Iran new transit point for Somali charcoal in illict trade

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10, (RTRS): Criminal networks are using Iran as a transit point for illicit Somali charcoal exports that earn Islamist militants al-Shebab millions of dollars annually in tax, UN sanctions monitors said in a report seen by Reuters.

In the unpublished annual report to the UN Security Council, the monitors add that domestic revenue generation by al Qaedaaffiliated al-Shebab “is more geographically diversified and systematic” than that of Somalia’s federal government.

The report says that since March the main destination for shipments – using fake country of origin certificates from Comoros, Ivory Coast and Ghana – has been ports in Iran, where the charcoal is packaged into white bags labelled “Product of Iran”.

“The bags were then reloaded onto smaller, Iran-flagged dhows (boats), and exported to Port Al Hamriya, Dubai, UAE, using certificates of origin falsely indicating the ‘country of manufacture’ of the charcoal as Iran,” the monitors wrote.

Iran became a transit point for the shipments – which breach a UN ban on Somali charcoal exports – after Oman tightened its customs procedures, said the report.

The monitors, who track compliance with UN sanctions on Somalia and Eritrea, said Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) did not “substantively engage” when the monitors raised concerns about the transhipment of Somali charcoal.

The report estimated the wholesale value of illicit Somali charcoal to be $150 million a year in the UAE, where it is widely used for cooking and smoking shisha water pipes, also known as hookah or nargile. They also estimated that about three million bags of charcoal were exported from Somalia in the past year.

“The charcoal trade continues to be a significant source of revenue for al-Shebab, generating at least $7.5 million from checkpoint taxation,” they wrote.

UAE Ambassador to the UN Lana Nusseibeh said she could not comment because the report had not yet been published.

“That being said, the UAE is fully aware of all Security Council resolutions and is in full compliance with the sanctions imposed,” she told Reuters. “We also reaffirm our continued cooperation with the Monitoring Group throughout its mandate.”

The Iranian mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The UN Security Council banned charcoal exports from Somalia in 2012 in a bid to cut off funds for al-Shebab, an al Qaeda-affiliated group trying to topple Somalia’s Western-backed central government and impose its own rule based on its strict interpretation of Islam’s sharia law.