Making terrorism pay a handsome dividend

 

It seems that Houthi terrorists, backed by Iran, are making massive profits out of their blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb and the sea areas surrounding it.

Intelligence cited by the Seahawk report confirms that the Houthis, in partnership with al-Shabaab and Somali pirates, have revitalised piracy operations along critical Red Sea and Indian Ocean shipping lanes.

“This strategic alliance allows the Houthis to exert control over shipping routes while financing their operations through illicit piracy proceeds and arms smuggling,” states the report.

“The expanding Houthi presence in Somalia signals a strategic escalation that poses immediate and long-term threats to regional stability and security,” warns the Seahawk report. “The alignment of Houthi, al-Shabaab, and Daesh interests underpins a coordinated front that is poised to disrupt maritime commerce, strengthen local militant capabilities and challenge international forces.”

The UN Panel’s investigation, meanwhile, revealed that the Houthis are using various networks of individuals and entities operating from multiple jurisdictions, including Djibouti, Iran, Iraq, Türkiye and Yemen, to finance their activities.

They employ various banks, shell companies, exchange companies, shipping companies and financial facilitators. The panel interviewed the officials of a few exchange and shipping companies and banks, who, requesting anonymity, confirmed the details of these operations.

The Houthi command even established a special committee to augment its military spending.

The panel’s sources conveyed that the Houthis allegedly collect illegal fees from “a few shipping agencies to allow their ships to sail through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden without being attacked”.

Sources further informed the panel that these shipping agencies coordinate with a company affiliated with a top-ranking Houthi leader and that the fees are deposited in various accounts in multiple jurisdictions through the hawala network and through adjustments involving trade-based money-laundering.

While the UN Panel has not been able to independently verify this information, the sources estimate the Houthis’ earnings from these illegal safe-transit fees to be about $180m per month.

There's more at the link.

As always, follow the money.  The Houthi leaders aren't ideologically pure, theologically motivated nationalists at all - they're just grifters, extortionists, chiselers par excellence, as many people have been in that part of the world for untold centuries.  Just as Hamas and Hezbollah leaders have made literally billions of dollars for themselves out of the suffering of their people, so the Houthi leaders are following their example.  Iran, meanwhile, is profiting not only from its cut of all that money, but also from the disruption caused to its opponents by its satellite allies in Yemen, Gaza and Lebanon.

I think we need to ask Elon Musk to find a decently inhospitable planet somewhere, and export the entire extremist population of that region to it, using suitably sized rockets.  Let them try to extort rocks from each other there, and leave the rest of us in peace!

Peter