Just over a year ago, armed men on motorcycles entered a national park in
Cameroon, near the Nigerian border, and swiftly abducted a family of
vacationing French tourists a husband and wife and their four children, along
with their uncle. Two months later, the kidnappers released the hostages along
with 16 others in exchange for a cool $3.15 million. The transaction was made
by French and Cameroonian negotiators, but it was not divulged who made the
payments, according to Reuters.
So landed another cash infusion into
the coffers of Boko Haram, that has now gained worldwide infamy through the
mass kidnapping of school girls in northern Nigeria. Long before its latest
wave of attacks, the Islamist group has efficiently financed violent acts in the
service of its mission to impose Shariah law through a combination of lucrative
criminal enterprises, say experts who tracked the group. In addition to
kidnappings, Boko Haram has secured financing through extortion, cooperation
with international drug cartels and operating fake charities, these experts
say. “What is certain about Boko Haram is that the organisation is very well
funded; without an ever-increasing cash flow, the movement would have died out
long ago,” reads a report from the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium,
a research initiative of the reference publisher Beacham Group.
About a decade ago, shortly after
Boko Haram was founded, it drew the majority of its funds from people in
surrounding communities who supported its goal of imposing Islamic law while
ridding Nigeria of Western influences, according to a report from the National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) based
at the University of Maryland. But that means of fundraising was inherently limited
in a country in which 54 per cent of people are classified as “extremely poor”
by the World Bank. In recent times, Boko Haram has broadened it’s funding by
drawing on foreign donors, and other ventures such as fake charity
organisations, extortion, and deals with global drug cartels, according to the
START report. Its most recent foray — the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls to sell
on the black market as “wives” — is merely the outgrowth of a coherent strategy
to find funds for expansion through whatever means necessary.
The term Boko Haram translates to
“Western education is forbidden,” in the local Hausa language of the
predominantly Muslim region in northern Nigeria where the group is based. Since
its formation in the early 2000s, the militia has been carrying out violent
attacks around the country. Since 2009, when the group’s founding leader was
killed and replaced by his second-in-command, the attacks have grown
significantly more violent and intense, according to the START report. Last
year, the US State Department officially designated the group as a “foreign
terrorist organisation.” “What Boko Haram achieved in less than a year is quite
remarkable,” wrote David Doukhan of the International Institute for
Counter-Terrorism, in a 2013 report, citing their reign over many parts of
northeastern Nigeria, the institution of Sharia law, tax collection and an
Islamic education system to recruit youth to their cause.
This expansion has required
increasingly large sources of funding, which has apparently led Boko Haram to
ratchet up its methods of raising money. “Perhaps less sophisticated than other
tactics, kidnapping has become one of the group’s primary funding sources,”
wrote Jacob Zenn, African and Eurasian affairs analyst at The Jamestown
Foundation, in a recent report. But the group receives steady support from
abroad, including from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, according to the US
State Department, while using links to that terrorist group to secure further
donations from sympathisers in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, along with
weapons and training. An unnamed United States intelligence official last week
told The Daily Beast that the Islamist group had received “strategic direction”
from Osama bin Laden.
Boko Haram cloaks its sources of finance
through the crafty use of a highly decentralized distribution network, say
experts. The group employs an Islamic model of money transfer called “hawala,”
based on an honour system and a global network of agents that leaves no trace.
“The very features which make hawala attractive to legitimate customers —
efficiency, anonymity and lack of a paper trail — also make the system
attractive for the transfer of illicit funds,” reads a report from the US
Treasury Department. Other direct fundraising includes fake charities and
nonprofits. Some have reported that the group receives regular payment from
local leaders in northern Nigeria to protect their land.
An untraceable flow of money plus
loosely guarded borders has created an ideal environment for black market
trade. The porosity of Nigeria’s borders offers the group a steady flow of
weapons, training, radicalisation and funding. A 2012 report from the
Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies alleges that Nigerian terrorist
groups are financed by drug cartels in Latin America. Lauretta Napoleoni, an
Italian journalist and expert on terrorist finance, said this began to happen
when the 2001 Patriot Act made it difficult to transfer drugs through the US to
Europe. “Nobody wants to admit that cocaine reaches Europe via West Africa,”
said Napoleoni. “This kind of business is a type of business where Islamic
terrorist organizations are very much involved.”
Beyond drugs, Boko Haram has joined
other criminal groups in Africa in the billion-dollar rhino and elephant
poaching industry, according to a recent report from Born Free USA, a wildlife
conservation organization. “While impoverished locals are enlisted to pull the
triggers, it is highly organized transnational crime syndicates and militias
that run the poaching and reap the lion’s share of the profits, funding
terrorism and increasingly war,” wrote New Scientist’s Richard Shiffman. Using
these extensive networks, Boko Haram members can smuggle anything from sugar
and flour to weapons or even people across international borders. This, plus
kidnapping ransoms and donations from abroad, is one of the most important
factors keeping them in business.
SOURCE:
By Kathleen Caulderwood, International Business Times
By Kathleen Caulderwood, International Business Times
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