Ele­phants are be­ing slaugh­tered and their tusks sold, in or­der to fi­nance deadly at­tacks by So­ma­li­a’s ter­ror­ist group al-Shabaab. This nar­ra­tive link­ing poach­ing and al-Shabaab fi­nanc­ing has been widely touted. It hit the in­ter­na­tional spot­light thanks to high pro­file at­ten­tion from U.S. con­gress­men, for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton, and Kenyan Pres­i­dent Uhuru Keny­atta. Os­car win­ner Kathryn Bigelow also re­leased a short film on the topic in 2014.

Rather than re­ly­ing on il­le­gal ivory trade, for years, al-Shabaab pre­dom­i­nantly fi­nanced its ac­tiv­i­ties with char­coal. Peo­ple through­out the Arab Gulf—in­clud­ing in Saudi Ara­bia, the United Arab Emi­rates, and Yemen—have long de­pended on So­mali char­coal. In fact, al-Shabaab’s coal busi­ness reached, at its peak, be­tween $38 and $56 mil­lion per year. Al-Shabaab ad­di­tion­ally prof­its from trad­ing sugar and tax­ing small shops and busi­nesses.

Er­ro­neous nar­ra­tives like this one about al-Shabaab are dan­ger­ous. They can mis­di­rect in­ter­na­tional at­ten­tion, ef­forts, and fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions, with sig­nif­i­cant cost to real is­sues on the ground. One ex­am­ple comes from the De­mo­c­ra­tic Re­pub­lic of Congo (DRC). Pop­u­lar ad­vo­cacy groups like the Enough Pro­ject and Global Wit­ness mis­char­ac­ter­ized the con­flict in east­ern DRC, pre­sent­ing trade min­er­als as a pri­mary cause of vi­o­lence in the coun­try and high­light­ing sex­ual vi­o­lence as a main con­se­quence. As a re­sult of this over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion—the con­flict in the DRC has been fu­eled by com­pe­ti­tion for po­lit­i­cal power, con­trol over re­sources, and lo­cal-level dis­putes among other fac­tors—United Na­tions agen­cies, the World Bank, and other in­ter­na­tional or­ga­ni­za­tions paid dis­pro­por­tion­ate at­ten­tion to sex­ual vi­o­lence and the min­eral trade. Do­ing so dis­tracted from other crit­i­cal and per­va­sive is­sues, like com­mu­nity-level land con­flicts, cor­rup­tion, and state ad­min­is­tra­tion dys­func­tion. Sim­i­larly, a 2010 anti-traf­fick­ing cam­paign in South Africa, re­ly­ing on fab­ri­cated data, sug­gested that forty thou­sand girls and women were be­ing traf­ficked into the coun­try in the lead up to the 2010 World Cup. Sev­eral or­ga­ni­za­tions like the In­ter­na­tional Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) redi­rected re­sources to­ward vic­tims of traf­fick­ing who did not ex­ist. The cam­paign di­verted at­ten­tion from crit­i­cal needs in South Africa, such as the mil­lion eco­nomic mi­grants flee­ing Zim­babwe at the time.

In this case, mis­rep­re­sent­ing al-Shabaab’s role in the ivory trade could be detri­men­tal for both ele­phants and anti-ter­ror ef­forts. First, the al-Shabaab ivory nar­ra­tive di­verts at­ten­tion from the many ac­tors, in­clud­ing the Lord’s Re­sis­tance Army and Jan­jaweed, who ac­tu­ally profit from poach­ing. In­ter­na­tional ef­forts should be di­rected to­ward stop­ping these groups. Ad­di­tion­ally, the in­ac­cu­ra­cies of the cam­paign dis­tract from al-Shabaab’s ac­tual char­coal rev­enue stream, which should re­main a cen­tral fo­cus for anti-ter­ror ef­forts. Fi­nally, the cam­paign’s false premise calls into ques­tion the cred­i­bil­ity of con­ser­va­tion move­ments. Though un­in­tended, this cam­paign’s false nar­ra­tive has mis­led in­ter­na­tional in­sti­tu­tions and the gen­eral pub­lic to be­lieve al-Shabaab is in­volved in ivory trade, which could have a high price: it could leave us with more ter­ror­ists and less ele­phants.