Iranian weapons in Yemen identified in Somalia

While Saudi Arabia and its allies waged war in support of Yemen’s internationally recognized government based in Aden, evidence suggests that guns supplied by Iran to its Houthi allies in Yemen are being smuggled across the Gulf of Aden to Somalia.

According to a report from Global Initiative Against Translational Organized Crime, over 400 illicit weapons in 13 locations across Somalia, including the Type 56-1 assault rifle had likely originated in Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis over the course of eight months.

It is the first publicly available research into the scale of illicit arms smuggling from Yemen into the Horn of Africa country.

A portion of this Iranian support has consisted of deliveries of small arms and light weapons. With many of the identified weapons having batched serial numbers, they are likely to originated with a single supplier, the report says.

One dhow carrying weapons which was seized by a U.S. navy vessel had a GPS with stored points in Iran, southern Yemen and Somalia, the report said, including a small anchorage near Jask port, which hosts an Iranian naval base, and "home" as the Yemeni port of Mukalla, a well-known arms smuggling hub.

Report author Jay Bahadur, formerly coordinator of the United Nations Security Council monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea, notes Iran’s consistent denial of supplying weapons to Ansar Allah, who since 2014 have battled a Saudi intervention, but writes that “a preponderance of evidence points to Iranian state supply.”

The report said the guns end up with commercial smuggling networks whose customers can include armed factions seeking advantage ahead of Somalia's repeatedly delayed presidential elections, as well as clan militias and rival Islamist insurgent groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Analysts believe the proliferation of arms related to the Yemen conflict in Somalia has potentially serious security implications for the country as a whole, where al Qaeda-linked al Shabab insurgents are battling a weak and divided government.

Under a United Nations resolution, Tehran is prohibited from supplying, selling or transferring weapons outside the country. A separate UN resolution on Yemen bans the supply of weapons to Houthi leaders.