Terrorist organizations exploit criminal elements to carry out plans: Africa model

The Al-Azhar Observatory for Combating Extremism continues its series of articles dealing with the overlap between crime and terrorism, which has caused a crisis in the world for many reasons, including terrorist operations committed in the name of religion and the reactions that accompany them on the other side, which escalate tensions. The first article in this series exposed the continent of Asia and some examples of so-called terrorist “crocodile cells” of criminal elements, and now we move to address this phenomenon in the continent of Africa.

First of all, the ideology does not stop at certain borders, and therefore the idea of “crocodile cells” emerged in al-Qaeda before its official disclosure, when the Somali Al-Shabaab movement targeted a vital compound in Kenya in an attack that was described as a qualitative leap in the tactics of the terrorist movement.

This qualitative shift was discussed in a report by Matt Bryden and Premdeep Bahra published in July 2019 under the title “East Africa's Terrorist Triple Helix: The Dusit Hotel Attack and the Historical Evolution of the Jihadi Threat”.

It is worth noting that the terrorist attack on January 15, 2019 was carried out by Al-Shabaab targeted an office complex in the Westlands neighborhood of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, which includes the Dusit Hotel. During the night siege, 21 people were killed and 28 others were injured, in an attack described as a qualitative development in the terrorist movement’s attacks despite it having struck Kenya several times in the past.

This qualitative development in the tactics of the movement is due to its reliance on Kenyan elements of non-Somali origin to carry out the attack, including a suicide bomber from the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa. It had previously relied mainly on Somalis to carry out its terrorist operations inside and outside Somalia before this attack.

According to the report, what distinguished the Dusit attack from other terrorist attacks was that it was the movement's first successful suicide operation that was primarily planned, led and executed by Kenyans, indicating that the terrorist threat in East Africa and the Horn of Africa had entered a new, more dangerous phase.

It can be said that East Africa and the Horn of Africa are important incubators for extremist organizations, as they provide terrorist operatives, while al-Qaeda and ISIS provide the ideological cover and global attractiveness, and Al-Shabaab seeks to expand internationally.

This ambition was translated by the Nairobi attack, which included the first suicide attack carried out by someone of Kenyan origin from Al-Shabaab against his homeland. The internal conditions in Somalia formed a fertile environment for Al-Shabaab to work without restrictions for many years under the banner of al-Qaeda, which allowed it to globalize its operations, making it easier for the terrorist movement to attract new elements from the surrounding countries and to establish new “crocodile cells” to carry out more deadly attacks, as mentioned by the British newspaper Sunday Times. Therefore, these factors gathered together and formed what is called the “terrorist triad”, the danger of which was evident in the Nairobi attack in early 2019.

However, this ambition to expand internationally is not born of the moment. Rather, the movement worked hard to achieve it, with the al-Qaeda’s encouragement. This emerged in a video clip recorded shortly before one of the suicide bombers of the Kampala attack left for Somalia. The terrorist attack that targeted two sites in Kampala, Uganda in July 2010 was the first major terrorist attack launched by the movement outside Somalia. The suicide bomber also warned of the movement’s plans to expand its fight to other countries in East Africa.

A United Nations monitoring team observed at the time that the planning and organization of the Kampala attacks indicated that Al-Shabaab not only had the will and capacity to carry out such attacks, but that it was leading to the emergence of a new generation of fighters from East Africa, and these crocodile cells represent a new security challenge to the region and the wider international community.

Although the years following the Ugandan bombings witnessed attacks carried out only by Somalis, indicating that the movement's ability to push elements from East African countries to carry out terrorist attacks in their countries, these fighters from East African countries gained skills and experience inside Somaliland, which they could ultimately then employ in their own countries and elsewhere in the region and around the world.

This had already culminated in 2016, when enough members of the Kenyan Immigration movement received training from Al-Shabaab in Somalia, which enabled its members to launch attacks inside Kenya in a more independent and effective manner. These well-trained elements gathered in May 2016 at a safe house in Komarock, Nairobi, to discuss plans for important operations against their homeland. Among the attendees were three of those who participated in the Dusit attack in early 2019. Mahir Riziki, one of the three and the only suicide bomber in the attack, had returned after the meeting to Somalia to prepare for his role in the operation.

After these meetings, the movement attempted to carry out several terrorist operations inside Kenya, but the police managed to abort them, including intercepting a four-wheel drive vehicle that had been packed with nearly 100 kilograms of explosives near Isiolo in February 2018.

According to the report “East Africa's Terrorist Triple Helix” report, despite these attacks being thwarted in 2018, the Kenyan security services had to pay attention to Al-Shabaab’s ability to penetrate the Kenyan interior through local cells that were able to develop and prepare for such attacks. After 10 months of the Kenyan police thwarting those attacks in 2018, elements of the terrorist movement were able to carry out the attack on the compound that houses the Dusit Hotel in Nairobi. After the police managed to eliminate the terrorists and save more than 700 people, many of the terrorists were identified.

Earlier, a study funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2018 estimated that, since 2013, about 200 young men have been recruited into Al-Shabaab from Isiolo, where the movement's recruits are active in recruiting everyone in the poor neighborhoods, regardless of race.

The Dusit attacker Mahir Riziki had a history of violence and extremism and had fled to Somalia after an arrest warrant was issued against him. Only two days before the Dusit attack, Riziki returned to Kenya from Somalia, traveling by bus to Nairobi to meet with another attacker, Farouk, to receive special instructions for his role in the terrorist operation.

On the basis of Riziki's movements, it is clear to everyone the importance of observing personalities with a history of extremism and violence and tracking their movements well, especially with the repetition of many terrorist operations by people with extremist criminal records. It also shows the importance of border control, especially if there is an active group such as Al-Shabaab, which had previously threatened to target Kenya and other countries in the region.

By looking at the terrorist operations carried out by the Somali terrorist movement, we are assured of its ability to launch more in the future by relying on its crocodile cells whose elements do not carry Somali nationality, but will be from East African countries in order to avoid disrupting their mission or being exposed by security services. They also depend on a network of criminals who work in the shadows and meet the needs of terrorist elements by providing forged identity documents to facilitate their movements, as well as weapons and explosives to carry out their terrorist operations away from the eyes of security.

This was pointed out by the report issued by the United Nations monitoring team in 2018, which revealed the existence of a secondary network of non-Somali mediators and facilitators who are ideologically non-extremists, but who assisted the Kenyan Al-Shabaab elements logistically by providing false identity documents and forged insurance certificates. Consequently, what we referred to in the introduction confirms that there are intertwining and highly complex links between crime and terrorism, as these logistical facilities enabled the terrorist elements to move about easily without revealing their true identity in Kenya.

These criminal elements are not accounted for by terrorist organizations and therefore do not cause concern to the security services in the field of combating terrorism, so they can move in parallel with the movements of those terrorist organizations to complete a given scheme, which is Al-Shabaab and other terrorist organizations have realized and are therefore working to extend bridges of cooperation with related elements in the world of crime, such as theft, drug trafficking and forgery.

These interrelationships between crime and terrorism have given rise to the phenomenon of “hybrid terrorism” in Africa, where many tribal, religious and criminal dimensions overlap.

This combination of terrorist organizations and criminal elements prompted the International Crisis Group to call this phenomenon “religious gangs” as a result of the emergence of groups that combine fighting in the name of religion with organized crime within transnational networks, where a parallel economy is being formed known as the “fraud economy”.

Terrorist organizations were able to strengthen their network of relations with elements involved in human trafficking, drugs and arms smuggling, with the aim of strengthening its financial resources and equipping itself with weapons. Helping the terrorist organization to consolidate this interlocking network was its alliances with some of the tribes scattered in the desert regions, such as the Nigerian Boko Haram movement.

According to statistics issued by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) in early 2016, ISIS received huge sums of money in exchange for facilitating migration operations from sub-Saharan Africa ​​to Europe. The terrorist organization also succeeded in diverting many illegal immigrants from migrating to Europe in order to join the ranks of its fighters.

All of the above proves the seriousness of these interrelationships between crime and terrorism, as well as terrorist organizations’ exploitation to support their ranks with new elements, money and weapons.