Money, spies and Hezbollah: How Yemen’s Houthis built smuggling network across narrow waterway

What started as isolated smuggling operations by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has turned into a network that stretches through Africa, senior Yemeni and regional security officials told The National as they revealed how the militants carefully built their routes.

Over the past decade, the Iran-backed group has slowly transformed from a local armed faction into a wider force, threatening neighbouring countries and attacking shipping lanes while consolidating its control over the capital Sanaa and north-western Yemen.

But it is the Houthis’ close relationship with Iran’s main regional proxy, Hezbollah, that has taught them how to extend their reach beyond Yemen to diversify sources and resources while advancing Tehran’s goals in new regions.

The most important of those regions is the Horn of Africa. Recent reports revealed that Houthi ties with Al Shabab in Somalia and the Sudanese Armed Forces have led to arms-smuggling networks in the troubled region just a stone’s throw across the sea.

“The Houthis’ activity in the Horn of Africa is not only for obtaining supplies but also for expanding their arms distribution and sales in the region, as well as spreading Iranian agendas,” a senior Yemeni security official told The National.

“Therefore, the Houthi presence and activity in Africa constitute one of the most important pillars of the Houthi movement’s current supply chain,” he added.

The Houthis have an estimated troop strength, according to the US-based Middle East Institute, of 350,000, including child soldiers, forced-conscript African refugees and foreign mercenaries.

The rebels rely primarily on cross-border smuggling networks and complex maritime supply routes that extend across the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea to secure a significant portion of their military and logistical needs, including weapons, drone components, ballistic missiles, and technology and equipment related to naval capabilities.

The Yemeni coast, particularly the western coast including Hodeidah, is strategically important for the group. It has served as one of its most crucial access and logistical support points since its takeover of Sanaa and state institutions in 2014.

“In this context, the Houthis’ activities in the Horn of Africa cannot be viewed in isolation from the requirements of securing Iranian supply lines and the associated transportation and intermediary networks,” said the official.

“Our observations indicate that the issue is no longer limited to isolated smuggling operations, but rather moving towards the formation of more flexible and diverse networks with multiple intermediaries and routes. This allows for the continuous flow of supplies and reduces the risk of the network being exposed or completely disrupted if one link is intercepted.”

Building a network

Security sources said relationships with smugglers, intermediaries and organised crime networks, as well as elements and groups active on the African side of the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, were a vital component of the logistical support system. This could be for transporting shipments or providing intermediate points and rerouting them in a way that minimises the likelihood of detection and interception.

“Hezbollah taught them everything about cultivating relationships and building a network of spies and smugglers,” a regional security source told The National. “They do that mainly through money and exchange for services, like offering support with obtaining weapons and training.”

Hezbollah officials have long acknowledged that they have trained and equipped Houthi militants.

Like Hezbollah, the Houthis have also established a foothold in Iraq. Earlier this year, the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) reported that the Yemeni group has maintained a presence in Iraq since 2011, but that the Gaza war marked a turning point in its co-operation with Iran-backed militias.

In 2024, the Houthis opened an office in Baghdad and also operate another in Najaf. According to ISPI, Ahmed Al Sharafi, “founder of the first Houthi military factory in Saada” in northern Yemen, leads the Baghdad office. That same year, the Houthi-Iraqi militia alliance claimed responsibility for six joint operations against Israel.

However, over the past few years, as the war inside Yemen slowed down, the group made expanding its network and building local networks in the Horn of Africa a major priority. They have exploited the vulnerability of some coastal areas, the prevalence of smuggling, and the overlapping activities of organised crime, piracy and trafficking.

“This environment provides fertile ground for establishing networks of intermediaries and logistical facilities, sometimes making it difficult to identify those behind them or to separate criminal activity from security and military objectives,” explained the Yemeni security official.

“Therefore, reports of links between the Houthis and smuggling networks, armed groups, or elements in the Horn of Africa should be viewed within the broader context of the group’s evolving logistical and regional infrastructure.”

Somalia to Sudan

In 2024, the US reported continuing co-operation between Al Shabab and the Houthis. Furthermore, a UN report in 2025 revealed that the Somali militant group held at least two meetings with Houthi representatives in Somalia in July and September 2024, during which it was agreed that the Houthis would provide Al Shabab with weapons and technical expertise. Al Shabab was tasked with increasing piracy activity in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, and collecting ransoms from captured ships.

According to a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last year, Al Shabab “receives a 20 per cent share of the ransoms they collect” and “it is likely that the partnership between the Houthis and Shabab involved using pirates to disrupt maritime traffic”.

Lt Col Eric Navarro, director of military and strategic programmes at the US-based Middle East Forum think tank, wrote in a recent report that “available evidence” of weapons smuggled by the Houthis shows small arms, explosives and drone-related components moving by land and sea between Yemen and Somalia.

“Reporting indicates training exchanges and technical assistance, particularly in unmanned systems, targeting and operational planning. Smuggling networks that once moved charcoal, migrants and light weapons now facilitate higher-end militant collaboration.”

In Sudan, where civil war has taken the lives of thousands and displaced millions, one of the most significant boosts the Houthis appear to have delivered is to the state-owned arms maker to develop its own attack drone, the Safaroog, according to a report by the Century Foundation published this week.

The report notes that it closely resembles the Iranian Ababil-T, a 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.

Houthis “recruited migrants from African countries to serve as smugglers, spies and soldiers”, it added. The push into the Horn of Africa and its neighbourhood “makes the case that the group is trying to establish itself as a new node of [Iran’s so-called] Axis of Resistance activity in the region,” claimed the report.