Yemeni forces claim control over Kahboub Mountains: Why they matter

Yemen’s government forces say they have re-established full control over the Kahboub Mountains after fending off Houthi attempts to seize the strategically important range for weeks.

The Houthis launched an effort to seize control of the mountains after taking much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast in a lightning offensive last month, an advance that experts said could dramatically shift the balance of power in the country’s war if successful.

Yemen’s Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government has responded by launching what it has called Operation Dawn of Yemen, seeking to roll back the advance and restore state authority across the country.

The renewed fighting in recent months has brought an end to the relative calm that had largely held since 2022. The conflict has moved into the rugged highlands overlooking the approaches to Bab al-Mandeb strait, one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

The strait connects the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, and its importance is only growing as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted by the Houthis’ main ally: Iran.

Experts said taking the high ground would help the Houthis defend the newly captured coastline and make it far harder for government forces to push them back. While the mountains may not necessarily be used as a launchpad for attacks on ships, controlling them would provide defensive depth and cover for Houthi positions closer to the coast, making missile and drone operations in the Red Sea easier to sustain and harder to disrupt.

The Houthis have said they do not intend to target United States shipping and attacks would be limited to vessels linked to Saudi Arabia. But the group has repeatedly attacked ships in the Red Sea in previous years, including vessels with no clear connection to its stated targets.

Why is Kahboub strategically important?

Kahboub, a mountainous region spanning parts of the Lahij and Taiz governorates in southern Yemen, derives much of its strategic importance from its proximity to Bab al-Mandeb. Some of its heights lie about 40km (25 miles) from the waterway, providing commanding views across a stretch of the Red Sea, through which a significant share of global maritime trade and millions of barrels of oil pass each day.

For the Houthis, control over the mountains would have helped secure other territory the group has captured.

“The mountains are the natural wall that protects the Houthis’ rear on the coast. Controlling them would cut the coast off from the government-held south and place direct pressure on Lahij and, in the longer term, Aden,” Faozi Al-Goidi, a visiting fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Aden is the seat of Yemen’s government. The Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

Despite the Houthis’ recent advances, Yemen’s government forces have made major gains along the Red Sea coast in the past week since launching their new operation. Now, with their claim to have captured the Kahboub Mountains too, Yemen’s forces have struck a new blow to the Houthis.

Ewa K Strzelecka, a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics, told Al Jazeera that whoever controls the coastline, Mayyun Island and the neighbouring highlands secures “strategic resilience”.

When they held all three, the Houthis had a “much deeper and more defensible position around one of the world’s principal maritime chokepoints”, she said.

Those positions allow whoever is in control to move fighters, weapons and supplies along the coast with less risk of their routes being severed from behind.

The battle to control Kahboub has proven more costly for the Houthis than their rapid advance across the coastal plains last month, analysts said.

“This is not an easy battle,” said Mohammed al-Basha, an analyst and a former spokesperson for Yemen’s embassy in Washington, DC. “The fighting is taking place across some of Yemen’s most unforgiving terrain where control of a single hilltop or mountain peak can come at a heavy cost.”

Could the Houthis further isolate Taiz by controlling Kahboub?

Control of Kahboub also places greater pressure on Taiz, a symbolically and strategically important city, as the Taiz governorate forms a bridge between the Houthi-held north and the government-held south and the Red Sea coast. Whoever controls it gains the upper hand in the movement of weapons and supplies between the interior and the southern port city of Aden. Losing it, therefore, could deal a serious blow to the government.

Murad Al-Arefi, an editor at the Sana’a Center, told Al Jazeera that Houthi control over Kahboub would have increased “pressure on the southern and western approaches to Taiz” amid the group’s attempts to encircle the city.

One of Yemen’s largest population centres, Taiz became an important centre of resistance to the Houthis after they seized Sanaa, and it has been besieged by the rebel group for years. A major Houthi breakthrough there, therefore, would carry symbolic significance far beyond the territory captured.

What could it mean for Red Sea shipping?

Whoever controls Kahboub and the Red Sea coast can influence shipping through Bab al-Mandeb.

Although the Houthis said their restrictions on the strait apply only to Saudi-linked shipping, during their previous Red Sea campaign, they struck or endangered ships with no clear connection to Israel – their purported target during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – raising questions about how narrowly any new restrictions would be applied.

If Yemeni government forces have reclaimed control of the mountains, it strengthens their ability to secure the coastline overlooking Bab al-Mandeb.