Yemen calls on international community to confront 'terrorist' axis crossing the Red Sea
Aden, September 30 (KUNA) -- Yemen’s Foreign Minister Afrah al-Zoubi called on the international community on Wednesday to treat the Houthi militia-led axis as a terrorist network that extends as a single entity across the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa. In a statement to the state-run Yemeni News Agency (Saba), al-Zoubi stressed the need to bolster support for the Yemeni government to confront the security threats posed by this axis to regional stability and international navigation.
She noted that reports by the United Nations Panel of Experts on Yemen have documented cooperation between the Houthi militia and Somalia’s al-Shabaab that goes beyond arms smuggling to include the transfer of expertise, operational coordination, and the deployment of militia engineers to Somalia to train on modifying drones and to train al-Shabaab fighters in Houthi camps.
Al-Zoubi explained that the cooperation between the Houthi militia and al-Shabaab represents a strategy to expand regional influence, and that threats to the Bab al-Mandab strait provide the militia with a means of extortion, imposing increasing costs on global trade through higher insurance and shipping expenses by diverting cargo routes around the Cape of Good Hope.
She said there are four priorities for international action: recognizing the interconnectedness of this network within legal frameworks and sanctions lists to enable the prosecution of intermediaries, facilitators, and financiers; enhancing intelligence sharing on its activities in Yemen and the Horn of Africa; supporting government forces in confronting the Houthi militia domestically; and ending the practice of treating the Yemeni government and an armed terrorist militia on an equal footing.
She added that confronting this threat requires capabilities beyond what Yemen can muster alone, particularly in areas such as continuous monitoring, tracking of financiers, shipping agents, and cross-border networks, emphasizing that what has occurred at Bab al-Mandab is not solely a Yemeni matter, given the waterway’s significance for international security and trade. (End) S.N.S./A.M.S.
