UN Report Warns Of Islamic Extremists Group Al-Shabaab Growth

Saturday, October 18, 2014

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Al-Shabaab is shipping large quantities of charcoal from a port in Somalia controlled by the Kenya Defence Forces, United Nations monitors say in a report released Wednesday. The UN cautioned that the surge of revenue will only boost the power and influence of the Islamic extremists group.

Revenues collected by Al-Shabaab from the export of charcoal, in violation of a UN ban, have increased in two years since the Kenyan army took control of the Somali port of Kismayu.

According to the UN Somalia-Eritrea Monitoring Group, more than a million bags of charcoal are being shipped from Kismayu each month.

“Al-Shabaab continues to benefit from the revenue generated, on a scale greater than when it controlled Kismayu, at charcoal production sites, from checkpoints along trucking routes and from exports, in particular at Kismayu and Barawe, all of which to date have been uninterrupted by the military offensive against the group,” the UN monitors state.

Al-Shabaab decided last January to route most of its charcoal supplies through Kismayu, the report notes.

“Currently, an estimated average of 20 trucks, each carrying approximately 5 to 12 tons of charcoal, arrives at the port of Kismayu on a daily basis,” the monitors say.

Kenyan authorities have sought to obstruct the Monitoring Group’s work, the report charges.
“The government of Kenya prevented one of the group’s experts from remaining at his duty station in Nairobi,” the monitors say.

The consequent need to relocate the UN official —Babatunde Taiwo, an expert on armed groups — “significantly interfered with the group’s investigations, especially with regard to Al-Shabaab, at a critical juncture in Somalia,” the report states.

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