started dispatching equipment and demolishing even newly constructed structures.
“Emirates are reducing their strategic ambitions and moving out of places where they had a presence,” said Ryan Bohl, an analyst at Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence company. emiratis are now willing to tolerate ”.
Emirati officials did not respond to questions from the PA. Eritrea, which granted the Emirates a 30-year lease for the base, also did not respond to questions sent to its embassy in Washington.
The United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikdoms that house Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has invested millions of dollars to improve facilities in Assab, just 70 kilometers (40 miles) from Yemen. He dredged a port and improved the dusty airstrip by approximately 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) to allow heavy support aircraft to enter.
The emiratis also built barracks, aircraft covers and fences along the 9 square kilometer (3.5 square mile) facility initially built in the 1930s by the colonial power Italy.
Over time, the United Arab Emirates positioned Leclerc battle tanks, G6 self-propelled howitzers and BMP-3 amphibious combat vehicles at the airport, according to United Nations experts. These types of heavy weapons were seen on the battlefields of Yemen. Attack helicopters, drones and other aircraft were seen on its runways.
The base barracks were home to troops from the Emirates and Yemen, as well as Sudanese forces filmed on landing in the port city of Aden, Yemen. Records show that the ship carrying them, SWIFT-1, was traveling back and forth to Assab. The ship was later attacked by Houthi forces in 2016 and the Emirates government said it was carrying humanitarian aid, a complaint for which UN experts later described themselves as “unconvinced of its veracity”.
The base also helped wounded soldiers by housing “one of the best field surgical hospitals anywhere in the Middle East,” said Michael Knights, a member of the Washington Institute of Policy for the Near East who studied the Assab base.
As the Yemeni war dragged on, the emiratis also used the base to hold prisoners, while the Saudi-led coalition faced increasing international pressure due to the abuse of detainees and air strikes that killed civilians. The United Arab Emirates announced in the summer of 2019 that they had begun withdrawing their troops from the war, which continues today.
“There is only so far that they can overcome their weight, which they do militarily and economically,” said Alex Almeida, security analyst at Horizon Client Access who studied Assab. “As soon as they found out that Yemen was not worth it for them, they decided: ‘Let’s get this over with’ and ended it all suddenly.
Satellite images from Planet Labs Inc., analyzed by the AP, show that the decision appears to extend to Assab as well.
In June 2019, at the time the emiratis made their withdrawal announcement, workers apparently destroyed structures that would be barracks next to the port, the satellite images show. Workers gathered organized lines of material north of the port, apparently waiting to be dispatched.
At the beginning of January this year, another photo showed what appeared to be vehicles and other equipment being loaded onto a waiting cargo ship. On February 5, the ship and equipment were gone.
The deconstruction also included newly built canopies along a new runway close to the facilities runway. In the February 5 images, another set of canopies that analysts previously linked to drones flying out of the base was also dismantled. The UAE used Chinese-made armed drones in the Yemen war to kill leaders among the Houthi rebels.
The destruction of the drone hangars occurred after rebels in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in November claimed that drones from the Emirates of Assab had been used against their positions. The United Arab Emirates did not comment on the claim that the rebels offered no evidence.
The UN-backed Libyan government also claimed that the United Arab Emirates sent weapons through Assab on its way there. UN experts accused the United Arab Emirates, among other nations, of channeling weapons to Libya in the midst of the civil war of several years.
Meanwhile, an Antonov An-124 cargo plane registered in Ukraine made several flights in late January from Assab to the city of Al Ain in the Emirates, according to flight data from FlightRadar24.com.
This aircraft, previously linked to the Emirates military, now flies to a Ukrainian-Emirate company called Maximus Air. The company did not return a request for comment left in its Abu Dhabi office.
Despite dismantling work, Emirati attack helicopters were still seen at the base. It also remains a strategically important point, located close to the crucial Bab el-Mandeb strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
But the UAE may face more pressing concerns. Since 2019, tensions between the U.S. and Iran have seen a series of growing incidents, including attacks on Emirate ships. These threats closer to home may take precedence over an expanded military footprint abroad.
“I think what ‘Little Sparta’ is doing is keeping its powder dry for whatever needs to be done next,” said Knights.
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