Mysterious airstrip appears on a Yemeni island as Houthi rebel attacks threaten region

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A mysterious airstrip being built on a remote island in Yemen is nearing completion, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show, one of several built in a nation mired in a stalemated war threatening to reignite.

The airstrip on Abd al-Kuri Island, which rises out of the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, could provide a key landing zone for military operations patrolling that waterway. That could be useful as commercial shipping through the Gulf and Red Sea — a key route for cargo and energy shipments heading to Europe — has halved under attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The area also has seen weapons smuggling from Iran to the rebels.

The runway is likely built by the United Arab Emirates, which has long been suspected of expanding its military presence in the region and has backed a Saudi-led war against the Houthis.

While the Houthis have linked their campaign to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, experts worry a ceasefire in that conflict may not be enough to see the rebels halt a campaign that’s drawn them global attention. Meanwhile, the Houthis have lobbed repeated attacks at Israel, as well as U.S. warships operating in the Red Sea, raising fears that one may make it through and endanger the lives of American service members.

A battlefield miscalculation by Yemen’s many adversarial parties, new fatal attacks on Israel or a deadly assault on an American warship easily could shatter the country’s relative calm. And it remains unclear just how President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday, will handle the emboldened rebel group.

“The Houthis feed off war — war is good for them,” said Wolf-Christian Paes, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who studies Yemen. “Finally they can live up to their slogan, which famously, of course, declares, ‘Death to America, death to the Jews.’ They see themselves as being in this epic battle against their archenemies and from their view, they’re winning.”

Satellite images show airstrip nearly complete

Satellite photos taken Jan. 7 by Planet Labs PBC for the AP show trucks and other heavy equipment on the north-south runway built into Abd al-Kuri, which is about 35 kilometers (21 miles) in length and about 5 kilometers (3 miles) at its widest point.

The runway has been paved, with the designation markings “18” and “36” to the airstrip’s north and south respectively. As of Jan. 7, there was still a segment missing from the 2.4-kilometer- (1.5-mile-) long runway that’s 45-meters (150-feet) wide. Trucks could be seen grading and laying asphalt over the missing 290-meter (950-foot) segment.

Once completed, the runway’s length would allow private jets and other aircraft to land there, though likely not the largest commercial aircraft or heavy bombers given its length.

While within Houthi drone and missile range, the distance of Abd al-Kuri from mainland Yemen means “there’s no threat of the Houthis getting on a pickup truck or a technical and going to seize it,” said Yemen expert Mohammed al-Basha of the Basha Report risk advisory firm.

The United Nations’ Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization, which assigns its own set of airport codes for airfields around the world, had no information about the airstrip on Abd al-Kuri, spokesman William Raillant-Clark said. Yemen, as a member state to ICAO, should provide information about the airfield to the organization. Nearby Socotra Island already has an airport declared to the ICAO.

It’s not the only airfield to see an expansion in recent years. In Mocha on the Red Sea, a project to extend that city’s airport now allows it to land far larger aircraft. Local officials attributed that project to the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The airfield also sits on a similar north-south path as the Abd al-Kuri airstrip and is roughly the same length.

Other satellite photos from Planet Labs show yet another unclaimed runway currently under construction just south of Mocha near Dhubab, a coastal town in Yemen’s Taiz governorate. An image taken by Planet for the AP on Thursday showed the runway fully built, though no markings were painted on it.

A key location for a country riven by war

Abd al-Kuri is part of the Socotra Archipelago, separated from Africa by only 95 kilometers (60 miles) and from Yemen by some 400 kilometers (250 miles). In the last decade of the Cold War, the archipelago occasionally hosted Soviet warships due to its strategic location.

In recent years, the island has been overseen by Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council, which advocates for Yemen to again split into a separate north and south as it was during the Cold War. The UAE has backed and armed the council as part of the Saudi-led war against the Houthis, who seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

The UAE, home to the massive Jebel Ali port in Dubai and the logistic firm DP World, previously built a base in Eritrea that was later dismantled and attempted to build an airstrip on Mayun, or Perim, Island, in the center of the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

But unlike those efforts, the Emiratis appear likely to open the Abd al-Kuri airstrip — and have even signed their work. Just east of the runway, piles of dirt there have spelled out “I LOVE UAE” for months.

An Emirati-flagged landing craft also was spotted off the coast of Abd al-Kuri in January 2024 and off Socotra multiple other times in the year, according to data analyzed by AP from MarineTraffic.com. That vessel previously has been associated with the UAE’s military operations in Yemen.

The UAE, which runs a once-a-week flight to Socotra via Abu Dhabi, have long described their efforts as aimed at getting aid to the archipelago. Asked for comment about the Abd al-Kuri airfield, the UAE similarly pointed to its aid operations.

“Any presence of the UAE … is based on humanitarian grounds that is carried out in cooperation with the Yemen government and local authorities,” the Emirati government said in a statement.

“The UAE remains steadfast in its commitment to all international endeavors aimed at facilitating the resumption of the Yemeni political process, thereby advancing the security, stability and prosperity sought by the Yemeni populace.”

The Southern Transitional Council and officials with Yemen’s exiled government did not respond to repeated requests for comments over the airfield. The UAE’s presence on Socotra has sparked tensions in the past, something the Houthis have used to portray the Emiratis as trying to colonize the island.

“This plan represents a serious violation of Yemeni sovereignty and threatens the sovereignty of several neighboring countries through the espionage and sabotage operations it is expected to carry out,” the Houthi-controlled SABA news agency said in November.

Smuggling route passes by the island

A new airport on Abd al-Kuri could provide a new, secluded landing zone for surveillance flights around Socotra Island. That could be vital to interdict weapons smuggling from Iran to the Houthis, who remain under a U.N. arms embargo.

A report to the U.N. Security Council said a January 2024 weapons seizure by the U.S. military took place off Socotra near Abd al-Kuri. That seizure, which saw two U.S. Navy SEALs lost at sea and presumed killed, involved a traditional dhow vessel that U.S. prosecutors say was involved in multiple smuggling trips on behalf of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to the Houthis.

Disrupting that weapons route, as well as the ongoing attacks by the U.S., Israel and others on the Houthis, likely have contributed to the slowing pace of the rebels’ attacks in recent months. The U.S. and its partners alone have struck the Houthis over 260 times, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Next week, Trump will be the one to decide what happens to that campaign. He has experience already with how difficult fighting in Yemen can be — his first military action in his first term in 2017 saw a Navy SEAL killed in a raid on a suspected al-Qaida compound. The raid also killed more than a dozen civilians, including an 8-year-old girl.

Trump may reapply a foreign terrorist organization designation on the Houthis that Biden revoked, a reimposition that the UAE backs. Marco Rubio, who Trump has nominated to be secretary of state, mentioned the Houthis several times when testifying Wednesday at his Senate confirmation hearing alongside what he described as threats from Iran and its allies.

Any U.S. move could escalate the war, even with the Houthi’s enigmatic supreme leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, pledging Thursday night to halt the rebels’ attacks if a ceasefire deal is reached in Gaza.

“I don’t see a way in 2025 that we have a de-escalation with the Houthis,” said al-Basha, the Yemen expert. “The situation in Yemen is very tense. An outbreak in the war could be a reality in the next few months. I don’t foresee the status quo continuing.”

Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press