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.
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