Sugar-smug­glers whose ac­tiv­i­ties have been linked to Al-Shabaab are still in busi­ness, three weeks af­ter one of the ter­ror group’s dead­liest at­tacks in Kenya that killed 148 peo­ple.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions by the Sat­ur­day Na­tion re­veal that none of the sugar barons were named in the list of 86 com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als whose ac­counts were frozen on al­le­ga­tions of sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism.
Re­ports by the United Na­tions and a US gov­ern­ment agency say there are about 70 busi­ness­men — lo­cated in the So­mali port city of Kismayu and in Garissa and Nairobi in Kenya — who are bro­kers in the sugar and char­coal trade.
Garissa was the scene of the lat­est at­tack, on April 2, by Al-Shabaab in which 142 uni­ver­sity stu­dents and six se­cu­rity of­fi­cers were killed. Re­ports say the busi­nesses earn the mil­i­tant group mil­lions of dol­lars which they use in their ter­ror cam­paign.

According to a report prepared jointly by the United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) and Interpol, Al-Shabaab’s primary source of income appears to be from informal taxation at roadblocks.

“In one road­block case, they have been able to make up to $8 mil­lion (Sh696 mil­lion) to $18 mil­lion (Sh1.5 bil­lion) per year from char­coal traf­fic in So­ma­li­a’s Bad­hadhe Dis­trict,” says the Unep/​In­ter­pol re­port, adding that trad­ing in char­coal and tax­ing the ports have gen­er­ated an es­ti­mated an­nual to­tal of $38 mil­lion to $56 mil­lion for Al-Shabaab.

Earn­ings from the trade are vi­tal in sus­tain­ing the ter­ror­ists’ ca­pac­ity to carry out at­tacks in So­ma­lia and Kenya.

Kismayu has been con­trolled by Kenya De­fence Forces(KDF) since they cap­tured it from Al-Shabaab in Sep­tem­ber 2012, cut­ting off the group’s fi­nances but the mil­i­tants have since moved into the hin­ter­land where they rake in money at road­blocks.

SE­NIOR POLITI­CIAN

Al­though the re­ports do not name in­di­vid­u­als, the Sat­ur­day Na­tion has es­tab­lished that one of the biggest sugar smug­glers based in Garissa is re­lated to a se­nior politi­cian.

He has been op­er­at­ing a lu­cra­tive smug­gling ring be­tween the port of Kismayu and Garissa, that brings in mil­lions of dol­lars a year.

The sugar trade has boomed since KDF went into So­ma­lia in late 2011 and has over­taken char­coal as south­ern So­ma­li­a’s lead­ing cross-bor­der trade com­mod­ity.

The smug­gler has a fleet of trucks that op­er­ate be­tween Garissa and Kismayu. On their way to Kismayu they carry Kenyan food and con­sumer goods and on their way back, they are loaded with hun­dreds of bags of con­tra­band sugar im­ported from Brazil.

“There are five check­points be­tween Kismayu and Garissa – three by Al-Shabaab and two by the KDF. The sugar trucks are waved through all the check­points with­out any checks. There is a tacit agree­ment be­tween the owner and these en­ti­ties and we are sure hefty sums of money change hand in the form of il­le­gal ‘tax­es’,” said the source.

The Kenya Rev­enue Au­thor­ity (KRA) of­fice at the Li­boi bor­der cross­ing is also im­pli­cated in the scam, through “cre­ative in­voic­ing” or by sim­ply not de­clar­ing.

The trucks are also known to use the Kol­bio bor­der post where they are dri­ven to Lamu and Mom­basa and resold to mid­dle-men as “cus­tomed” sugar. They are repack­aged and made to look like lo­cal sugar.

With Mu­mias Sugar, Kenya’s biggest pro­ducer of the com­mod­ity in fi­nan­cial dol­drums, sugar im­por­ta­tion has be­come even more lu­cra­tive.
The news could un­der­mine con­fi­dence in the list of ter­ror as­so­ci­ates.

In­trigu­ingly, while the list in­cluded two hu­man rights groups — Muhuri and Haki Africa — and money trans­fer firms, none of the sugar barons was listed.

It also con­tains names of cler­ics who the gov­ern­ment has been col­lab­o­rat­ing with to tackle ji­hadism and youth rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion in Kenya’s So­mali-speak­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Sheikh Um­mal, a promi­nent East­leigh-based cleric, whose name was in the list, has protested his in­no­cence. Sheikh Um­mal has con­sis­tently crit­i­cised Al-Shabaab’s cam­paign of ter­ror and its in­tran­si­gence and re­fusal to seek a po­lit­i­cal set­tle­ment.

He is im­mensely in­flu­en­tial and his anti-Shabaab mes­sages are of­ten re­layed on So­mali satel­lite TV chan­nels, earn­ing him death threats from Al-Shabaab.
“This is the kind of guy the gov­ern­ment should keep on its side in its ide­o­log­i­cal fight against ji­hadism and Al-Shabaab,” a So­mali se­cu­rity source told the Sat­ur­day Na­tion.

LACK OF IN­FOR­MA­TION

Those who have been named in the list and have ap­peared be­fore the counter-ter­ror­ism po­lice unit have been shocked at the state agents’ lack of in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject.

Fa­ther Gabriel Dolan of Muhuri who ap­peared be­fore the unit to­gether with his fel­low board mem­bers, said: ‘’We ex­pected a ‘grilling’ and to be fur­nished with sub­stan­tive al­le­ga­tions and ev­i­dence link­ing Muhuri with the Al-Shabaab mur­der­ers. How­ever, noth­ing of the sort emerged.

In­stead, we faced a team of tired, bored NIS of­fi­cials who did not want to be iden­ti­fied nor un­duly both­ered and whose task was merely to give out a four­teen-page doc­u­ment to be filled, re­turned and ‘you will be hear­ing from us in two weeks.

“The whole thing may have been sloppy, un­pro­fes­sional and lack­ing any shape or di­rec­tion but the IG Boinett and his NCTC team had al­ready con­demned the two or­gan­i­sa­tions by freez­ing their ac­counts and now in ut­ter con­tempt of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the rule of law, the bur­den of proof fell on them to prove their in­no­cence,” Fr Dolan wrote in his weekly col­umn in the Sat­ur­day Na­tion.

The KRA has also raided the two rights groups’ of­fices, cart­ing away doc­u­ments and com­put­ers for tax au­dits.

Mean­while, for the big boys in the sugar and char­coal trade, it is busi­ness as usual.

El­e­ments of the KDF have been ac­cused of col­lud­ing with Al-Shabaab in the il­le­gal multi-bil­lion-shilling char­coal trade.

In 2014, a re­port by a US gov­ern­ment-funded or­gan­i­sa­tion, which echoed ear­lier find­ings by the United Na­tions, al­leged that the KDF mis­sion to So­ma­lia ap­pears to in­clude the char­coal trade.

“Kenya, al­though for­mally a par­tic­i­pant in Ami­som, which op­er­ates in sup­port of the So­mali na­tional gov­ern­ment, is also com­plicit in sup­port of trade that pro­vides in­come to Al-Shabaab, its mil­i­tary op­po­nent both in­side So­ma­lia and, in­creas­ingly, at home in Kenya,” the In­sti­tute of De­fence Analy­ses (IDA) said in its re­port by Mr George Ward, for­merly Wash­ing­ton’s am­bas­sador to Namibia.

Kenya’s mil­i­tary chiefs have pre­vi­ously de­nied al­le­ga­tions of in­volve­ment in any il­licit ac­tiv­ity in So­ma­lia and have main­tained that since Oc­to­ber 2011, they have only en­gaged in mil­i­tary ac­tion aimed at sta­bil­is­ing the war-torn coun­try. But the ac­cu­sa­tions have re­fused to go away.

While busi­nesses of the sugar and char­coal barons boom, most of Garissa town is fac­ing an eco­nomic cri­sis fol­low­ing the at­tack on the uni­ver­sity col­lege.

Traders in the county who spoke to the Sat­ur­day Na­tion said they had been in­cur­ring heavy losses since the at­tack and the dusk-to-dawn cur­few im­posed by In­spec­tor Gen­eral of Po­lice Joseph Boin­net.

Po­lice have also been ac­cused of us­ing the cur­few to ex­tort money from res­i­dents.