Through drug smuggling.. Iranian networks fuel Houthi terrorism
English - Thursday 02 March 2023 الساعة 02:29 pm
Mukalla, NewsYemen, exclusive:
In late January, the US State Department's "Rewards for Justice" program offered a reward of up to $15 million for anyone who provides information on the financial networks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that feed the Houthi militia in Yemen.
At the time, the program, through its Twitter account, raised a question about the great financial ability of Iran and the Revolutionary Guards to buy all these weapons and ship them to Yemen to strengthen the Houthi militia and continue its terror against the Yemeni people and neighboring countries and threaten navigation and energy transmission lines in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
The question raised by the US State Department directed attention towards following up on the threads and networks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, through which it runs an economic empire to finance its militias that are waging proxy wars in several Arab countries, foremost of which is Yemen.
Perhaps the drug trade represents one of the most important financial resources that the Iranian Guard exploited to earn huge amounts of hard currency, with the aim of supporting and strengthening its arms in Yemen and the Arab region. The size and escalation of drug smuggling operations from Iran to Yemen confirms the fact that the Iranian Guard depends on the funds of this trade to buy weapons and strengthen the military capabilities of the Houthis.
Profitable business..Organized operations
With the Houthi militia taking control of power in Yemen, drug smuggling activity in Yemen escalated to unlimited levels. Indeed, these operations are being managed through local and international organized networks with the aim of flooding Yemen and neighboring countries with this dangerous scourge, with the help of the mafia networks affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the pro-Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah.
In 2016, the Houthi militia, under the supervision of officers from the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, began unifying the network of drug smugglers in Yemen, and worked to release many prominent dealers who were then in the prisons of Sana'a, Hajjah and Saada. The militias began to subjugate smugglers to their authority, and the Houthi militia trained new dealers and smugglers from its followers, in cooperation with the Revolutionary Guards mafia and Hezbollah, to cover its plans to double revenues by reviving the drug trade.
According to security information and official documents, the Yemeni security services and the Joint Maritime Forces seized about 78 drug shipments while smuggling them into Yemen between September 2016 and April 2022. According to the information, all of them were seized inside Yemeni territory except for 12 shipments seized off the coast of Yemen since July 2020, which were either Within arms shipments or independently carried on smuggling boats or ships.
During the past year, about 5 tons of drugs were seized and destroyed with the participation of the competent authorities. More than 6,000 Captagon pills, 330 cocaine, about 530 crystal pills, and about 116 kilograms of heroin were seized.
And the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, General Brad Cooper, said: The US Navy thwarted drug smuggling operations worth more than one billion dollars in two years, which is a very large amount, and if this is the price of the seized and confiscated drugs; The scale of these operations seems enormous, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and its militias receive huge revenues that are sufficient for them to continue their wars for a long time.
Organized smuggling
During the past years, the Combined Maritime Forces - the largest international maritime partnership in the world consisting of 38 member states and partners - managed to intercept and confiscate a number of ships carrying narcotics and weapons in the Gulf of Oman and in the Arabian Sea, which is a famous route used to smuggle Iranian support from Iran to the Houthi militia in Yemen.
On the 25th of last February, the US Navy operating in international waters in the Arabian Sea managed to confiscate a new shipment of drugs worth about $20 million, which was coming from Iran and on its way to the Yemeni coast. The ship had four sailors on board, and inside it (1350 kilograms) of hashish, 276 kilograms of methamphetamine and 23 kilograms of amphetamine pills when the ship was intercepted.
According to reports, the value of smuggling shipments that were intercepted by the Joint Maritime Forces amounts to more than one billion dollars, which is a large number that reveals the size of the continuous smuggling operations led by Iranian networks in order to support the Houthi militias in Yemen.
Security information in Yemen confirms that drugs come from Iran, Lebanon, South America, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Iranian mafia buys and supervises their smuggling, which delivers them through maritime smuggling lines to Yemen and hands them over to the Houthi militia, which smuggles them within Yemen and also towards neighboring countries.
The sources confirmed that the Houthi leaders are linked to the Iranian mafia and the Hezbollah mafia, which have been active for many years in the smuggling and trade of drugs and antiquities in various countries of the world.
A UN report reveals the truth
The experts' report stated that the team "monitored cases of smuggling of narcotics, psychotropic substances and other items such as precious metals and banknotes to ensure that the Houthi leaders included in the sanctions list, directly or indirectly involved in generating funds for possible use in the war effort."
The team received information about an increasing number of drug smuggling and trafficking incidents in Yemen, and the authorities' confiscation of some shipments, as well as reports proving the Houthis' involvement in multiple smuggling operations in: Alab, Al-Khadra, Al-Wadiah, Al-Tawwal and the port of Jizan, with regard to the land borders with Saudi Arabia alone. .
The report stated that there were several reports of regular interceptions of dhows carrying drug shipments, which were not investigated by any Member State due to the lack of a clear legal mandate, noting that there was a need for Member States to consider adopting appropriate legal instruments that would allow the investigation to be conducted in a proper manner. In cases of drug trafficking discovered by the Navy, Coast Guard forces in territorial waters so that the relevant authorities can bring the perpetrators to justice.
Shocking facts
A recent human rights report issued by the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms revealed that the drug trade in Yemen is closely linked to the Houthi militia, which has turned Yemen into a large market for the trade in these contrabands coming from Iran. He explained that the Iranian drug trade aims to finance its military and terrorist operations against the Yemeni people and neighboring countries.
According to the organization, it has obtained information from various sources, confirming that drug smuggling and trafficking is closely linked to the Houthi coup militia, and it clarified the involvement of leaders in the Houthi group in smuggling and trading in drugs of all kinds and facilitating the passage to them in large quantities. And she stressed that Iran is the main focus and the main drug smuggling quagmire for the terrorist Houthi militia.
The report added: "The Houthis rely heavily on drug smuggling through the huge revenues they reap from trafficking in them, and economic estimates indicated that the volume of money flowing into the coup plotters' coffers from drugs amounted to (6) billion dollars annually."
He pointed out that "officers in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard cooperated with drug dealers in Colombia to produce cartels and submersible boats to smuggle weapons, missile components and drugs to the Houthis."
He added, "There is a team operating in secret, headed by Muhammad al-Houthi, Abu Ali al-Hakim, the brother of the militia leader, Abdul Karim al-Houthi, Faris Manna, and other leaders."
The human rights network confirmed, "The involvement of prominent Houthi leaders in drug trafficking networks and their reliance on them as an important source of financing what they call the war effort, luring and attracting thousands of young people to join their ranks, and plunge them into their absurd battles."
She explained that she had obtained special information stating that there are (39) warehouses in Sana'a alone that Houthi merchants use to hide various types of drugs that are imported from Iran. Where they are smuggled through the ports of Hodeidah and Salif, and fishing ports in the north of Hodeidah, and these shipments belong to organized networks supervised by the Houthi leaders.
Yemen is a smuggling station
Many reports and security information revealed that drug shipments transported by Iranian ships to the Houthi militia are unloaded either on the western coasts of Yemen and through the ports of Hodeidah, which are under the control of the militias. Or through the Al-Mahra Governorate, which borders the Sultanate of Oman, and this confirmed the volume of smuggling operations that were seized in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Al-Mahra.
The militias were not satisfied with flooding Yemen with these drugs and contraband, but rather the goal was greater than that, which is to use Yemen as a station for smuggling drugs and exporting them to Saudi Arabia and other countries. The governorates of Saada, Al-Jawf, and Hajjah are considered major smuggling lines supervised by militias to deliver drugs to the Gulf states.
According to the report of the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, the Houthi militia, and Iran behind it, deliberately kept large areas on the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia as safe passages for drug smuggling to the Kingdom and the Gulf. The report indicated that the Yemeni borders, currently with regard to Saudi Arabia, are considered one of the most dangerous sources, if not the most dangerous, for financing this scourge, and the types of drugs are still flowing towards the Kingdom in an exponential manner. According to security sources, what is seized is negligible compared to the quantities that flow daily across the Yemeni-Saudi border.
