In a region crucial to global trade, ideological rivals may now be working together. United Nations and American intelligence reports suggest that Yemen’s Houthi insurgents and the Somali group Al-Shabaab — considered Al-Qaeda’s strongest affiliate — are exchanging logistical and military resources, despite having no formal alliance.

These reported exchanges involve military technology, potentially expanding Al-Shabaab’s operational reach beyond Somalia and further destabilizing an already fragile region.

The Ansar Allah movement (whose supporters are known as the “Houthis”) controls part of northern Yemen and has the military capacity to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea. Al-Shabaab controls large swaths of Somali territory and continues to wage an armed insurgency against the central government.

As part of my doctoral research in political science at the University of Montréal, I have focused on security dynamics in the Horn of Africa and, more broadly, the Red Sea basin, one of the world’s most important maritime trade corridors linking Asia and Europe through the Suez Canal.

The first reports of co-operation between the two groups emerged in 2024. The UN Panel of Experts on Yemen was the first to warn about growing arms trafficking between the coasts of Somalia and Yemen, both of which have been affected by conflict since 1991 and 2014 respectively.

The same panel has also raised concerns about growing........

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