Page 28 - An Illusion of Complicity: Terrorism and the Illegal Ivory Trade in East Africa

Tom Maguire and Cathy Haenlein 15

Slightly further south, the South Kitui National Reserve, bordering the Tsavo herd range, has
also received attention. In 2013, a convicted Somali terrorist made a number of statements
regarding his past operational use of the reserve. This led the MP for South Kitui, Rachael
Nyamai, to warn that the area could now be home to 5,000 undocumented Somalis. This, she
claimed, included Al-Shabaab ‘agents’ engaged in poaching and terrorism.13 When questioned
on these claims by the authors, one local source suggested it was plausible that there were
potential ‘cells’ of pro-Al-Shabaab fighters acting as poachers in the area.14 Similar support
came from the Kenya Police following the 2014 arrest of a Somali national in South Kitui with
twenty-three passports. Concern was expressed that the passports were destined ‘to facilitate
recruitment … or poaching’.15

Yet, other interviewees told the authors of their scepticism.16 Their doubts rest principally on
the results of elephant population surveys in the reserve. The most recent, from 2011, showed
South Kitui to be devoid of elephants.17 In this context, it is unlikely that Al-Shabaab could now
engage in poaching in South Kitui on the scale required to earn significant revenues.18

Reinforcing this picture, Al-Shabaab’s operational base in south-central Somalia is far removed
from the areas of Kenya in which most elephants have been poached in the last decade.19 These
include two core ecosystems: Samburu-Laikipia in the north and Tsavo in the southeast.20 The
group is based even further from the major sources of the ivory that transits East Africa: the
Selous-Niassa ecosystem on the Tanzania-Mozambique border and the Ruaha-Rungwa ecosystem
in central Tanzania. Research has shown that since 2006, a full 86–93 per cent of large seizures
(500 kg or more) of savannah elephant ivory originated from herds in Selous-Niassa alone.21 In

13. Nation Correspondent, ‘Kitui Reserves are Terrorist “Safe Havens”’, Daily Nation, 23
September 2013, <http://mobile.nation.co.ke/News/Kitui-reserves--are-terrorist-safe-
havens/-/1950946/2004608/-/format/xhtml/-/91ckgez/-/index.html>, accessed 23 August 2015.

14. Authors’ interview with senior conservation NGO manager, Nairobi, 29 January 2015.
15. Kitvai Mutua, ‘Man Found with 23 Passports, Held over Links with Al-Shabaab’, Daily Nation, 28

August 2014.
16. Authors’ interview with Western diplomat 1; authors’ interview with Western diplomat 2, 27

January 2015.
17. A 2011 survey detected no elephants at all in South Kitui. See Elephant Database, ‘Kenya:

Provisional African Elephant Population Estimates’, <http://www.elephantdatabase.org/preview_
report/2013_africa_final/Loxodonta_africana/2013/Africa/Eastern_Africa/Kenya>, accessed 23
August 2015.
18. This argument has also been made by Tom Milliken, TRAFFIC’s Regional Director Africa, and in
an internal investigation by the UNODC in 2015. See Tristan McConnell, ‘The Claim that Illegal
Ivory Is Funding a Major Terror Group in Africa May Not Be True’, Global Post, 14 November 2014;
confidential information provided to the authors by UNODC; authors’ interview with UNODC
officials 1 and 2, Nairobi, 24 April 2015; authors’ interview with wildlife-crime research consultant,
Dar es Salaam, 8 July 2015.
19. KWS, ‘Annual Report 2013’, <www.kws.go.ke/download/file/fid/1468>, accessed 23 August 2015;
Elephant Database, ‘Kenya: Provisional African Elephant Population Estimates’.
20. The elephant population of Samburu-Laikipia is estimated at around 7,000, and at 11,000 in Tsavo.
See Elephant Database, ‘Kenya: Provisional African Elephant Population Estimates’.
21. S K Wasser et al., ‘Genetic Assignment of Large Seizures of Elephant Ivory Reveals Africa’s Major
Poaching Hotspots’, Science (Vol. 349, No. 6243, July 2015), p. 85, Figure 4.