DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The United Arab Emirates is dismantling parts of a military base he manages in the East African country of Eritrea after withdrawing from the grinding war in nearby Yemen. satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press.
The UAE built a port and started an airport in Assab in September 2015, with the facility as a base to transport heavy weapons and Sudanese troops to Yemen, while working with a Saudi-led coalition against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels fought there.
But experts believe the country was once praised as ‘Little Sparta’ by former US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. After withdrawing troops from the conflict, the satellite photos show that it is starting to deliver equipment and even demolish newly built structures.
“The Emirates are withdrawing their strategic ambitions and moving out of places where they were present,” said Ryan Bohl, an analyst at private intelligence firm Stratfor, in Texas. ‘the emirates are now willing to tolerate. ”
Emirates officials did not respond to questions from the AP. Eritrea, which gave a 30-year lease to the Emiratis for the base, similarly did not respond to questions sent to the embassy in Washington.
The United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhs housing Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has poured millions of dollars to improve the facility at Assab, just about 70 kilometers from Yemen. It dug out a harbor and improved the dusty runway’s runway of about 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) to allow heavy support aircraft.
The Emiratis also built barracks, air roofs and fences over the 9 square kilometers (3.5 square miles) originally built by the colonial power Italy in the 1930s.
Over time, according to United Nations experts, the UAE has stationed Leclerc combat tanks, G6 self-propelled tankers and BMP-3 amphibious combat vehicles. These types of heavy weapons have been seen on Yemeni battlefields. Attack helicopters, drones and other aircraft were seen on its runways.
In the barracks at the base were Emirati and Yemeni troops, as well as Sudanese troops that had taken off in the Yemeni port city of Aden. Records show how the ship they were carrying, the SWIFT-1, traveled back and forth to Assab. The vessel was later attacked by Houthi forces in 2016 and the Emirati government claimed it was providing humanitarian aid, a claim for which UN experts later described themselves as ‘unconvincing of its truth’.
The base also helped wounded soldiers by “housing one of the best field surgery hospitals in the Middle East,” said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy, which studied the Assab base. .
As the war in Yemen continues, the Emirates has also used the base to detain prisoners, as the Saudi-led coalition has faced increasing international pressure over abuses of detainees and airstrikes that have killed civilians. The UAE announced in the summer of 2019 that it had begun withdrawing its troops from the war, which is still raging today.
“There is just so much that they can beat above their weight, which they do militarily and economically,” said Alex Almeida, a security analyst at Horizon Client Access who studied Assab. “When they realized that Yemen was not worth it to them, they decided, ‘We’ll end it,’ and they abruptly ended it.”
Satellite photos from Planet Labs Inc., analyzed by the AP, show that the decision appears to extend to Assab as well.
In June 2019, around the time the Emiratis made their withdrawal announcement, workers apparently leveled structures resembling barracks along the harbor, the satellite images show. Workers gathered neat rows of material just north of the harbor and apparently waited to be unloaded.
In early January this year, another photo showed what appears to be vehicles and other equipment being loaded onto a waiting cargo ship. By February 5, the ship and the equipment were gone.
The deconstruction also included newly built canopies along a new tarred road near the runway of the facilities. In the February 5 images, another set of canopies that analysts had previously linked to the drones flown from the base was also dismantled. During the Yemeni war, the UAE used Chinese-made drones to kill leaders among the Houthi rebels.
The destruction of the drone hangars comes after rebels in the Tigray region of Ethiopia claimed in November that Assir Emirati drones had been used against their positions. The UAE did not comment on the allegation, for which the rebels offered no evidence.
The UN-backed government in Libya also claimed that the UAE had flown weapons through Assab on its way there. UN experts have accused the UAE, among others, of pulling weapons into Libya amid years of civil war.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian-registered Antonov An-124 cargo plane flew back and forth to the emirate city of Al Ain from Assab in late January, according to flight data from FlightRadar24.com.
The plane, once linked to the Emirati army, now flies to a Ukrainian-Emirati company called Maximus Air. The firm did not return a request for comment left in its office in Abu Dhabi.
Despite the dismantling work, Emirati attack helicopters were still seen at the base. It also remains a strategically important point, just off the important Bab el-Mandeb Strait that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.
But the UAE may be experiencing more pressing issues. Since 2019, tensions between the US and Iran have led to a series of escalating incidents, including attacks on Emirates’ ships. These threats closer to home may take precedence over an extensive military footprint abroad.
“I think what ‘Little Sparta’ is doing is keeping the powder dry for all he has to do now,” Knights said.
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