Houthi ties with Al Shabab in Somalia and the Sudanese Armed Forces have led to arms-smuggling networks expanding the Yemeni rebels' influence in the Horn of Africa, a report has found.
The Iran-backed militia’s presence in the region builds on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps network that arms and trains regional groups, the report found.
Al Shabab and the SAF are among a number of allied factions just across the Red Sea, the report by the Century Foundation said.
There are concerns that these new networks will allow the Houthis, who took control of northern Yemen by force more than a decade ago, to entrench themselves in the Horn of Africa.
“The Houthis … have things that these groups want – arms, technology, know-how, supply chains and access to Iran,” said the report, titled From Spoke to Hub: The Houthis in Africa.
“The relationships are transactional, for now. But … such seemingly transactional relationships can harden into interdependence over time.”
The most-significant boost the Houthis appear to have delivered so far is to the Sudanese state-owned arms maker to develop its own attack drone, the Safaroog. The report highlights that it closely resembles the Iranian Ababil-T, the medium-range, one-way attack drone the Houthis have also produced, under the name Qasef-2k.
Sudan's state-owned Military Industrial Corporation is closely tied to the SAF and is run by the US-sanctioned Islamist leader Mirghani Idris Suleiman. Its claims of an indigenous manufacturing capability could significantly alter the course of the civil war.
Aggression resumes
The Houthis last month resumed attacks on international shipping in the Bab Al Mandeb strait and installed a blockade of Saudi Arabia's ports, ending a year-long ceasefire in the Red Sea. A Saudi oil tanker was attacked and set alight at the port of Yanbu on Monday.
The playbook for its growth in the Horn of Africa is the one pioneered by its own patrons in Iran and Lebanon, “developed over decades by the IRGC and Hezbollah, which was behind the Houthis’ own rise.
Al Shabab, a Somali group with ties to Al Qaeda, opened communications with the Houthis in 2024 for help in buying anti-aircraft weapons and drones that would deter airborne attacks from the US, the report said.
Amir Al Bidh, spokesman for the Southern Transitional Council in Yemen that formerly dominated the Aden-based authorities, rivals to the Houthis, told The National the smuggling lines from central and even southern Yemen had been one of its strategic targets before it was ousted in a Saudi Arabia-led intervention late last year.
“The evidence is clear: the Houthis with IRGC support have built a network of facilitators across the Red Sea into the Horn of Africa,” he said. “The STC have presented evidence to both the US and UK on the Houthi operational relationship with Al Shabab. This includes smuggling routes that went through Hadhramaut.”
There are no signs yet that Al Shabab has obtained and used the advanced weapons, which also includes shoulder-fired rockets, the Century Foundation report said. Yet two discoveries of Al Shabab operatives in Yemen suggest the relationship is deepening. When and how the support manifests on the ground is the next question.
“The clearest near-term signal of capability transfer would be the appearance of Iranian-pattern explosive devices, anti-aircraft missiles, or drones on Somali battlefields,” it said. In particular, if “explosively formed penetrators” (armour-piercing bombs) appeared in Somalia, it would indicate the presence of a deepening Houthi relationship.
After the arrest of Al Shabab operative Ahmed Elmi Samatar in Yemen’s Mukalla, he confessed he had organised training camps for Al Shabab militants with Houthi combatants.
In February, a Somali citizen named Abdishakur Yahye Ali (nicknamed “the Joker”) was killed in an apparent US drone strike in Al Ghaydah, eastern Yemen. In his hotel room, security forces found a Yemeni passport issued in 2023 by the Houthis’ de facto authorities in Sanaa.
In Sudan, the Houthis are believed to have been taking shipments of small arms and light weapons on Iran’s behalf since 2024. Houthi operatives are present in Port Sudan, with arms traffic moving both directions across the Red Sea, according to the report.
At the heart is the relationship that Iran once had with deposed Sudanese military dictator Omar Al Bashir and the army. Those ties were severed in 2016 after an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, when Al Bashir sided with Riyadh. But the SAF restored its ties with Tehran in 2023 after the onset of the Sudanese civil war.
There are concerns that as well as smuggling weapons, the Houthis have been training the SAF alongside the IRGC.
“Multiple sources claim that the Houthis have sent veteran engineers and operatives to train Sudanese forces in the use and manufacturing of Iranian UAV [drone] systems alongside the IRGC,” the report said.
The group is also believed to be, with Iranian support, re-establishing ties with Eritrea, where it serves as a smuggling centre for Iranian arms en route to Yemen.
“If these claims are correct, it would mean that the Houthis have built a logistical footprint that runs, intermittently, along the African shores of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea from north-eastern Somalia to northern Sudan,” the report said.
