In the first two months of 2018, almost 1,400 kilograms of narcotics were intercepted in the Indian Ocean, not far from the east African coast. According to the Drug Control and Enforcement Authority in Tanzania (DCEA) it is highly likely that these were in transit towards Kenya and Tanzania, where they would have been picked up by smugglers and trafficked north towards Europe. There is growing evidence that in the last five years east Africa has become an increasingly popular transit point in the illegal narcotics trade, particularly for heroin.
In April 2014, an Australian warship seized over a tonne of heroin from a dhow boat off the coast of Tanzania. With an estimated value of USD $240 million, the seizure’s monetary value was roughly equivalent to all the heroin seized off the east African coast between 1990 and 2009. This substantial increase in the volume of narcotics being transited through the region was supported by a 2015 report in The Economist.
The report suggested that in the preceding decade, heroin produced in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand and Myanmar was increasingly being shipped to ports on the east African coast, whereby it was smuggled north into Europe via what the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) calls the ‘Southern Route.’ This article explores the extent to which the increased flow of illegal narcotics in east Africa has helped finance Islamist extremist groups such as al Shabaab and Islamic State in Somalia (ISS).
Recent academic scholarship has championed the concept of a ‘crime-terror’ nexus, in which terrorist groups enable the trafficking of illicit goods by international criminal gangs. In Africa, ivory and charcoal are two of the most commonly trafficked illegal products. People are also a highly-valued commodity, with many being sold as sex workers or forced labourers (a CNN report in November 2016 published footage of a ‘slave auction’ taking place in Libya). Crucially, international criminal gangs and terrorist groups tend to flourish where state capacity is weakest. In areas like southern Somalia, they have shown themselves willing to conduct mutually-beneficial transactions, thereby facilitating each others’ operations.
Alongside ivory, charcoal and people, drugs are another trafficable commodity that offer an economic reward for terrorist groups. A 2018 study by Mariya Omelicheva and Lawrence Markowitz found that although there is considerable evidence that the narcotics trade is a source of revenue for terrorist groups, its substantive impact on finances is probably limited. Unreliable data also makes it difficult to assess the true extent of these interactions. But to limit the capacity of terrorist groups to inflict harm on people in East Africa and around the world, targeting these revenue streams is of pivotal importance.
Moreover, Omelicheva and Markowitz’s study explains how international trafficking gangs and terrorist groups can interact both directly and indirectly. Directly, terrorist groups often levy taxes from drug producers and traffickers in the areas they control. Though this usually contradicts their ideological narratives, taxation can be a lucrative form of income. The UNODC estimates the total value of the illegal narcotics trade to be around USD $320 billion per year (approximately 1 percent of global GDP). One-quarter of this figure is derived from traffickers and wholesalers in areas like east Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Moreover, terrorist groups and trafficking gangs sometimes opt to work collaboratively in areas where the former control territory. For example, al Shabaab in east Africa are reported to have facilitated the movement of drugs north across the Sahara by offering protection for traffickers in exchange for money. This money can then be used to buy weapons, train and equip recruits, and support propaganda campaigns.
Indirectly, the effects of drug trafficking on a country’s socio-economic environment can help create conditions which terrorist groups exploit for recruitment purposes. There is a strong correlation between the prevalence of drug trafficking and elevated levels of drug use at both a national and local levels, largely due to increased domestic demand for illegal drugs in these areas. In 2015, for example, al Jazeera estimated that 7 percent of Zanzibar’s population were addicted to heroin. A high proportion of drug addiction, combined with economic marginalization and a turbulent relationship between residents and law enforcement agencies, has fostered disaffection among many Zanzibaris for the Tanzanian government. Antipathy towards their host state is often the starting point in an individual’s radicalization, and the Tanzanian Defence Minister has previously expressed concern about young people from Zanzibar and other Tanzanian regions joining al Shabaab in Somalia. The same can be said of Kenyans living in the Kenya-Somali border regions.
But while the marriage of convenience between drug traffickers and terrorist groups in East Africa has been recognized by academic research and security analysts, estimating the true extent of this relationship is difficult. Robert Rotberg, an expert on state failure, estimates that approximately 40 percent of the cocaine that reaches Europe annually is trafficked via West Africa. Collecting data in areas held by terrorist or insurgent groups (such as al Shabaab) is notoriously tricky, therefore judging the impact of drugs-based income on terrorist activities involves some level of conjecture.
If close to 40 percent of the heroin sold in Europe is trafficked through East Africa, then al Shabaab and ISS will almost certainly benefit from this, using it to finance their operations in the region (such as a recent attack on an African Union military base near Mogadishu). Should naval forces continue to impound large quantities of illegal drugs before they reach the shores of East Africa, crucial revenue streams for extremist groups may be minimized while also reducing the supply for domestic drug users in the continent.
Some, such as Rotberg, suggest that legalizing drugs is the best way to starve terrorist groups of the income their trade can provide. The territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq shows that military confrontation is an important strategic tool. In the long term, however, a concerted approach to undermine core sources of terrorist financing may prove a more productive strategy in combatting violent extremism across the globe.
