In plain sight: Houthi-backed arms dealers in Yemen sell guns, rifles, grenades on X

Iranian-backed arms dealers in Yemen have been selling Kalashnikovs, pistols and grenade launchers on X, formerly Twitter, in plain sight, the BBC and The Times reported on Thursday.

Operating out of Sana'a, the country's capital, as well as other Houthi-controlled regions, the BBC and The Times reported the dealers use X as a shopfront, posting photos of assault rifles that they wish to sell. Many of the images of sale weapons have the Houthi logo attached, which contains the words “God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, and victory to Islam.”

"It is inconceivable that they [the weapons dealers] are not operating on the Houthis’ behalf," the former British Ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Fitton-Brown, told the BBC. Fitton-Brown now works for the Counter Extremism Project.

"Purely private dealers who tried to profit from supplying, [for example] the government of Yemen, would be quickly shut down."

Dr. Elisabeth Kendall, an expert on Yemen at the University of Cambridge, said that, as the sellers were operating in Houthi territories, they would have the Houthi seal of approval.

"You can’t be doing business in those territories unless you have some kind of sanction from the Houthis," Kendall said.

The Times found that several of the accounts had a blue tick, which demarcates verified accounts from regular ones and gives them added reach. The Times and the BBC asked X for comment but did not receive a response. 

The advertisements, reportedly in Arabic, are mainly aimed at Yemeni customers. According to a Small Arms Survey in 2017, Yemen was the second most armed country after the US, where 54.8 out of every 100 Yemenis have a firearm and about 14,859,000 weapons in civilian hands.

The BBC found several such arms advertisements online, with weapons listed in Yemeni and Saudi currency.

Many featured wording to market the products as good quality.

"Premium craftsmanship and top-notch warranty," read one advertisement. "The Yemeni-modified AK is your best choice."

Advertisements on X

The Jerusalem Post found and identified several advertisements. One, posted July 27, read, "The Yemeni AK is an excellent weapon with amazing quality, effectiveness, and performance. From the Yemeni Military Industrialization. Our weapons are our pride. Made in Yemen."

Another that The Post found, selling out of Sana'a, with a phone number attached, shows a Turkish-issue Sar 9 with accessories attached.

One of the most commonly sold appeared to be the Kalashnikov AK-103, marketed as the "authentic Yemeni version," The Post found.

One site, named @DhiaaArms, states in its bio, "for buying and selling weapons and military supplies of all kinds Address: Sana'a, Dar Salam, Al-Hindwana Market, for communication: 775102660."

SARSILMAZ SAR 9 كلك سار 9 تركـي وكالـه مضمـون لون بيج ورصاصي ( بلاتينيوم ) ابو 17 طلقه عيار 9ملي كلك بضااعه من المعـدوووم جداد زيـرووو مع توابعـها ضياء المنتصر ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘ صنعاء / 775102660 pic.twitter.com/DA5VfRVkDv

— ضياء المنتصر ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘ (@DhiaaArms) August 18, 2024

Another offers sand-coloured Pakistani-produced Glock pistols for around $900 each.

The accounts mostly encourage buyers to connect via Telegram or the monetization platform Patreon to complete sales using cryptocurrency, The Times added.

In plain sight

While weapons sellers usually hide on the Dark Web, these traders are very searchable, with their pages accessible to millions. It took The Post under a minute to locate tens of sellers on X. 

As a result of the findings, UK-based NGO Tech Against Terrorism issued "an urgent plea" to tech platforms to remove Houthi-affiliated content from their sites.

Selling weapons on X is against the platform’s terms of service. Experts told The Times that the company’s failure to identify the Houthi-linked trade could mean Elon Musk’s company has broken US law.

Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, said, “We know that the Houthis are actively leveraging social media to raise money, purchase weapons, and facilitate the transfer of weapons. This is in addition to their fundraising and recruiting on the platform.”

Fitton-Brown told The Times, “X has a lamentable history of failing to police itself properly against extremists [and] this is a problem that has clearly got worse since Twitter became X. The very fact that they sell blue tick marks to terrorist groups like the Houthis and the Taliban is obviously a breach of sanctions and a breach of the law.”

Jessica Davis, an expert on terrorist financing and president of Insight Threat Intelligence, said, “If the transactions are happening through X and its payment capabilities, then it’s likely in breach of sanctions against the Houthis. Any payment processors involved would also likely have liability here."

“I think one of the big questions here is: is X and any payment processor involved actually doing due diligence to make sure its platform and services isn’t used for terrorist financing and facilitation?"

Other terrorist groups

Dr Kendall also said that the weapons may end up in the hands of other terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda.

A UN Security Council report in November 2023 stated that Somali terrorists from al-Shabaab had used weapons from Yemen in an attempted assassination.

A UN Office on Drugs and Crime report in 2023 titled "Illicit Weapons Trafficking" stated that "independent researchers have established that the arms dealers in Yemen communicate via mobile phone and commonly use the hawala remittances to make and receive international payments."

Hawala - meaning 'transfer' in Arabic - is a system whereby funds are transferred from one location to another through service providers—known as hawaladars— according to the International Monetary Fund.

The Houthis have been designated a terrorist group by many countries, including Israel and the United States, given their continued attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea, allegedly in support of Palestinians. Iran has been accused of supplying the group with weapons.