ADF STAFF
Somalia’s al-Shabaab and Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebels have struck an alliance that threatens to destabilize more of the Red Sea region along with parts of the Horn of Africa.
At the heart of the alliance is a simple equation: Al-Shabaab has money and needs weapons to fight the Somali government. The Ansar Allah rebels, known as the Houthis, have weapons and need money to operate in parts of northwestern Yemen where they are the de facto government.
The two groups have formed an alliance despite their different religious and political positions. Al-Shabaab members follow Sunni Islam and are an al-Qaida affiliate. The Houthis are Shiites like their patron, Iran, which has supplied them with small arms and light weapons in violation of a United Nations arms embargo on Yemen. In 2020, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime reported that some of those weapons end up in Somalia.
Al-Shabaab and the Houthis are making common cause in disrupting Red Sea and western Indian Ocean shipping. A February U.N. report confirmed that al-Shabaab and Houthi personnel met in Somalia in July and September 2024. During those meetings, the Houthis agreed to supply al-Shabaab with weapons and technical assistance in return for ramping up piracy and ransom kidnappings in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia’s coast.
“These reports have shed light on ongoing negotiations where the Houthis are allegedly facilitating the smuggling of advanced weaponry, including drones and surface-to-air missiles, to al-Shabaab,” researcher Zeinab Mostafa Ruwayha wrote recently for the Yemen & Gulf Center for Studies.
There also is evidence that Houthi engineers visited al-Shabaab to help the group make advanced weapons and bombs, Ruwayha added.
Al-Shabaab sees Houthi-made drones and Iranian-made weapons as a way to regain control of the coast, which the group lost after a series of defeats by the Somali National Army and its international allies. Those defeats have cut into al-Shabaab’s ability to raise money. The Houthis see their alliance with al-Shabaab as a way to project their influence, and, by extension, Iran’s influence across the Red Sea and into the Horn of Africa, according to experts.
Since late 2023, the Houthis have launched missiles and drones at more than 130 commercial ships transiting the chokepoint at the Bab el-Mandeb strait where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. The attacks caused shipping through the Red Sea to drop by about half between November 2023 and November 2024, according to the shipping news website Lloyd’s List.
Along with receiving missiles and other weapons from Iran, the Houthis also have developed their own domestic drone manufacturing system, which produces aerial and aquatic drones capable of conducting everything from intelligence gathering to kamikaze strikes.
For their part, al-Shabaab fighters have proved proficient at raising up to $100 million a year through extortion and support from like-minded businesspeople.
Even as it has become a source of financial support for other al-Qaida-allied groups around the world, al-Shabaab has suffered military setbacks at home. It lost its coastal foothold in the Galmudug region of Somalia’s central coast in 2023 and has lost territory to the Islamic State group on the northern coast of Puntland.
“These (Houthi) technologies are of immense significance to al-Shabaab, which believes that aligning with the Houthis will help mitigate the regional gains made by the Somali military over the past two years,” Ruwayha wrote.
