15 October 2026
Yemen’s civil war reignited in
early October, as Saudi Arabia brought
in Turkish and Pakistani military support to fight the
Houthi rebels, who have governed much of northern Yemen as a
de facto authority and waged a guerrilla war in the country
since
2004. Having spent more than a decade fighting
Saudi-led forces and enduring US,
British,
and Israeli
strikes, the Houthis have survived as a powerful
regional force with close ties to Iran. Their continued
ability to threaten Yemen’s neighbors and Red Sea shipping
was demonstrated again by retaliatory
strikes against Saudi infrastructure in recent
days.
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Although Iran is its main state ally, the
Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, are far from isolated. A
spokesperson for the US military’s Africa Command said in
September that the growing cooperation between the Houthis
and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Somali Islamist group Al-Shabaab
was a “highly concerning, escalatory threat to regional
stability,” according
to the Financial Times. Contact between the two ideologically
opposed groups—Houthis are Zaydi Shiites, and
Al-Shabaab has been strongly ideologically opposed to
Shiism—has been publicly evident since
at least 2024, with the Houthis supplying weapons and
technical training to Al-Shabaab, which, in return, has been
providing access
to piracy smuggling routes along the Somali coast.
In
recent years, similar ties have emerged between the Houthis
and other non-state groups in Somalia. The Islamic State in
Somalia (ISS) has
received Houthi weapons and drones while helping them
monitor ships in the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis, Al-Shabaab,
and ISS have also coordinated
with Somali pirates to transport goods and target
vessels in the Red Sea. “During the Gaza conflict, Ansar
Allah persuaded Al-Shabaab, ISS, and Somali pirates to
attack vessels and block their passage into the Red Sea in
solidarity with the Palestinians,” stated
a 2025 article in the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.
Since 2022, the Houthis have meanwhile
paused fighting with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP) amid the Yemeni civil war. According to the think
tank Jamestown, this collaboration is transactional and
focused on short-term arrangements: the Houthis can acquire
funds and smuggling routes, and Al Qaeda affiliates can
procure weapons and manufacturing capabilities.
Along
with the Houthis’ decades-long relationship
with the Lebanese-based force Hezbollah, which also has
the backing of Iran, the group has more partners than its
isolated diplomatic standing suggests.
Foreign state
support remains crucial to non-state groups. Much has been
made
of Iran’s “Axis
of Resistance,” but British support
for the Arab Revolt during World War I demonstrated how
Western powers could use local armed groups to shape Middle
Eastern affairs. The US and Soviet Union refined proxy
warfare during the Cold War, covertly financing, training,
and arming foreign militant movements, from the US-backed
Nicaraguan Contras to Soviet
support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC). This helped push militant groups into the drug
trade, with the superpowers willing to turn a blind eye when
criminal profits helped keep their allies
fighting.
Supporting non-state groups also provided
smaller states with means to strike at more powerful
adversaries. Between the 1970s and 1980s, Libya
supplied the Irish Republican Army with weapons,
explosives, and funding to attack British targets.
The
partial decline
in state support immediately after the Cold War forced
many non-state militant groups to become
self-reliant. Globalization, along with improved
communications and financial networks, brought
them into increasing contact with organized criminal
organizations, even as state support
rebounded.
Together, the “crime-terror
nexus” has built a global black market of smuggling
routes, safe houses, arms dealers, financiers, money
launderers, and shared technology. Distinguishing lines have
faded—militant groups like the Houthis have
turned to drug smuggling to fund their operations,
Yemeni authorities alleged, according to reporting by the
nonprofit Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Somali pirates have also become more
militarized due to their cooperation with the Houthis.
Alliances between non-state groups are mostly loose and
temporary partnerships, and even groups like Al Qaeda have
become decentralized, giving local affiliates greater
freedom to pursue their own interests.
From Al
Qaeda’s role in 9/11 to the Red Sea crisis involving the
Houthis and their allies, these non-state groups have shown
they can reshape global affairs independent of state
sponsors. The global illicit economy generated around $6
trillion in 2025, according to the International
Coalition Against Illicit Economies, giving criminal and
militant networks growing reach across international trade
and finance. Governments and businesses also have to contend
with these groups moving through the formal economy; in
2023, Gulf-based traders were
sanctioned for brokering charcoal exports from
Al-Shabaab-controlled territory.
As the global order
grows
more unstable due to ongoing wars, cooperation among
non-state groups makes it harder for governments to control
them and for the private sector to avoid
them.
Pursuing Instability
Africa has
experienced this phenomenon most severely. Since the 2023
outbreak of Sudan’s civil war, largely between the
Sudanese Armed Forces and rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF),
an estimated
150 groups have taken part in fighting. Competition for
territory and Red Sea access, alongside political influence
and control over the illicit gold
trade, has attracted tribal militias, Islamic groups,
foreign mercenaries, and criminal groups into the
conflict.
These actors have typically alternated
between the two main warring sides based on their own
financial and political interests. Cooperation between
traders, smugglers, and armed groups helps keep gold and
weapons moving across borders, with “[t]he growing
incentivization of armed actors toward revenue capture and
other criminal activities… deepening self-perpetuating
drivers of the conflict,” according
to the Africa Center.
Outside powers have
similarly sought to secure influence over Sudan, often
leaning on private forces and intermediaries. At various
times, for example, the RSF received support from Russian
private military companies (PMCs) backed by the UAE, UAE-linked
Colombian PMCs, and aircraft operated by a US contractor
supporting RSF logistics, according to a Reuters
investigation. But shifting local alliances have
frustrated foreign attempts to control the conflict, forcing
them to continually adjust their own relationships as the
balance of power changes.
Nonetheless, the UAE’s
position as the world’s second-largest
gold exporter, bolstered by Sudan’s huge gold
reserves, suggests that the benefits of the conflict may
outweigh the incentive to end it. As a Brookings article
states, “the UAE has been the major buyer of Sudan’s
gold, which many observers believe is the ‘lifeblood’ of
the civil war.”
A recent setback for non-state
groups in Africa came in Mali, where government forces,
backed by Russian government-controlled Africa Corps, retook
the city of Kidal in October 2026. The city was seized
in April—alongside
additional Malian territory—by Jama’at Nusrat
al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al Qaeda-affiliated
coalition, in
coordination with the secular Azawad Liberation Front
(FLA), a secular Tuareg separatist coalition. The FLA
controlled Kidal for years before Malian and Russian forces
retook it in 2023.
The October offensive in Mali was
welcomed in Niger and Burkina Faso. In the 2020s, the three
countries removed their elected leaders through military
coups. The military juntas that followed strengthened
cooperation with Russia and promised to defeat
insurgencies and increase domestic
ownership of resources. They have extracted
substantial payments from Western mining companies and
increased state control over the mining sector. But JNIM,
FLA, and other groups still
operate across significant territory, and the frequent
changes in control in Kidal show how unsettled the conflict
remains.
JNIM’s regional agenda is
meanwhile aided by drug and human trafficking networks,
with the group providing security and safe haven to
smugglers in exchange for a share of their income.
Additionally, despite the global rivalry between Al Qaeda
and the Islamic State, their Sahelian affiliates JNIM and
the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara initially
cooperated against Western and regional forces, before
turning to the conflict in the region.
These groups
have withstood or emerged despite the combined efforts of
the French-led counterterrorism mission Operation
Barkhane, UN
peacekeeping efforts, and actions by foreign
powers-backed PMCs since the early 2010s. They may also
outlast the latest Russia-backed effort to defeat them,
particularly if they continue to expand ties regionally and
globally.
Washington Weighs Its
Options
Washington is navigating this expanding web
of non-state actors with few effective options. In Sudan,
Washington has pressed the Sudanese Armed Forces “to sign
an unconditional ceasefire that would freeze the conflict
and allow unimpeded access for critical aid deliveries,”
according
to Al Jazeera, but has failed to secure an agreement.
Over the summer, the Trump administration meanwhile considered
strikes in Mali to target non-state actors, but their
spread across the Sahel would require a wider campaign. The
limited effectiveness of the 2025 US
strikes in Nigeria to attack camps of an armed group
affiliated with the Islamic State, Lakurawa, highlights
the difficulties in containing these groups through
airstrikes alone.
The Trump administration is seeking
to stabilize relations between the Democratic Republic of
the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, while formalizing
mineral supply chains and securing US access to minerals
under the Washington Accords. But armed groups like M23,
which control the mines, work
together with mineral smugglers to connect resources to
international buyers, complicating any efforts to build a
secure supply chain.
Foreign companies, meanwhile,
continue to act as eager buyers from these networks. A 2025
Global Witness investigation revealed that
Luxembourg-based commodities trader Traxys purchased
conflict coltan smuggled from DRC to Rwanda, while another
2026 report by the nonprofit found that smuggled coltan also
found its way “into global markets and popular
consumer products, despite due diligence
systems.”
For now, Washington may have to tolerate
these networks, as its focus
on reasserting dominance over the Americas is challenged
by a range of militant and criminal organizations operating
there. In 2025, the administration designated
dozens of criminal groups in Latin America as foreign
terrorist organizations, and has carried
out lethal strikes through Operation Southern Spear on
suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and
Pacific.
Yet, besides controversy surrounding the
operation’s legal basis and civilian deaths, the strikes
are “badly mismatched to the nature of its target. Drug
trafficking organizations are decentralized criminal
networks that absorb enforcement pressure by rerouting
shipments, replacing personnel, and splintering into smaller
groups, states
the John Quincy Adams Society.
Latin American
militant groups have long crossed paths with more general
criminal organizations. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) had longstanding
ties to drug traffickers, with a 2015 InSight Crime
report alleging that FARC
members trained fighters from Mexico’s Jalisco cartel.
Comandos de La Frontera (CDF), which includes dissident
factions of the now-defunct FARC, reportedly works with the
Ecuadorian gang Los Lobos, moving drugs from Colombia toward
the Ecuadorian coast while also dealing with weapons,
ammunition, and stolen gasoline, Diálogo
Américas reports.
Hezbollah-linked criminal
and financial networks have also
been reported across Latin America for decades. A
Colombian intelligence report mentioned by El
Heraldo in 2025 alleged links between Hezbollah,
Venezuela’s Cartel de LOS Soles, ELN, and FARC splinter
factions cooperating for drug trafficking and money
laundering activities, through a network allegedly based in
Dubai and operating via shell companies in Qatar.
In
2025, the Trump administration offered
up to $10 million for information on Hezbollah’s
financial institutions in the tri-border area of Argentina,
Brazil, and Paraguay, a longstanding hub for smuggling and
money laundering that operates with support from regional
criminal networks.
The enormous investments involved
in organized crime networks have created global economic
connections, with Chinese
underground banking networks helping Mexico’s Sinaloa
cartel move drug proceeds across borders, according to a
report by AI investigations company TRM Labs.
The
military threat has also evolved as militant groups and
organized crime networks overlap, with cartels now operating
“more like insurgent groups than purely criminal
organizations, employing tactics such as improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), drones, and the recruitment of
foreign mercenaries,” according
to the New Lines Institute for Strategy and
Policy.
State policies can also enable these
groups to become more lethal. Los Zetas emerged from a
Mexican special forces unit whose members received
US training, before becoming the armed wing of the Gulf
cartel. The Zetas eventually became a powerful independent
organization, helping it establish
links with Hezbollah-linked networks. Hezbollah has also
sought to exploit domestic criminal networks, with American
authorities documenting its efforts
to use local criminal groups to support operations
within the US.
A New Normal
These networks may
be based where government control is weak, but their global
reach makes them a challenge for all states. The Sinaloa
cartel has extended its drug trafficking routes into Africa,
crossing
jihadist-controlled territory, and has been working with
European criminal networks to distribute the substances to
European markets. Revenue from these activities can then
finance weapons, recruitment, and further operations for all
actors. While non-state groups often engage in violent
competition with one another, their ability to work together
has made even bitter rivals useful partners when interests
align.
Al Qaeda’s persistence despite decades of US
pressure demonstrates the resilience of these groups. Though
the Houthis’ future remains uncertain amid a widening
Saudi-led military campaign backed by Turkey and Pakistan and
talk of renewed US strikes, the coalition assembled
against them reflects how influential they have become,
partly through assistance from their non-state
partners.
The Taliban likewise returned to power after
near-defeat in 2021, becoming Afghanistan’s de facto
government despite limited international recognition. Its
successful insurgency benefitted from ties to drug
traffickers connected to regional and international criminal
networks, as documented by researcher
Hamid Azizi in his 2024 article.
While
Washington’s focus returns to its great
power competition amid war with Iran, the Russia-Ukraine
War, and competition with China, it cannot ignore the
underworld actors that are thriving through opportunistic
cooperation. Their supply chains have become so developed
that states rely on them to sustain their economies, with
the Kinahan cartel’s reported involvement in Russian
oil shipments helping keep Russia’s sanctioned economy
afloat.
The role of non-state groups in fragile
regions complicates traditional mediation efforts, as key
actors involved in unrest and conflict are often no longer
governments, “but profit-driven corporations and armed
factions operating outside the bounds of state control,”
states
the think tank Foreign Policy in Focus. As non-state groups
and commercial interests forge cross-border ties that bypass
governments, states are increasingly losing their role as
primary architects of the global order, as businesses work
with whichever actors can secure their
interests.
Author Bio: John P. Ruehl
is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington,
DC, and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent
Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign
affairs publications, and his book, Budget
Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy
Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December
2022. Follow him on X @john_ruehl.
This
article was produced by Economy
for All, a project of the Independent Media
Institute.
