Illicit trafficking in East Africa: Fragile governments fuel rise in terrorism and maritime crime

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Friday July 19, 2024
By LUCAS MARTÍN

East African countries are among the twenty most affected by terrorist threats as a result of their fragile governments and state structures

A member of the Somali security forces stands guard on the beach on the coast of Qaw in Puntland, northeastern Somalia - Mohamed ABDIWAHAB / AFP

There are situations whose persistence over time has led us to normalise them and even forget them, without considering the possible consequences of these realities and our passive attitude towards them.

A glaring example of this is what is happening in the so-called "Horn of Africa", a region that had its moment in the spotlight a few years ago, but which has now, due to conflicts closer to home and the entrenchment of the situation, lost all our interest.

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East African countries are among the twenty most affected by terrorist threats as a result of fragile governments and state structures, the prevalence of armed conflict, underdevelopment and the growth of extremism, all of which are intertwined and feed on each other in an endless vicious circle. Terrorist networks have extensively exploited the maritime domain of the Indian Ocean. Transnational maritime crime, piracy, human trafficking, smuggling of illicit goods and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing reveal the different facets of criminal flows that affect the region's economy and whose deterioration in turn fuels the growth of such activities. Terrorist groups on the East African coast, such as Al-Shabaab in Puntland, Somalia, and the Islamic State in Mozambique, are increasingly visible, especially at sea due to poor maritime law enforcement in East Africa.

The East African coastline stretches 4,600 kilometres from southern Somalia to the South African coast of Natal. The Horn of Africa and the East African coast border the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. More than 8,300 km of the Horn and East Africa's continental coastline stretches from Sudan to Tanzania. Somalia has the longest national coastline in Africa, 3,025 km. This vast expanse makes the region diverse and essential to global trade and maritime communications. The vastness of the coastline makes it difficult for individual countries to govern alone, necessitating regional intervention and engagement, which given the economic and political situation of the countries in the region is little more than a pipe dream.

The sea lanes of communication (SLCs) along the Indian Ocean are the third largest in the world, and thirty percent of the world's crude oil passes through the SLCs of the western Indian Ocean.

The importance of sub-Saharan maritime traffic is exploited by criminal groups to carry out illicit activities by exploiting regional corruption loopholes, thus threatening various forms of maritime crime, including terrorism, in the coastal areas of this region.

Traditionally, the coasts of the East African region have been considered potentially vulnerable to all the illegal activities listed above, and this vulnerability was exacerbated during what was until recently referred to as "the era of the global war on terror". Protecting maritime coasts is critical for governments such as Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, as they are considered permeable to terrorist groups as well as traffickers and smugglers.

The difficulties in establishing links between crime and terrorism in the region, and more specifically along its coasts, have been aggravated by two facts that we are also witnessing in other regions such as the Sahel, namely the problem of distinguishing criminal activities from terrorist activities and their social roots in local communities.

In the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, Somali-linked piracy networks have threatened ships and crew members, affecting global trade. Piracy-related incidents have decreased considerably thanks to multinational anti-piracy coalitions such as Combined Task Force 150.

However, recent incidents such as the failed attempt by a pirate group to seize the Israeli-linked oil tanker Central Park on 26 November 2023 off the coast of Aden continue to highlight the fragility of the area. In the Gulf of Aden region, there have been reports of illegal trafficking of terrorist arms and the activity of organised criminal groups mainly from Somalia, but also from the rest of the Horn of Africa and the East African region, increasing the potential threat to the civilian population and fuelling illicit activities affecting vulnerable young people in the region, while undermining the effectiveness of the partial arms embargo decreed by the UN Security Council.

The inherent difficulties of obtaining accurate and useful information in the region mean that this task relies mainly on technical means (IMINT or SIGINT), as HUMINT operations, which in this case and due to the idiosyncrasies of the area and the threat would be the most productive, have a very high level of complexity due to the difficulty of finding reliable sources and the almost total impossibility of working with operators directly on the ground.

The result is that only vague or scant information is available on how terrorists use their relative control of the maritime domain and the involvement of the local community in assisting terrorist networks through logistical support or hosting suspected terrorist members. These insecure maritime border regions have ramifications as terrorist activities disrupt socio-political and economic development along the coasts. The immediate and direct effect of all these dynamics is that young people, who due to the virtual absence of economic activity beyond those related to fishing, lacking opportunities, are a prime recruiting ground for criminal or terrorist networks.

But the problem goes further, as criminal activities themselves contribute to slowing down economic activities related to the sea, or the "blue economy" as it is sometimes called. The example is Mozambique, where there are already clear indications that maritime security threats from IS-Mozambique are having a negative impact on these economic activities. Similarly, naval security threats along the coasts of Somalia and Kenya may affect the blue economies of the respective countries.

To make matters worse, much illegal activity does not or has not enjoyed the same international attention as piracy, perhaps because it does not pose as much of a direct threat to property (ships), economic activities (fishing), or Western citizens (crews) as piracy. One of the most important and growing are the criminal flows between the African continent and the Arabian Peninsula through the Gulf of Aden, which, despite what may seem to be the case, are not new, and where we find the world's busiest smuggling routes for people, arms and illegal drugs connecting northern Somalia, Yemen and other regions of East Africa.

Weak, if not non-existent, governance structures in the countries along the East African coast, where geography does not help, have made them highly vulnerable to the activity of drug trafficking networks. The study by S. Haysom, P. Gastrow and M. Shaw "The Heroine Coast: A Political Economy along the Eastern African Seaboard" refers to the fact that small ports and islands are being used as landing points for heroin traffickers who use the "dhow", traditional small boats of the area, to traffic drugs from the Makran coast to the African coast.

These movements are largely conditioned by the monsoons, and are masked by the usual activities of the ancient fishing villages and the licit trade using these same traditional boats from Asia. Moreover, the handicap of their small size and mode of navigation is also their greatest advantage, making them almost undetectable and impossible to control.

Drug trafficking along the coasts of the East African region from Kismayo to Cape Town, especially heroin, has increased dramatically and has taken root in local communities as their only means of livelihood. These networks are often linked to corrupt political elites who take advantage of weak state institutions, something we have unfortunately seen in other parts of the African continent. The study makes explicit the system employed in East African heroin trafficking routes. First, wooden dhows, albeit larger and motorised, are sent from Africa to be loaded with consignments of between one hundred and one thousand kilograms on the Makran coast of southern Pakistan. The dhows return and anchor off the African coast in international waters, where flotillas of small boats pick up the heroin and transport it to various beaches, coves or islands, or unload it at small commercial ports. The investigation reveals that dozens of such sites are used to land shipments along the entire east coast, from north of Kismayo (Somalia) to Angoche (Mozambique). It should be added that it does not take an expert to imagine where this heroin is produced and who is profiting from its production and sale. We are repeating past scenarios.

Obviously, terrorist groups in the region are no strangers to this activity. And just as on the West African coast, illicit trafficking, in this case heroin trafficking, is not only part of the international network of organised crime, but is also a fundamental element in financing the activity of terrorist groups.

In light of the facts, and with the certainty that the same pattern is repeated in different scenarios, it is increasingly urgent to seek a holistic vision that treats the threats of drug trafficking, organised crime and terrorism as a whole, as what were once independent networks have evolved and the communicating vessels are no longer the exception, but the norm; a vision that also cannot forget the actions of those communities that end up being part of these networks as victims of their lack of hope and development. Only by denying the soil in which these seed networks are planted can we begin to glimpse success.

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