REPORT: Yemen weapons fueling conflict in Africa

The UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Houthis in 2015 [Photo Credit: U.S. Navy]

NAIROBI, Kenya - The ongoing war in Yemen is directly to blame for restlessness and internal conflicts within the Horn of Africa, a report published by the Freestar notes, with Somalia, now being the most affected country within Africa.

Houthi rebels have been getting weapons from Iran as they fight a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, with a number of them ending in East Africa, a report noted. It's not the first time such allegations are being made.

According to the report, this proliferation of illicit arms diverted from Yemen into Somalia has potentially serious security implications for the country, and for neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya.

The weapons, the report said, have been used by Al-Shabaab factions of Somalia and Mozambique and parts of southern Tanzania. The Al-Shabaab of Mozambique is not related to those of Somalia but has been terrorizing residents of Cabo Delgado since 2017.

The report was done by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime [GI-TOC] released March 14, showing an overall increase in organized crime in eastern and southern Africa since 2019, as illicit arms fall into the wrong hands that are engaged in transnational crimes — poaching, terrorism, drug, and human trafficking.

GI-TOC is a global network with 500 Network Experts around the world that provides a platform to promote debate and innovative approaches as building blocks for a global strategy against organized crime.

The US naval forces intercepted a dhow in the Arabian Sea in December 2021 believed to have been en route to Yemen, the dhow carried 1,400 assault rifles and over 200,000 rounds of ammunition.

“Our team documented weapons at various locations in Somalia, which appear to have been sourced from shipments originally destined for Yemen, thereby demonstrating how one conflict can have a destabilizing effect on others and a wider region,” the report says.

The Yemeni angle is now a cause of concern for the region. Between December 2020 and August 2021, GI-TOC field researchers documented a total of 417 small arms and light weapons in Somalia in a survey of 13 different locations.

Last year, for example, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta jointly called for increased cooperation to counter-terrorism in Mozambique, arguing that this is a regional, rather than national, threat.

“The 2021 results can lend insight into how organized crime has changed over the past two years in eastern and southern Africa. This, in turn, can show how trends may continue to develop into 2022,” it says.

Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia are said to be the biggest beneficiaries of these weapons with close to $24 million of their budget going to purchase weapons from abroad. The group controls large swathes of rural central and southern Somalia.

GAROWE ONLINE