Al-Shabaab’s Drones Comes Out of Yemen

United Nations monitors have documented a Houthi weapons and training pipeline into Somalia that goes well beyond informal contact between two allied militant groups, according to a series of UN Security Council reports released over the past year, evidence analysts say points toward a structured, strategic partnership rather than a one-off arms deal.

The foundation for that assessment was laid in mid-2024. The UN found that al-Shabaab received technical instruction from the Houthis and weapons shipments from Yemen between June and September of that year, according to an analysis by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which tracks the reporting closely. Those weapons were subsequently used in al-Shabaab attacks on African Union forces in September and November 2024. In August that year, Puntland authorities arrested seven suspected al-Shabaab members and seized five suicide drones, physical evidence that the group was moving weapons, not just fighters, through the pipeline. Separately, Yemeni National Resistance Forces, the anti-Houthi coalition, intercepted a vessel that same month carrying hydrogen fuel cells, technology experts believe was intended to extend Houthi drones’ payload capacity and range, according to a report on the escalating ties between the two sides.

What is actually moving through that pipeline has become clearer with time. Some of the equipment and components traced back to Iran appear to be domestically assembled Samad-series drones, according to Taimur Khan, head of Gulf operations at Conflict Armament Research, cited by ISS Africa. The same analysis notes that UN monitors documented al-Shabaab’s leadership directly requesting “advanced weapons and training” from Ansar Allah, the Houthis’ formal name, in meetings held in 2024, a request that goes beyond passive technology transfer and suggests al-Shabaab is actively shopping for a weaponised capability it does not yet have.

The relationship deepened further in 2025. A UN Security Council Panel of Experts report on Yemen, presented on 15 October 2025, found that cooperation between the Houthis and al-Shabaab had “intensified to unprecedented levels,” involving weapons smuggling, military training and logistical support, according to coverage of the report. The panel documented that two Houthi military engineers were dispatched specifically to Jilib, in southern Somalia, to train al-Shabaab members on drone modification and weapons maintenance, a level of hands-on technical support that goes well past shipping hardware across the Gulf of Aden. A separate November 2025 UN Panel of Experts report monitoring al-Shabaab directly, reported by Africa Defense Forum, found that al-Shabaab sent four groups of roughly 30 fighters each to Yemen for training over the preceding year, with one group departing Somalia’s Lower Shabelle coast by boat in late October 2024. A separate estimate from Century International, cited by regional broadcaster Kaab TV, put the total number of al-Shabaab fighters trained in Yemen at somewhere between 120 and several hundred.

Analysts monitoring the relationship are increasingly explicit that this is not a simple transactional arrangement. The UN panel’s own report states the cooperation is “part of a Houthi strategy to wield increasing influence in the region,” and Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said as early as March 2024 that he intended to expand maritime operations toward the Indian Ocean, a statement the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has read as a tacit signal that the Houthis are willing to use Somali territory to project power beyond Yemen, treating the country partly as a testing ground for tactics before deploying them closer to home. A retired US Navy rear admiral summarised the resulting arrangement bluntly in comments carried by Africa Defense Forum: the Houthis supply advanced, Iranian-backed weaponry, al-Shabaab uses it to escalate piracy and battlefield pressure inside Somalia, and each group’s reach grows as a result.

What has not yet happened, despite two years of documented training, hardware transfers and seized suicide drones, is a confirmed weaponised drone strike by al-Shabaab itself. Unmanned Africa reported separately that al-Shabaab’s smaller rival, Islamic State Somalia, crossed that line first, in January 2025, in Puntland’s Cali Miskat mountains, months after the same Houthi-linked smuggling networks were disrupted at Bosaso port. Al-Shabaab, better funded and more cautious with its equipment, has so far kept its own drones in a surveillance and propaganda role even as its access to weaponised technology has visibly grown. Analysts describe that gap, between capability and use, as the reason Somalia remains one of the most closely watched proliferation risks on the continent: everything a weaponised al-Shabaab drone campaign would require, training, hardware, a willing supplier and a documented request for exactly that capability, already appears to be in place. The only missing piece, so far, is the attack itself.