The last of the Iranian proxies.
From gCaptain, December 17:
After a year of drone and missile attacks against merchant and naval vessels, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group is now extending an olive branch of sorts—by planning a seminar and webinar on “security of navigation in the Red Sea.”
In an unexpected twist, the group has apparently reached out to industry insiders for agenda ideas and insights to “enrich the discussion.”
The email, sent to TradeWinds by an events manager for the Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC), is raising eyebrows across the shipping community. HOCC is the same entity that has issued threats to shipping companies and shipowners, including warnings earlier this year that vessels failing to cooperate with Houthi authorities would be “banned” from crossing the Red Sea....
....MORE
I still think a bayonet charge in the manner of Mad Mitch would have changed the minds of the Houthis re: their chosen profession.
As noted (intro and outro) from March's "Palantir Cuts Deal To Clear Landmines In Ukraine":
So no HALO Trust?
*****
I was thinking of the HALO Trust because of Lt Col Colin Campbell
Mitchell and I was thinking of the Lieutenant Colonel because of the
failure of the Western militaries to convince the Houthis to stop firing
missiles at passing ships.
In Aden Yemen he led what has been referred to as the "Last Battle of the British Empire" in July 1967.
He and his 700 -strong 1st Battalion, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders did a bayonet charge at 500-700 of the local militia and police who had perfidiously killed a bunch of Brits a couple weeks earlier.
As they charged the bagpipes began making their Godawful noise, in this case the regimental charge Mony Musk. Here's a recording from the year after the charge:
Commanding Officer Lt Col C.C. Mitchell
Drum Major WO ll J Malloch
Pipe Major Sgt. K. Robson
1968
As the crazy Scotsmen are running straight at the Yemenis, the pipes go double-time. In December's "Maersk Ship Hit by Missile in the Red Sea" I mentioned:
It might be time for a reprise of "Mad Mitch" in Yemen with cold steel and pipes skirlingwith a short explanation after the jump:
...Back to Mad Mitch, after he was basically chased out of the British Army for exceeding his orders, he went on to found, along with his wife and another Scotsman, the HALO Trust, clearing landmines from the world's conflict areas and keeping kids bipedal.
His regiment's march, Mony Musk, sounds like it would be quite terrifying to those being approached by a bunch of loony Scots, never mind the bayonets.And then it goes up-tempo, Yikes! I'd be thinking, time to run.
It
was in all the papers and contemporaneous reports on the "mad hillmen"
were referring to the Scots, not the Houthis or other Yemenis. But as a
result hardly a shot was fired, the Yemenis laid down their weapons and
Britain pulled out of Aden, their only Arab colony, on the schedule they
had announced in 1963 and the rest is history.
HALO Trust has cleared tens of thousand of acres of a million or two landmines in conflict zones all around the world, and kept a few thousand - or more - kids walking on two legs.
Or walking at all.
And that's why I thought of the HALO Trust.