Page 40 - An Illusion of Complicity: Terrorism and the Illegal Ivory Trade in East Africa

Tom Maguire and Cathy Haenlein 27

goods through Al-Shabaab-controlled territory and ports.28 At the same time, a major source
of income from Al-Shabaab’s protection racketeering derives from international humanitarian
agencies and local NGOs, which are thought to have paid tens of thousands of dollars to reach
recipients, particularly during Somalia’s 2010–11 drought.29

Yet recent strategic and territorial setbacks may have impacted Al-Shabaab’s ability to generate
revenue through these mechanisms. The loss of Bakara Market in Mogadishu and its tax base
of 4,000 businesses in mid-2011 reportedly deprived the group of an estimated $30–60 million
per year.30 The losses of the ports of Kismaayo in September 2012 and Baraawe in October 2014
may have further impacted the group’s ability to generate funds through these means. However,
Al-Shabaab has seemingly remained able to tax goods passing through road checkpoints at
their approaches.31

Illicit Trade and Contraband

Alongside exploiting a range of legal activities within its territory, Al-Shabaab has benefited
from illicit forms of trade and commerce.32 It has done so both directly and indirectly, through
third-party networks. Here the focus remains on the taxation of charcoal – the ‘black gold’
to ivory’s alleged ‘white gold’. The charcoal produced from Somalia’s acacia forests is highly
profitable, retailing in the Arabian Peninsula at around $1.85/lb. Al-Shabaab has profited from
this trade through transport and export duties.33 In 2011, the UNMGSE estimated Al-Shabaab’s
taxation of an annual export of 9–11 million sacks at road and port checkpoints to be worth $25
million, of an total income of $70–100 million.34

Concern over the scale of these earnings prompted the UN Security Council to pass Resolution
2036, banning the export of charcoal from Somalia in 2012.35 However, rather than declining,
and despite AMISOM’s recapture of Kismaayo, charcoal smuggling has emerged as a lucrative
form of organised criminality. Despite initial hopes following Kismaayo’s recapture, UNMGSE

28. Authors’ interview with Western diplomat 2; Gettleman and Kulish, ‘Somalia Militants Mixing
Business and Terror’; UNMGSE Report, 13 October 2014, p. 11.

29. Vilkko, ‘Al-Shabaab’, p. 21; Ashley Jackson and Abdi Aynte, Talking to the Other Side: Humanitarian
Negotiations with Al-Shabaab in Somalia (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2013).

30. UNMGSE Report, 18 July 2011, p. 28; Afyare Abdi Elmi and Abdi Aynte, ‘Somalia: The Case for
Negotiating with Al-Shabaab’, Al-Jazeera Centre for Studies, 16 January 2012.

31. Authors’ interview with Western diplomat 5; authors’ interview with Western diplomat 2; authors’
interview with director of research institute; UNMGSE Report, 12 July 2013, pp. 39, 44.

32. UNMGSE Report, 13 July 2011, p. 27.
33. UNMGSE Report, 12 July 2013, p. 44; authors’ interview with director of research institute;

authors’ interview with UNODC officials 1 and 2, Nairobi, 24 April 2015. The trade has led to
substantial environmental degradation and desertification in south-central Somalia. See Muhyadin
Ahmed Roble, ‘Al-Shabaab Razes Somali Forests to Finance Jihad’, Jamestown Foundation Terrorism
Monitor (Vol. 8, No. 42, November 2010).
34. UNMGSE Report, 18 July 2012, p. 38.
35. UN News Centre, ‘Security Council Requests African Union to Increase Troop Level of Somalia
Mission to 17,700, Establish Expanded Presence in Keeping with Strategic Concept’, 22 February
2012, <https://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/sc10550.doc.htm>, accessed 23 August 2015.