The Hanish Islands (Arabic: جزر حنيش, Tigrinya: ደሴታት ሃኒሽ) is an archipelago in the Red Sea consisting of a trio of major islands at the centre of an array of smaller islets and rocks.[1] The three major islands are the northern Zuqar Island, the southern Great Anish (Al-anīsh al-Kabīr), and the significantly smaller Little Anish (Al-anīsh al-Ṣaghīr) in between. The archipelago is largely under the control of Yemen, with only several small south-eastern rocks and islets granted to Eritrea following the Hanish Islands conflict in 1996 AD.
History
The Ottoman Empire exercised claim over the Hanish archipelago until its dissolution following World War I, afterwhich sovereignty and political status of the islands was left indeterminate by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which saw the newly formed which Turkey surrender the archipelago alongside all other Asiatic territories outside Anatolia.[2] Italy exercised loose control over the fishermen frequenting the archipelago through its geographical proximity to Italian Eritrea, until its occupation by the British in 1915 to "forestall the Italians".[3][4]
The islands were administered by the Italian Empire until 1941, when the Italian colonists surrendered to the British, who would subsequently awarded all of Eritrea, including the archipelago, to Ethiopia.
Eritrean independence groups used the archipelago, particularly Zuqar Island, as a base for attacks on Ethiopian military interests, leading to the Ehtiopian desire for control over the archipelago.[5]
In 1991, Eritrea succeeded in gaining its independence and would attempt to negotiate and exercise sovereignty over the archipelago, particularly Great Anish. The breakdown of peaceful negotiations with Yemen resulted in the Hanish Islands conflict of 1996, a territorial war that would last two years until both countries agreed to accept arbitration, afterwhich the Permanent Court of Arbitration determined that the territory belonged to Yemen in 1998, only granting several small islands and islets to Eritrean sovereignty. The conflict ultimately claimed the lives of 4-15 Yemenis and twelve Eritreans.[6]
The archipelago would become the scene of intense fighting during the 2015 Yemeni Civil War, when forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Houthi insurgents on one side fought against forces loyal to acting president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, backed by Gulf Arab coalition forces, on the other.[7]
See also
References
- ^ "Ḥanīsh Islands | islands, Red Sea | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-10-08.
- ^ "Ḥanīsh Islands | islands, Red Sea | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-10-08.
- ^ Baldry, John (1976). "Anglo-Italian Rivalry in Yemen and ʿAsīr 1900-1934". Die Welt des Islams. 17 (1/4): 155–193. doi:10.2307/1570344. ISSN 0043-2539. JSTOR 1570344.
- ^ "Ḥanīsh Islands | islands, Red Sea | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-10-08.
- ^ Killion, Tom (1998). Historical Dictionary of Eritrea. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3437-5.
- ^ "Ḥanīsh Islands | islands, Red Sea | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-10-08.
- ^ "Coalition forces capture Yemeni islands from Houthis". www.aljazeera.com.
Coordinates: 13°45′N 42°45′E / 13.750°N 42.750°E