The army denies splitting the profits of a $400m smuggling industry with al-Qaeda’s east African branch
IN THE more than four years that Kenyan soldiers have been in Somalia to fight al-Shabab, al-Qaeda’s east African branch, terrorist attacks back home have escalated. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Kenya, where jihadists continue to pose a potent threat. Defeating insurgencies is no easy task for sophisticated military alliances such as NATO, let alone less well-resourced ones. Even so, Kenya’s army has made slow progress, not least in cutting off al-Shabab’s sources of funding. And one reason for this, says a new report, is that the Kenyan military has an economic interest in the same smuggling networks that also channel funding to al-Shabab.
Somalia has little going for it economically so its jihadists have turned to unlikely ways of raising cash. One is by taxing the production and export of charcoal to the Gulf, where it is used in shisha pipes. A less well-known source of revenue comes from a sugar-smuggling racket worth as much as $400 million a year.
Much of this two-way trade—charcoal going out and sugar coming in—takes place through Kismayo’s sickle-shaped harbour in southern Somalia. The port was captured from al-Shabab in 2012 by Kenyan troops operating under the African Union Mission in Somalia. Yet the peacekeepers’ control of the port has done little to stem the illicit flows. Several United Nations reports have alleged that charcoal exports through the port have been facilitated by Kenyan army. The Kenyan government has denied these claims.
Now a new report by a non-profit group, the Nairobi-based Journalists For Justice (JFJ), has alleged that the Kenyan army, al-Shabab and the southern Somali regional Jubaland administration share the spoils of sugar smuggling from Kismayo into Kenya. This allegation has been denied by the Kenyan government and army.
JFJ alleges that the Kenyan army levies taxes at Kismayo port, the Dhobley-Liboi border crossing and the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, a clearing house for smuggled goods. Ben Rawlence, the report’s author, reckons this adds up to about $30m a year in “taxes” on illicit shipments. Based on interviews with sugar traders, port workers, truck drivers, Kenyan military officers, foreign diplomats and intelligence officials he reckons that about 150,000 tonnes of illegal sugar enter Kenya every year. The regional authorities in Jubaland take a share, as does al-Shabab, which demands money from drivers to allow their trucks through the territory it controls.
The incentive for smuggling comes from a complicated system of tariffs and import controls that are intended to protect an uncompetitive local industry. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation reckoned in a 2013 report that Kenya’s retail price for sugar would fall by about a quarter if the trade were to be liberalised.
Convoys loaded with illegal sugar rumble out of Kismayo at an impressive rate: around 230 trucks a week each carry 14 tonnes, the JFJ reckons. In October the UN released a report noting that Kenya’s tariffs on sugar imports encourage “a vibrant illicit trade in sugar and other basic foodstuffs imported duty-free through the port of Kismayo.” Investigators for the UN reckoned al-Shabab levied a “tax” of about $1,000 on each sugar truck going south.
The Kenyan army is already under fire for appearing to have lost interest in pursuing al-Shabab. During last year’s “Operation Eagle”—an African Union offensive to oust militants from towns south of the capital, Mogadishu—commanders of the Ugandan contingent grumbled at the Kenyans’ unwillingness to pitch in, saying they preferred to stay in their garrisons and launch occasional air strikes rather than take the fight to al-Shabab. The latest allegations will do nothing to mute the critics.
