Houthi delegation crossed gulf to coordinate against Israeli activity
The Wall Street Journal reported that a February U.S. missile strike killed Jibril “One-Armed” Yahya Ali, the central liaison between the Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, in what the Journal described as the opening salvo in the American campaign to disrupt a now-documented alliance between the two groups.
The strike, which killed the 38-year-old on Feb. 12 in the southern Yemeni town of al-Ghaydah, came about two weeks before the United States began its war with Iran. Jibril had worked with the Houthis since at least 2023 to coordinate weapons, training and fighter exchanges between two U.S.-designated terrorist organizations on opposite sides of a longstanding Sunni-Shia split, the Journal reported. Their shared hostility to the United States and Israel has, according to the Journal, made the two groups partners of convenience.
Two American sources familiar with the operation confirmed to the Journal that a U.S. missile killed Jibril. The missile struck a Toyota Corolla in which Jibril was riding on a beach road; rather than detonate, the warhead “sliced up the Corolla like a weaponized can opener,” the Journal reported. Jibril’s new wife, Budoor Murshid, had stepped outside to take a phone call, and a friend later spirited her away. U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said the killing was not a military operation. A Central Intelligence Agency spokesperson declined to say whether the spy service was responsible. Yemen’s ambassador to the United States declined an interview request; Houthi officials did not respond to written questions; and Budoor could not be reached.
Yemen’s Counter-Terrorism Service identified Jibril in an internal assessment viewed by the Journal as “one of the key figures in strengthening ties between the Houthis and al-Shabaab through the exchange of expertise and coordination, particularly in facilitating the transfer of weapons and military equipment.” Jibril had studied veterinary medicine in Yemen and ran a charity in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, where he owned a foreign-exchange outlet and an import-export firm, the Journal reported. He bore scars from gunshot wounds; the injuries earned him the nickname Gacaamey — roughly “one-armed” — despite his having both limbs.
Matt Bryden, a former United Nations official who monitors arms flows to Somalia, outlined Jibril’s life and death in a closed-door intelligence briefing in June attended by U.S. special-operations personnel and East African government officials. The Houthis had given Jibril a furnished apartment in Sana’a, the rebel-held Yemeni capital, and provided him with a Yemeni passport under an assumed name, according to a document viewed by the Journal.
In 2024, al-Shabaab dispatched a more senior envoy — Sheikh Ahmed Elmi Samatar — to work alongside Jibril in Yemen. Samatar presented the Houthis with a lengthy weapons wish list reviewed by the Journal that included shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, 107-millimeter Katyusha rockets, Dragunov sniper rifles, explosive attack drones, antitank missiles and U.S.-made night-vision gear. A U.S. military-intelligence official confirmed that al-Shabaab had sought advanced weaponry from the Houthis, in addition to rifles, machine guns and ammunition. Yemeni officials arrested Samatar in January 2025 and later released him in a prisoner exchange with the Houthis, and he returned to Somalia, leaving Jibril to press al-Shabaab’s interests in Yemen alone.
Weapons have moved across the Gulf of Aden in speedboats and fishing vessels, the Journal reported, citing a U.S. military-intelligence official and Yemeni intelligence documents it reviewed. Front companies in Yemen disguise the shipments as civilian goods and route them to the port of Mukalla and other harbors. They are transferred ashore on poorly monitored stretches of the northern Somali coast and transported overland to al-Shabaab combat units in southern Somalia, the Journal reported. In April 2025, the U.S. military destroyed two unflagged boats entering Somali waters from Yemen that U.S. Africa Command described as carrying advanced conventional weapons.
At least 100 al-Shabaab fighters have traveled to Yemen for Houthi training, the U.S. military-intelligence official told the Journal. The United Nations reported last year that al-Shabaab sends classes of about 30 militants at a time to study marksmanship, antiaircraft operations and techniques for building more lethal booby-trap bombs. In a June briefing, Bryden said a group of fighters spent three months this year in Sa’dah, Yemen, learning drone assembly and systems that allow operators to see drone-camera views as if they were in a cockpit. Houthi trainers have also traveled to Somalia to coach al-Shabaab on drone operations, the U.S. official said.
In June, a four-person Houthi delegation sailed from Yemen, crossed the gulf and came ashore in southern Somalia before trekking through the bush to al-Shabaab’s de facto capital in Jilib, according to a regional intelligence source. The Houthis sought to coordinate the disruption of Israeli activities in Berbera, a Red Sea port in the breakaway territory of Somaliland, the Journal reported, citing the briefing and the intelligence source. The Houthis promised al-Shabaab leaders more advanced weapons and training, according to a report from one of the source’s agents.
Somaliland, which declared independence from Somalia in 1991, hosts a port whose runway is long enough that NASA once rented it as an emergency landing strip for the space shuttle. Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer, told the Journal that the Houthis were “front of mind” when Israel recognized Somaliland in December. “Military deployment in Somaliland gives you a very strong position to confront the Houthis,” Milshtein said. In a televised speech earlier this month, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said the group would move against Israel in the territory: “We will move at any time to target any activity or presence of the Israeli enemy in Somaliland.”
The geography gives the partnership particular strategic weight, the Journal reported. Yemen and Somalia sit on opposite shores of the Gulf of Aden, through which 12 percent of the world’s seaborne oil passed before the Iran war. With the Strait of Hormuz all but closed by Iranian forces, the gulf could serve as an escape route for Middle East crude — except that the Houthis have begun attacking Saudi-linked oil tankers with missiles and drones in the Red Sea, the Journal reported.
“You have al-Shabaab, al Qaeda’s largest and most lucrative affiliate, gaining access to more sophisticated weapons and training,” Gen. Dagvin Anderson, commander of U.S. forces in Africa, told the Journal. “On the other side, the Houthis are extending their geographic reach, gaining a foothold that could further destabilize one of the world’s most critical economic chokepoints. This isn’t just a regional problem. It has global implications.”
Al-Shabaab generates at least $100 million a year from extortion of Somali businesses, motorists at roadside checkpoints and the port of Mogadishu, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment reviewed by the Journal. The group, which Anderson described as “al Qaeda’s largest and most lucrative affiliate,” also exploits artisanal gold mines along the Cal Madow Mountains in northern Somalia, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Abdullahi Sheikh, a former commander of Somali special forces, told the Journal. Among the Houthis’ aspirations, the briefing outlined, is securing al-Shabaab’s help in deploying radar to monitor ships in the waters they share.
U.S. Africa Command has carried out roughly 40 airstrikes against al-Shabaab targets in Somalia this year, compared with 41 for all of 2025, according to command figures. “I don’t know what their plans are, but there’s definitely something cooking,” Sheikh told the Journal. Awes Yusuf Ahmed, Somalia’s national security adviser, told the Journal that the relationship between the Houthis and al-Shabaab was traditionally “purely transactional” — “that doesn’t mean there aren’t some new factors added after the Iran-U.S.A. war which can be of strategic importance.” Abdulaahi Mohamed Ali, a former Somali intelligence chief, was more direct: “They hate the West, they hate Israel.”