An international organised crime-watchdog has warned that Iranian weapons and ammunition supplied to Houthi insurgents in Yemen may be making their way onto East Africa’s black market.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime said on Friday that it had obtained credible evidence not only suggesting Iran is providing materiél to rebels in the Yemeni civil war, but that criminal networks may be trafficking these weapons on toward the Horn of Africa and in particular Somalia.
Researchers with the watchdog, posing as potential buyers, made contact with a Somalian arms-dealer based in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, who over a period of some weeks explained the details of his operation.
The source provided a price-list that included AK-pattern assault rifles, light machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and assorted ammunition.
Reviewing photos of the dealer’s stock, Global Initiative confirmed that the weapons shared characteristics with those reportedly provided by Iran to the Houthi movement.
This indicates “the existence of illicit-arms smuggling networks that see Iranian arms intended for Yemen end[ing] up in Somalia, and potentially beyond,” according to the report.
Further, the organisation noted that the discovery in fact points to a long-standing trend in arms smuggling in the region.
Somalia has been under a UN arms embargo since 1992, and Somali arms dealers have long looked to Yemen as a source of business because of the widespread availability of weapons in the Arab country.
Even before the outbreak of war in 2015, the report states that Yemen had the second-greatest per capita ownership of weapons after the United States, and that this will only have been exacerbated by the ongoing violence.
The full report HERE
