Poaching funds terror campaign
IS THE epidemic of elephant poaching in Kenya financing the activities of terrorist groups in East Africa? The Somali group al-Shabaab, which has claimed responsibility for the indiscriminate attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, is an extension of Somalia’s Union of Islamic Courts, which fought Ethiopian forces in 2006 that were attempting to prop up a weak interim government. Though it has since been driven out of the towns, it retains control in many rural areas where it imposes strict sharia law, stoning to death women accused of adultery and amputating thieves’ hands.
Kenya accused al-Shabaab of kidnapping tourists along its northern coastline and invaded Somalia in 2011. Its armed forces now operate in Somalia under the flag of the African Union. Al-Shabaab was forced out of the Somali capital Mogadishu and the vital port of Kismayo last year.
Al-Shabaab is being squeezed in the south of Somalia by the Kenyan army and by Ethiopian forces in the west. It is thought the group may have about 8,000 fighters, many among them Somalis who previously lived in western countries.
Al-Shabaab is known to be connected with al-Qaeda and its leader, Mukhtar Abu Zubair, has developed a hardline, international agenda. There are reports that the group has links with Boko Haram in Nigeria. During the siege of the Westgate Mall it openly said that, since Kenya waged war inside Somalia, it was entitled to wage war in Kenya.
Among its many supporters is the so-called White Widow, the British woman Samantha Lewthwaite, whose husband, Jermaine Lindsay, was one of the July 7 2005 suicide bombers who paralysed London’s underground rail system and killed 52 commuters.
It is thought she may have been involved in the Westgate Mall siege and a British woman is said to be among the terrorists killed.
Using a fake South African passport in the name of Natalie Faye Webb, Lewthwaite entered Kenya in February 2011.
She was later charged by Kenyan police with involvement in an attempt to bomb Mombasa tourist hotels. She eluded police after questioning and fled to Somalia.
Since then it has been reported that Lewthwaite was involved with the terror attack in June last year on a Mombasa beer garden (three dead, 25 injured) and an attempt to free another al-Shabaab member from a Kenyan prison in March.
With many of al-Shabaab’s sources of funding having been cut off, the Elephant Action League says that, after an 18-month investigation, the terror group’s trafficking of ivory through Kenya “could be supplying up to 40% of the funds needed to keep them in business”.
Chris Tackett, a New York social media editor, says al-Shabaab’s role in ivory trafficking is of immense concern. Since 2011, “Kenya has suffered from unsustainable increases in elephant poaching in all its major elephant habitats”.
Heavily armed Somali poaching gangs have been identified as the cause of the heightened poaching and Tackett says al-Shabaab’s role is not confined to this killing spree but extends to reaping huge profits from the mark-up in the ivory trade.
In effect, the increasing sophistication and technology employed by poachers has required a response that is increasingly looking like a counterinsurgency, with wildlife authorities being required to fight terrorism, insurgents and rebel armies. Two weeks ago former US secretary of state Hilary Clinton, speaking at a White House Forum to Counter Wildlife Trafficking, said the business had become more organised, more lucrative and more dangerous than ever.
“Poachers now use helicopters, automatic weapons, night vision goggles, satellite phones to murder park rangers,” she said.
The slaughter of elephants is a tragedy that contributed financially to the attack on the Westgate Mall in which 61 civilians and six soldiers died (reports suggest the death toll will rise). The blood spilled by elephants is helping to fuel a worrying African cross-continental terrorism phenomenon.
E-mail: david@gleason.co.za Twitter: @TheTorqueColumn