The Houthi attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was more than a terrorist assault on a civilian facility. It exposed a stark contrast between two visions: one that invests in airports, ports, maritime straits and technology to transcend borders and connect a country to the wider world; another that devotes its resources to tunnels, missiles, drones and fortifications to penetrate borders while isolating itself from the world beyond them.
The nationalities of the victims capture this contrast with painful clarity. Saudis, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Americans, Indians, and Bangladeshis, including pilgrims performing Umrah. People from different countries brought together in an airport terminal, only to become victims of the same attack. They were parties to neither the conflict in Yemen nor Iran’s war. They were travellers making their way to work, to their families and to their homelands. An airport brought them together; a missile launched from a tunnel struck them.
An airport is far more than runways and terminals. It forms part of a global network sustained by laws, agreements, institutions and mutual trust. An aircraft departing Riyadh for destinations around the world crosses the airspace of several countries, carries passengers of different nationalities and connects markets, societies and families. It embodies a world of intertwined interests, where borders serve as gateways to human connection rather than lines of confrontation.
A military tunnel, when converted into a base for an armed group operating beyond state authority, belongs to an entirely different order. It forms part of a network of fortifications, storage facilities, communications systems, concealed weapons and launch platforms. These are no primitive caves, nor are the groups that construct them strangers to technology. Modern tunnels require engineers, specialists, funding, equipment and sophisticated technical expertise. The problem lies in how that knowledge is employed, channelled through proxies into warfare at the expense of development.
The airport symbolises life and operates in the light. The tunnel serves death and dwells in darkness. Iran, its proxies and its allies have developed various forms of these underground networks. In Lebanon, Hezbollah built extensive systems of fortifications and military installations. Kataib Hezbollah and other Iraqi militias followed similar approaches. In Gaza, Hamas constructed a vast subterranean network for movement, storage, command and combat. In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces excavated tunnels and fortifications in territories under their control, although that case belongs to a different context, associated with Kurdish tunnel networks in western Iraq and south-eastern Türkiye.
