Maritime Threats: The Interconnection of Terrorism and Organized Crime on the East African Coast
East African countries are among the twenty most affected by terrorist threats, largely due to the spread of armed conflicts, underdevelopment, and the growth of extremism. Terrorist networks have exploited the maritime domain of the Indian Ocean to expand cross-border maritime crimes, including maritime terrorism, piracy, human trafficking, smuggling of illicit goods, and illegal fishing. Terrorist groups have emerged on the East African coast, such as Al-Shabaab in Somalia and ISIS in Mozambique, taking advantage of weak maritime law enforcement.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to understand the relationship between crime and terrorism along the East African coast, as a location for terrorist activities, which has been largely overlooked in counter-terrorism literature due to the difficulty in distinguishing between criminal and terrorist activities and their connections to local communities. This is where the importance of a study by the French Institute of International Relations, published in March 2024, becomes evident. The study examines the relationship between crime and terrorism in coastal and maritime areas of East Africa, with a focus on Kenya’s coastal regions, as they serve as hubs for terrorist recruitment, planning, and logistical support for attacks through maritime routes.
The Evolution of Terrorism in East Africa
In the 1990s, East Africa became a strategic priority for Al-Qaeda, which established its base in Sudan after the Islamist regime took power in 1989. Gradually, Al-Qaeda transformed into an active terrorist organization in East Africa by raising funds through business ventures and military training camps in Sudan. Since the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by Al-Qaeda, East Africa has become a critical center for terrorist attacks. These attacks intensified in the 2000s, especially by Al-Shabaab in Somalia.
In Tanzania, the Ansar Muslim Youth Center (AMYC), led by Sheikh Salim Abdulrahim Brahián, came under scrutiny for its alleged ties to Al-Qaeda networks in East Africa, which coordinated the 1998 attacks on U.S. interests. Similarly, a new group called “Al-Muhajiroun” emerged in 2015 with links to Mombasa in Kenya and Mwanza in Tanzania.
Since 2016, ISIS has exploited local splinter groups from Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab in East Africa, alongside aspiring rebels and extremist networks, facilitating the travel of recruits to Syria, Libya, Iraq, and other regions where ISIS operates. Between 2016 and 2023, ISIS carried out numerous attacks across East Africa through its local affiliates, including claiming responsibility for attacks in Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania. ISIS Somalia was formed in October 2015, claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing at a police checkpoint in Somalia in May 2017 and an attack on the Village Hotel in Bosaso, Puntland in February 2017.
In both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ISIS formed an alliance with the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which pledged allegiance to the group in 2018. This strengthened ISIS Central Africa Province (ISCAP), extending its influence to Mozambique, where it operates under the name “Al-Shabaab,” responsible for numerous attacks in the country.
In Kenya, reports suggest that ISIS has mainly operated through the East African Front (JEA), which began as a small Islamist group in Somalia, helping fighters from Kenya migrate to Libya, Syria, and Somalia to join ISIS. One notable ISIS-linked attack in Kenya was the burning of Mombasa Central Police Station in 2016. The group’s factions continue to threaten the region, as evidenced by a series of attacks in 2023, targeting villages and security forces.
The Interconnection of Crime and Terrorism
There is a significant overlap between terrorist activities and maritime crime, including drug trafficking, arms smuggling, human trafficking, and illegal fishing. In the past, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates used maritime routes to transport explosives for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, as well as for coordinated attacks in Mombasa in 2002, which involved using these routes to smuggle weapons into Kenya and facilitate the attackers’ infiltration and escape.
Since the early 2000s, cross-border terrorist organizations like Al-Shabaab have increasingly relied on maritime mobility to carry out operations in East Africa. Al-Shabaab has exploited its ports in Kismayo and Mogadishu to bolster its maritime strategy, maintaining control over both legal and illegal businesses. Even after losing control of these ports due to offensives led by the African Union Mission in Somalia, Al-Shabaab retained a maritime presence by engaging in illicit economic activities, strengthening its financial stability through maritime targets.
The relationship between maritime crime and terrorism has proven lucrative, particularly through Al-Shabaab’s involvement in charcoal smuggling, which enabled the group to sustain itself as a terrorist organization. Estimates suggest that Al-Shabaab profited by approximately $70 to $100 million annually from the charcoal trade. With the United Nations Security Council imposing a ban on charcoal exports in 2012, Al-Shabaab shifted to sugar smuggling and implemented mafia-like taxation systems. Raw sugar would be shipped from Brazil to Somali ports controlled by businessmen connected to Al-Shabaab and then transported overland across the Kenyan border for resale. Additionally, Al-Shabaab established an elaborate mafia-style taxation system with connections to Mogadishu Port, Somalia’s largest port, using commercial shipping agents and port institutions to access cargo lists and impose taxes.
Al-Shabaab continues to use the Indian Ocean for financial gain and operational support. The group’s infiltration of port operations provides it with a strategic position to monitor imports and access various explosive devices via maritime routes. The group maintains a presence in Puntland, Somalia, using small boats to move its members around the region.
Similarly, ISIS operates in Puntland, collaborating with Somali pirates who use boats to purchase weapons and transport members via maritime routes. Part of ISIS’s broader maritime strategy in Mozambique includes targeting and attacking several islands such as Ilha Vamizi, Mitundo, and Ilha Michinjo. This allowed ISIS in Mozambique to navigate between the islands, gaining control over critical maritime infrastructure, such as the port of Mocímboa da Praia. Overall, terrorist organizations have taken advantage of existing illicit cross-border trade routes to enhance their financial capacity, making counter-terrorist infiltration across borders crucial for counter-terrorism strategies.
The Case of the Kenyan Coast
One example of the relationship between terrorism and organized crime activities is evident along the Kenyan coast, where these connections intersect with local communities in the following ways:
Motivations for Crime and Terrorism Integration: Financial incentives have driven criminal gangs to merge with Al-Shabaab’s network. These connections include funding for drugs, weapons, protection from law enforcement, and maintaining authority in their areas. Criminal gangs provide safe havens for one another to hide or continue operations within their respective territories. Sharing space between criminal and terrorist networks has led to cooperation in these regions.
Imitation Between Crime and Terrorism: There has been mutual imitation of operational and tactical activities between criminal and terrorist networks. For instance, criminal gangs in Kiunga, Kenya, have adopted Al-Shabaab tactics to intimidate local communities, enabling them to conduct illegal activities like drug trafficking or human smuggling. Non-governmental organization workers reported that local gangs in Kiunga distributed threatening leaflets signed by Al-Shabaab to force people out of specific areas.
Similarly, Al-Shabaab members often seek refuge with local criminal gangs to evade police. This has also been the case with Al-Shabaab defectors, who commonly turn to criminal gangs to avoid arrest, with their presence among the gangs facilitating their movement.
Poverty, Structural Injustice, and Mismanagement: Maritime threats from the entanglement of terrorism and crime in East Africa are particularly prevalent in areas characterized by mismanagement, deteriorating state-citizen relations, poverty, marginalization, or political instability. Mismanagement makes coastal areas vulnerable to maritime crimes such as piracy in Somalia, drug and arms trafficking, human smuggling, and terrorism in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique.
According to the study, the state’s role along Kenya’s coasts is weak, with limited control in regions dominated by gangs, shadow economies, corruption, and local conflicts. These contexts create opportunities for local populations to engage with extremist groups, often as a form of retaliation or resistance against the state. Law enforcement personnel are often seen as the main culprits in deteriorating police-community relations. With the rise in demands for bribes, corruption increases in contexts where locals seek ways to circumvent laws and engage in illegal activities, often paving the way for criminal gangs to operate in local areas.
Conclusion
The relationship between terrorism and crime remains invisible at higher levels due to the lack of data or the complexity of understanding the intertwined nature of these two domains. However, the involvement of youth in crime and violent extremism at lower levels is evident. Research lacks evidence to suggest that the leadership of terrorist organizations is directly involved in criminal networks, but it is plausible that these leaders, like their lower-level members, are implicated. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the complex operational methods of different criminal organizations in East Africa is necessary, requiring contextual and situational knowledge across time and space, including mobility dynamics and links to local social, cultural, political, and economic factors.
Despite varied interventions against different maritime crimes, such as the regional and international legal frameworks on piracy endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, no similar efforts have been made concerning maritime terrorism. Often, regional efforts for collective security against maritime crimes and terrorism conflict with issues of state sovereignty and national borders.
Source: Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen, “Cross-border Dynamics in Terrorist Mobility and Infiltration along the East African Coastlines”, Ifri, March 2024.
