Politics
Gambia: How Yahya Jammeh Stole a Country
12 min read.For more than two decades, Yahya Jammeh ruled over Gambia. His administration was implicated in widespread human rights abuses and several waves of brutal crackdowns on dissent. And his bizarre personality drew headlines around the world after he gave himself five titles and claimed to be able to cure AIDS.
Gambia’s former President Yahya Jammeh orchestrated the embezzlement of nearly US$1 billion of public funds and illegal timber revenue during his 22-year rule, looting the treasury in a long-running conspiracy that crippled one of the world’s poorest countries.
While president of the compact West African state of 2 million, Jammeh frequently drove his black stretch Hummer from his official residence in Banjul, the capital, to a lavish private estate in his home village of Kanilai.
His route took him past the central bank, the social welfare office, and the headquarters of the state telecom company. These were some of the institutions Jammeh pillaged by elevating privileged civil servants to prominent positions and empowering a group of corrupt businessmen led by a key Hezbollah financier.
Thousands of documents obtained exclusively by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project lay bare for the first time the massive scale of Jammeh’s corruption. They show how he hijacked government funds and departments, set up private accounts at the central bank, and built a patronage network while ruling the country through a combination of guile, unbridled power, and violence.
What was not withdrawn in cash by Jammeh’s officials or funnelled to bank accounts controlled by the president went to businesses that received lucrative contracts (or for unknown purposes). Some was sent to foreign shell companies about which little is known. The transfers may have violated Gambian law.
Just how much of the great Gambian heist ended up in Jammeh’s own pockets — through offshore accounts or bags full of cash — is still unknown.
Adama Barrow, the country’s current president, estimated in 2017 that Jammeh stole about 4 billion dalasis ($90 million) from public coffers. An official investigation known as the Janneh Commission of Inquiry is currently examining financial misconduct during his rule. And at the end of last year, the United States announced that Jammeh had been banned from entering the country, citing evidence that he had been involved in “significant corruption.”
The documents analyzed by OCCRP show a web of fraud that far exceeds the figure offered by Barrow, who defeated Jammeh at the polls in 2016 but was only able to oust the former president after neighboring states threatened a military intervention.
Jammeh was the worst of dictators, but because he ruled a nobody country, nobody cared.
“He ran the country like an organized crime syndicate,” said Jeggan Grey-Johnson, a Gambian activist and communications officer at the African regional office of the Open Society Foundation, a pro-democracy and good governance organization.
“Jammeh was the worst of dictators, but because he ruled a nobody country, nobody cared,” Grey-Johnson said.
Jammeh spent some of the stolen money on his palace in Kanilai, where he had his own private mosque, built a jungle warfare training camp, and kept camels, hyenas, zebras, and other exotic animals.
In total, Jammeh and his associates looted or misappropriated at least $975 million. Among their biggest targets:
- $363.9 million from the state-run telecoms company;
- $325.5 million in illicit timber revenue;
- more than $100 million in foreign aid and soft loans from Taiwan;
- $71.2 million from the Central Bank of The Gambia;
- $60 million from the Social Security and Housing Finance Corp., which manages disability, housing, and pension payments; and
- $55.2 million from the state-run oil company.
Jammeh spent some of the stolen money on his palace in Kanilai, where he had his own private mosque, built a jungle warfare training camp, and kept camels, hyenas, zebras, and other exotic animals. The looted funds also supported a lavish lifestyle that Jammeh’s average official monthly government salary of about $6,000 could never sustain.
Other spending was designed to portray Jammeh as a benevolent and generous ruler, but not typically in ways that benefitted ordinary Gambians, who eke out a living in an economy that is literally dependent on peanuts, a top export. In 2010, using diverted money, Jammeh held a tribute concert for Michael Jackson after the pop superstar’s death. He also hosted a Miss Black USA beauty pageant in Gambia using $1.1 million illicitly diverted from the Port Authority.
The spending did little to address Gambia’s needs. The country has poor health care, few basic services, and under 1,000 km of paved roads. According to the World Bank, its external debt at the end of 2017 was $489 million — less than the amount Jammeh allegedly stole.
The United Nations criticized Jammeh during his final election campaign for threatening to kill off the country’s most populous ethnic group — the Mandinkas — and put them “where even a fly cannot see them.
The former president gave himself five titles, insisted he could cure AIDS (but only on Mondays and Thursdays), and proclaimed that he would stay in power for a billion years if Allah wanted him to. He is now in exile in Equatorial Guinea, where he allegedly spends his days on a farm carved out of the jungle.
Ruling with an Iron Fist
The United Nations criticized Jammeh during his final election campaign for threatening to kill off the country’s most populous ethnic group — the Mandinkas — and put them “where even a fly cannot see them.”
In its 2015 report on Gambia, “State of Fear”, Human Rights Watch detailed accusations that included “enforced disappearances,” torture of political opponents, the summary execution of more than 50 African migrants, and the murder or disappearance of two journalists.
The sentiment was typical of a president who ruled through terror. At the center of his ability to strip Gambia of its meager wealth was Jammeh’s ruthless control of the government and its institutions. After capturing power in a bloodless coup in 1994 at just 29, he quickly deployed an array of official and unofficial security forces to silence dissent.
In a climate of fear, and with the complicity of a powerful circle in and out of the government, Jammeh’s brazen corruption continued unchecked for more than two decades.
The Jungulers, an unofficial unit of about 40 men largely drawn from the Presidential Guard, carried out the most egregious offenses. In its 2015 report on Gambia, “State of Fear”, Human Rights Watch detailed accusations that included “enforced disappearances,” torture of political opponents, the summary execution of more than 50 African migrants, and the murder or disappearance of two journalists.
In a climate of fear, and with the complicity of a powerful circle in and out of the government, Jammeh’s brazen corruption continued unchecked for more than two decades.
Merely questioning Jammeh’s often erratic rule could result in entire departments being seized. When a senior official at the state-run oil company questioned the president’s office on whether its income could be exempt from taxes, Jammeh responded by seizing control of the company’s bank accounts and diverting its funds for his use.
His micromanagement of government affairs allowed him to exert “complete control” over Gambia, said Fatou Camara, who twice served as Jammeh’s press secretary between 2011 and 2013.
“Every minister would wait for him before they made decisions,” Camara said. “Everything had to wait for the Office of the President to agree.”
Jammeh’s human rights abuses and corruption went largely unchallenged by the international community because of his country’s small size and relative obscurity. A wave of violence across West Africa during his reign — in Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — also helped him fly under the radar.
“The Gambia wasn’t even like a back-burner issue — it was a backwater issue,” said Cameron Hudson, a former West Africa analyst for the CIA.
The ‘Number One Bank’ as a Slush Fund
The Central Bank of The Gambia was known as the “number one bank” among Jammeh’s staff because they knew its coffers would continually be replenished with public money.
Central banks are only supposed to regulate local banks, control currency in circulation, and set interest rates. Typically, individuals can’t have accounts. But Jammeh treated Gambia’s central bank as his personal slush fund.
Much of the time, the money he stole flowed electronically between domestic and foreign accounts. But sometimes the cash literally traded hands. Beneath the hum of air conditioning units in a loading bay on the central bank’s east side, presidential aides were known to shove suitcases stuffed with dollars, euros, and other currencies into waiting vehicles, according to testimony received by the commission of inquiry. The official investigation, led by lawyer Surahata Janneh, has not yet released its final report.
On one occasion, when Jammeh wanted to withdraw cash from the central bank, his office wrote directly to the bank’s second deputy governor with a blunt request that circumvented lawmakers and regulators. The bank complied.
Amadou Colley, the central bank’s governor from 2010 to 2017, told the commission that Jammeh and his cronies exerted significant control over the institution. Government records, testimonies, and directives show senior bank officials routinely allowing the president’s office unfettered access.
Colley, who declined to comment for this story, testified that he saw officials close to the president withdraw funds without proper paperwork. Able to obtain withdrawal notes from Jammeh’s office only occasionally, he resorted to accepting hastily-written statements from those retrieving the money that they had been “directed by President Jammeh [or] the Office of the President to make this withdrawal.”
Documents obtained by reporters show that Jammeh diverted over $71 million from the central bank’s reserves in just a few years. He used three main techniques: hijacking the bank’s accounts, creating new accounts on which he and his chosen aides were sole signatories, and using dormant accounts (which are seldom found at well-managed central banks). Sometimes he ordered the withdrawal of cash from accounts without any funds, causing them to become overdrawn.
Accounts such as the Consolidated Revenue Fund received millions of dollars every year from income taxes and other sources. There is little accounting for how money from the fund was spent between 2007 and 2016, despite laws that require parliamentary approval of expenditures.
Thousands of internal bank documents reviewed by OCCRP revealed other major accounts Jammeh plundered.
They included:
- The International Gateway Account: This account received revenues from Gambia’s state telecommunications operator, known as Gamtel. The practice of collecting such revenues, earned from long-distance telephone calls and internet services, occurs in every country. In Gambia, however, a disproportionate 82 percent went to private companies through secret contracts that bypassed the country’s regulatory body. About $363 million disappeared this way. The remaining 18 percent which did land in the account was largely withdrawn by Jammeh’s office without explanation. Among other things, the president spent the money on cattle, vehicles, and extravagant carpets.
- The Special Vision Account: Once the International Gateway account was emptied, Jammeh turned to this account, also funded by Gamtel revenues and intended to finance his development plan for Gambia. From July 2014 until January 2017, Jammeh’s office diverted about $43 million — with $35.7 million taken as cash. Jammeh’s close business associates were among the beneficiaries. Other expenses included doctors’ salaries, a donation to fight the West African Ebola outbreak, and funding for Jammeh’s personal charitable foundation. The last transaction occurred two days after Jammeh went into exile in 2017.
- The State Aircraft Fund: This state travel fund was financed by donor aid from Qatar, tax revenues, and other sources. Jammeh’s office withdrew cash from the account without stating any purpose and used it to purchase a luxury jet, buses, and vehicles from a close associate.
- The State Security Account: This account was set up by Jammeh’s office with no declared purpose. About $466,000, or 95 percent of its funds, were diverted from another account called the Consolidated Revenue Fund and used for cash withdrawals, entertainment, travel, payments to Jammeh’s favorite wife Zeinab, and other expenses.
- Mineral-related accounts collected royalty payments from private mining companies such as Carnegie, Sand Mining, Gamico, and Heavy Minerals. Though this money was intended for the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the payments fell under the control of the president’s office, which oversaw the use of $4.9 million.
- The Office of the First Lady: There is no such office in Gambia, but Jammeh created this account, filled it with public revenues, and spent the entire $35,706.
- The National Youth Development Fund: Dozens of scholarships were awarded to young African-American women who Jammeh brought to Gambia to compete in the 2007 Miss Black USA beauty pageant, which he hosted. The fund also paid for maintenance on Jammeh’s jet and other expenses. The source of the $4.5 million that passed through the account is unknown.
- The Green Industry Account: Although the central bank is not allowed to open accounts for private entities, an account named Green Industry — presumably after a private company of the same name — was created. The source of the funds, which were illegally transferred to the company’s account at Trust Bank, is unclear.
- The Fish Landing Account: Funded by revenue from a 10 percent fee on fish caught by trawlers in Gambian waters, this account received multiple requests from withdrawals from Jammeh’s office.
During Jammeh’s rule, the central bank became heavily indebted. One of his government’s first acts in 1994 was to take out a secret $25 million loan in the form of a bond. Decades of fraud, hidden debts in the form of bonds, and account manipulation followed, draining the bank of its revenues. Almost 40 percent of the bank’s spending went toward interest payments on debts, according to OCCRP’s analysis.
In a 2015 letter to the International Monetary Fund, while Jammeh was still in power, central bank officials wrote that the institution remained highly indebted because of significant interest charges, bad investments, over-lending to the government, and violations of its own rules — described as “policy slippages.”
Today, the central bank remains in dire straits. The country owes lenders 130 percent of its gross domestic product, mainly due to “external arrears” incurred by the Jammeh administration, the IMF said in May 2018.
Jammeh’s manipulation of the central bank may have violated several of Gambia’s laws, including the Government Budget and Management Accountability Act of 2004, the Social Security Act of 2010, and the Public Finance Act of 2014. He has not been charged with any crimes.
“Jammeh ran the country like it was his own,” said William Gumede, an economist and chair of the Democracy Works Foundation, a South African pro-democracy group. “Who can question you when everything is considered yours?”
Gambia’s current government did not respond to requests for comment. The government of Equatorial Guinea did not respond to requests to reach Jammeh.
The true scale of Jammeh’s thefts from the central bank may never be fully known.
Taiwan Led the Way, Hezbollah Followed
Jammeh’s thirst for public money began soon after he captured power in 1994. In 1995, he recognized Taiwan’s independence from China in a strategic establishment of diplomatic ties also made by several other African countries. In doing so, he opened the door to some $100 million in foreign aid.
The East Asian island’s development assistance was deposited into a “Special 3M” donor aid account at Citibank, the New York-based lender. Documents show that $35 million of the funding was dispersed in less than two years.
In total, $58 million was processed, primarily by Citibank, meaning the account was presumably overdrawn. The bank transferred the money to just over 20 beneficiaries, allowing the funds to vanish into the accounts of Jammeh and his close associates, including Mohamed Bazzi, one of the country’s richest and most influential businessmen, whom Jammeh used as a middleman.
Some of the world’s biggest banks — including Barclays, Citibank, HSBC Bank, and Standard Chartered — approved transactions for what would turn out to be Jammeh’s seizure of state funds for his personal use
Bazzi, identified by the U.S. as a key financier for Hezbollah, introduced another financier who invested $35 million in Gamtel, Gambia’s state-owned telecommunications provider. He and other Hezbollah-linked businessmen were the primary beneficiaries of oil and telecommunications monopolies worth more than $100 million.
Some of the world’s biggest banks — including Barclays, Citibank, HSBC Bank, and Standard Chartered — approved transactions for what would turn out to be Jammeh’s seizure of state funds for his personal use.
In a statement to reporters, Citibank declined to comment on possible legal violations of standard anti-money laundering, due diligence, and “know your customer” requirements as well as potential violations of U.S. laws regarding banking secrecy, corrupt practices and even terrorism laws.
Standard Chartered declined to comment and Barclays declined to comment on the record. HSBC did not respond to requests for comment.
Former World Bank anti-corruption specialist Richard Messick said U.S. law enforcement might have been working with the banks to monitor where the funds were going.
“It’s possible they reported the transactions to the authorities,” he said. “I know of cases where law enforcement authorities have … ‘spooked’ the account holders … so that they could see where it was going to. So that’s not all beyond the pale.”
“Assuming the banks didn’t alert authorities to the transactions moving the money out of the accounts, they should have applied enhanced due diligence … to ensure the money wasn’t being laundered,” Messick said.
Keep Your Friends Close
None of Jammeh’s plundering would have been possible without the close network of advisers he posted to key positions and shuffled around at will. The aides, often used as signatories to bank accounts and loan agreements, played a key role in his money transfer schemes.
Jammeh’s right-hand man, Gen. Sulayman Badjie, was identified in commission testimonies as the president’s enforcer — both in politics and in business. Even as he ran the country as second-in-command and headed its armed forces, he also provided protection for Jammeh’s timber smuggling operation. Badjie could not be reached by reporters.
The secretary-general of the Office of the President, Nuha Touray, was a crucial intermediary between Jammeh’s office and various government departments. Documents obtained by reporters include directives Touray signed that authorized the seizure of bank accounts and the sacking of public officials who questioned orders.
In addition to Jammeh’s official salary, his personal bank accounts reveal that Bazzi paid Jammeh $500,000 a month for several months. Bazzi testified to the commission that he paid the sum to the president’s account for 20 months and the money was related to an incentive to the president for a telecommunications deal that Bazzi organized for his associate, Ali Charara, another Lebanese Hezbollah financier.
Bazzi did not respond to requests for comment.
Jammeh’s favored officials shared in his prosperity, but were also vulnerable to his propensity for violence and punishment.
Many officials who fell out of favor found themselves incarcerated alongside journalists, political activists, human rights campaigners, and those perceived to be gay or lesbian in the country’s notorious Mile 2 prison.
Touray told the commission that failure to carry out the president’s orders resulted in one of three consequences: “dismissal, imprisonment, or disappeared.”
Exiled in Comfort in Equatorial Guinea
Jammeh’s plundering ended after his seesaw exit from power in 2016, a spectacle that briefly captivated the world. After losing the presidential election to Barrow, a former property developer, on Dec. 1 of that year, the strongman shocked the region by conceding defeat.
But in true Jammeh style, he quickly reversed course and rejected the outcome. As President-elect Barrow called for an investigation into human rights abuses and corruption under Jammeh’s regime, the outgoing president appeared to be buying time to get his affairs in order.
After seven weeks of negotiations, which brought several prominent West African heads of state to Jammeh’s palace for talks, the embattled leader fled the country on Jan. 21, 2017, on a Falcon 900 private jet owned by the government of Equatorial Guinea and used by its president.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, known as Obiang, is a longtime friend of Jammeh. The two men have a similar propensity for using state finances for personal gain and quashing opponents. According to media reports, they even owned houses next to each other in Potomac, Maryland.
Once Jammeh arrived in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s island capital, Obiang granted him refuge from the chorus of human rights and anti-corruption campaigners who were seeking to put him on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity.
Jammeh remains in Equatorial Guinea to this day, nearly 5,000 km from Banjul and the commission investigating him.
Back in Gambia, the people Jammeh hurt most are hoping for better times at the hands of the government of Barrow, his replacement. “We’ve been told that our pensions will be increased by 100 percent,” said Abubacarr Dem, 79, a retired civil servant who lives near the capital. “That’s good if it works out. For now, we haven’t seen it. I don’t even know whether they have enough money there for us.
With additional reporting by Saikou Jammeh and Daniela Lepiz.
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Politics
Being Black in Argentina
What does Javier Milei’s presidential victory mean for Argentina’s black and indigenous minorities?
On November 19, Javier Milei secured the presidency of the Republic of Argentina with 56% of the vote. However, his victory is expected to significantly impact a specific segment of the country.
During my six-month exchange in Argentina’s Venado Tuerto (pop. 75,000) in 2016, I encountered someone of shared Black ethnicity on the street only once. A person whom many locals incidentally mistook for me—along with a Cuban Black girl, the only black person like me in the whole high school. As insignificant as a census of this small city’s population may seem, it effectively illustrates a sobering reality: the presence of Black people in Argentina is sparse, and their numbers have dwindled over time.
“Hay más por otros lados, acá no llegaron” (There are more of them elsewhere, they have not arrived here) is a rhetoric prevalent among many Argentines, but the reality is quite dissimilar. Contacts between Argentina and Black people, particularly of African descent, date back to the 16th century transatlantic slave trade, when West and Central Africa people were brought by Spanish and Portuguese settlers to the coastal city of Buenos Aires, only to be sold and moved mostly within the Río de la Plata, present-day Argentina and Uruguay. In “Hiding in Plain Sight, Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic,” Erika Denise Edwards reports that between 1587 and 1640 approximately 45,000 African slaves disembarked in Buenos Aires. By the end of the 18th century, one-third of Argentina’s population was Black.
What, then, became of the Black African population in Argentina? Some attribute their decline to historical factors such as their active involvement in conflicts including the War of Independence against Spanish colonists (1810-1819) and the war with Paraguay (1865-1870), in which Black men often found themselves on the front lines, enduring the brunt of the attacks, or even choosing to desert and flee the country. These factors intersect with a gradual process of miscegenation and interracial mixing, leading to a progressive whitening of the population—both in terms of physical attributes and ideology.
Adding to this complex mix, political rhetoric comes into play. Influential Argentine leaders, such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in the 19th century, idealized white Europe not only as a model for overcoming the country’s socio-economic challenges but also as a narrative that implied the absence of Black people in Argentina, thereby erasing an integral part of the nation’s history.
Doing so has shrewdly allowed a country to avoid reckoning with its past of slavery and navigate the complexities of its presence, using the escamotage that there are no race-related issues in the country because there are no Black people. This assertion is incorrect for several reasons beyond those mentioned above. First, despite being imperceptible to the naked eye, there is a small but existing population of Afro-descendants in Argentina. Nevertheless, in my second stay in Argentina, this time in Buenos Aires, it became more apparent to me how a certain nationalistic current, in the footsteps of Sarmiento, proudly makes itself of this consistent lack of Black heritage. Comparing itself favorably to neighboring countries, this current boasts a notion of white supremacy in Argentina, which celebrates the Italian immigration from the 19th and 20th centuries as the foundation of national identity, while largely overlooking the historical legacy of African bodies that predates it.
As a result, even in a cosmopolitan capital city such as Buenos Aires, a significant portion of the white Argentine population based its identity on my opposite—not knowing that as an Afro-Italian, my Italian citizenship actually made them closer to my blackness and African roots than they wanted. Asserting that there are no racial concerns in Argentina is misleading. It amounts to the invisibilization of racial discrimination in a country where those who deviate from the preferred prototype, including Indigenous communities such as Mapuche, Quechua, Wichi, and Guarani, experience limited access to education and social services, and are disproportionately prone to experience poverty than their white counterparts.
Even within everyday discourse in Argentina, the assertion is refuted: many are labeled Black despite not matching the physical appearance associated with the term. The expression “es un negro” might refer to everyone who has darker skin tones, grouping them into a specific social category. However, beyond a mere description of physical attributes, “es un negro” delineates a person situated at various margins and lower rungs of society, whether for economic or social reasons. The appellation is also ordinarily used in jest as a nickname for a person who, of “black phenotype,” has nothing. The label “morocho” seems to be the most appropriate appellation for dark-skinned people in the country.
Argentine white supremacist identity is often matched by a certain right-wing political ideology that is classist, macho and, to make no bones about it, xenophobic. In the 2023 elections, such a systemic structure takes on the face of Javier Milei. The Argentine’s Donald Trump claimed in 2022 at the presentation of his book that he did not want to apologize for “being a white, blonde [questionable element], blue-eyed man.” With false modesty, the demagogue took on the burden of what it means in the country to have his hallmarks: privilege, status, and power.
Milei’s need for apologies should not revolve around his connotations but rather the proposals presented during his election campaign and outlined in his political program, which include the dollarization of pesos and the removal of government subsidies. Besides assessing if these actions would really benefit the vulnerable economy of the country, it’s worth questioning why it’s the middle-class, often white population that stands to suffer the least from such policies. They can afford to transact in dollars, weather an initial depreciation of their income, and provide for their children’s education without relying on government subsidies. In essence, they can do without the limited benefits offered by the Argentine state, given their already privileged positions.
The election of this politician not only adversely affects Black minorities, but also targets apparent minorities whom this divisive ideology seeks to erase, including Indigenous populations and the poorest segment of society—the current Argentinian “blacks”—who significantly enrich the Argentine populace. In such a scenario, one can only hope that the world will strive for a more consistent record of their existence.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site every week.
Politics
Risks and Opportunities of Admitting Somalia Into the EAC
The process of integrating Somalia into the EAC should be undertaken with long-term success in mind rather than in the light of the situation currently prevailing in the country.
The East African Community (EAC), whose goal is to achieve economic and political federation, brings together three former British colonies – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania – and newer members Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and most recently the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Somalia first applied to join the EAC in 2012 but with fighting still ongoing on the outskirts of Mogadishu, joining the bloc was impossible at the time. Eleven years later, joining the bloc would consolidate the significant progress in governance and security and, therefore, Somalia should be admitted into the EAC without undue delay. This is for several reasons.
First, Somalia’s admission would be built on an existing foundation of goodwill that the current leadership of Somalia and EAC partner states have enjoyed in the recent past. It is on the basis of this friendship that EAC states continue to play host to Somali nationals who have been forced to leave their country due to the insecurity resulting from the prolonged conflict. In addition, not only does Somalia share a border with Kenya, but it also has strong historical, linguistic, economic and socio-cultural links with all the other EAC partner states in one way or another.
Dr Hassan Khannenje of the Horn Institute for Strategic Studies said: ”Somalia is a natural member of the EAC and should have been part of it long ago.”
A scrutiny of all the EAC member states will show that there is a thriving entrepreneurial Somali diaspora population in all their economies. If indeed the EAC is keen to realise its idea of the bloc being a people-centred community as opposed to being a club of elites, then a look at the spread of Somali diaspora investment in the region would be a start. With an immense entrepreneurial diaspora, Somalia’s admission will increase trading opportunities in the region.
Second, Somalia’s 3,000 km of coastline (the longest in Africa) will give the partner states access to the Indian Ocean corridor to the Gulf of Aden. The governments of the EAC partner states consider the Indian Ocean to be a key strategic and economic theatre for their regional economic interests. Therefore, a secure and stable Somali coastline is central to the region’s maritime trade opportunities.
Despite possessing such a vast maritime resource, the continued insecurity in Somalia has limited the benefits that could accrue from it. The problem of piracy is one example that shows that continued lawlessness along the Somali coast presents a huge risk for all the states that rely on it in the region.
The importance of the maritime domain and the Indian Ocean has seen Kenya and Somalia square it out at the International Court of Justice over a maritime border dispute.
Omar Mahmood of the International Crisis Group said that ”Somalia joining the EAC then might present an opportunity to discuss deeper cooperation frameworks within the bloc, including around the Kenya-Somalia maritime dispute. The environment was not as conducive to collaboration before, and perhaps it explains why the ICJ came in. Integrating into the EAC potentially offers an opportunity to de-escalate any remaining tensions and in turn, focus on developing mechanisms that can be beneficial for the region.”
Nasong’o Muliro, a foreign policy and security specialist in the region, said: “The East African states along the East African coast are looking for opportunities to play a greater role in the maritime security to the Gulf of Aden. Therefore, Somalia joining the EAC bloc will allow them to have a greater say.”
Third, Somalia’s membership of the Arab League means that there is a strong geopolitical interest from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. However, Somalia stands to gain more in the long-term by joining the EAC rather than being under the control of the Gulf states and, to a large extent, Turkey. This is because, historically, competing interests among the Gulf states have contributed to the further balkanisation of Somalia by some members supporting breakaway regions.
On the other hand, the EAC offers a safer option that will respect Somalia’s territorial integrity. Furthermore, EAC partner states have stood in solidarity with Somalia during the difficult times of the civil conflict, unlike the Gulf states. The majority of the troop-contributing countries for the African Union Mission to Somalia came from the EAC partner states of Uganda, Kenya and Burundi. Despite having a strategic interest in Somalia, none of the Gulf states contributed troops to the mission. Therefore, with the expected drawdown of the ATMIS force in Somalia, the burden could fall on the EAC to fill in the vacuum. Building on the experience of deploying in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, it is highly likely that it could be called upon to do the same in Somalia when ATMIS exits by 2024.
The presence of the Al Shabaab group in Somalia is an albatross around its neck such that the country cannot be admitted into the EAC without factoring in the risks posed by the group.
According to a report by the International Crisis Group, the government of Somalia must move to consolidate these gains – especially in central Somalia – as it continues with its offensive in other regions. However, Somalia may not prevail over the Al Shabaab on its own; it may require a regional effort and perhaps this is the rationale some policymakers within the EAC have envisioned. If the EAC can offer assurances to Somalia’s fledgling security situation, then a collective security strategy from the bloc might be of significance.
Somalia’s admission comes with risks too. Kenya and Uganda have in the past experienced attacks perpetrated by Al Shabaab and, therefore, opening up their borders to Somalia is seen as a huge risk for these countries. The spillover effect of the group’s activities creates a lot of discomfort among EAC citizens, in particular those who believe that the region remains vulnerable to Al Shabaab attacks.
If the EAC can offer assurances to Somalia’s fledgling security situation, then a collective security strategy from the bloc might be of significance.
The EAC Treaty criteria under which a new member state may be admitted into the community include – but are not limited to – observance and practice of the principles of good governance, democracy and the rule of law. Critics believe that Somalia fulfils only one key requirement to be admitted to the bloc – sharing a border with an EAC partner state, namely, Kenya. On paper, it seems to be the least prepared when it comes to fulfilling the other requirements. The security situation remains fragile and the economy cannot support the annual payment obligations to the community.
According to the Fragility State Index, Somalia is ranked as one of the poorest among the 179 countries assessed. Among the key pending issues is the continued insecurity situation caused by decades of civil war and violent extremism. Furthermore, Human Rights Watch ranks Somalia low on human rights and justice – a breakdown of government institutions has rendered them ineffective in upholding the human rights of its citizens.
Somalia’s citizens have faced various forms of discrimination due to activities beyond their control back in their country. This has led to increasingly negative and suspicious attitudes towards Somalis and social media reactions to the possibility of Somalia joining the EAC have seen a spike in hostility towards citizens of Somalia. The country’s admission into the bloc could be met with hostility from the citizens of other partner states.
Dr Nicodemus Minde, an academic on peace and security, agrees that indeed citizens’ perceptions and attitudes will shape their behaviour towards Somalia’s integration. He argues that ”the admission of Somalia is a rushed process because it does not address the continued suspicion and negative perception among the EAC citizens towards the Somali people. Many citizens cite the admission of fragile states like South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo as a gateway of instability to an already unstable region”.
Indeed, the biggest challenge facing the EAC has been how to involve the citizens in their activities and agenda. To address this challenge, Dr Minde says that ’’the EAC needs to conduct a lot of sensitisation around the importance of integration because to a large extent many EAC citizens have no clue on what regional integration is all about”. The idea of the EAC being a people-centred organisation as envisioned in the Treaty has not been actualised. The integration process remains very elitist as it is the heads of state that determine and set the agenda.
The country’s admission into the bloc could be met with hostility from the citizens of other partner states.
Dr Khannenje offers a counter-narrative, arguing that public perception is not a major point of divergence since “as the economies integrate deeper, some of these issues will become easy to solve”. There are also those who believe that the reality within the EAC is that every member state has issues with one or the other partner state and, therefore, Somalia will be in perfect company.
A report by the Economic Policy Research Centre outlines the various avenues through which both the EAC and Somalia can benefit from the integration process and observes that there is therefore a need to fast-track the process because the benefits far outweigh the risks.
EAC integration is built around the spirit of good neighbourliness. It is against this backdrop that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has extended the goodwill to join the EAC and therefore, it should not be vilified and condemned, but rather embraced. As Onyango Obbo has observed, Somalia is not joining the EAC – Somalia is already part of the EAC and does not need any formal welcoming.
Many critics have argued that the EAC has not learnt from the previous rush to admit conflict-plagued South Sudan and the DRC. However, the reality is that Somalia will not be in conflict forever; at some point, there will be tranquillity and peace. Furthermore, a keen look at the history of the EAC member states shows that a number of them have experienced cycles of conflict in the past.
Somalia is, therefore, not unique. Internal contradictions and conflict are some of the key features that Somalia shares with most of the EAC member states. The process of integrating Somalia into the EAC should, therefore, be undertaken with long-term success in mind rather than in the light of the situation currently prevailing in the country.
Politics
The Repression of Palestine Solidarity in Kenya
Kenya is one of Israel’s closest allies in Africa. But the Ruto-led government isn’t alone in silencing pro-Palestinian speech.
Israel has been committing genocide against the people of Occupied Palestine for 75 years and this has intensified over the last 30 days with the merciless carpet bombing of Gaza, along with raids and state-sanctioned settler violence in the West Bank. In the last month of this intensified genocide, the Kenyan government has pledged its solidarity to Israel, even as the African Union released a statement in support of Palestinian liberation. While peaceful marches have been successfully held in Kisumu and Mombasa, in Nairobi, Palestine solidarity organizers were forced to cancel a peaceful march that was to be held at the US Embassy on October 22. Police threatened that if they saw groups of more than two people outside the Embassy, they would arrest them. The march was moved to a private compound, Cheche Bookshop, where police still illegally arrested three people, one for draping the Palestinian flag around his shoulders. Signs held by children were snatched by these same officers.
When Boniface Mwangi took to Twitter denouncing the arrest, the response by Kenyans spoke of the success of years of propaganda by Israel through Kenyan churches. To the Kenyan populous, Palestine and Palestinians are synonymous with terrorism and Israel’s occupation of Palestine is its right. However, this Islamophobia and xenophobia from Kenyans did not spring from the eternal waters of nowhere. They are part of the larger US/Israel sponsored and greedy politician-backed campaign to ensure Kenyans do not start connecting the dots on Israel’s occupation of Palestine with the extra-judicial killings by Kenyan police, the current occupation of indigenous people’s land by the British, the cost-of-living crisis and the IMF debts citizens are paying to fund politician’s lavish lifestyles.
Kenya’s repression of Palestine organizing reflects Kenya’s long-standing allyship with Israel. The Kenyan Government has been one of Israel’s A-star pupils of repression and is considered to be Israel’s “gateway” to Africa. Kenya has received military funding and training from Israel since the 60s, and our illegal military occupation of Somalia has been funded and fueled by Israel along with Britain and the US. Repression, like violence, is not one dimensional; repression does not just destabilize and scatter organizers, it aims to break the spirit and replace it instead with apathy, or worse, a deep-seated belief in the rightness of oppression. In Israel’s architecture of oppression through repression, the Apartheid state has created agents of repression across many facets of Kenyan life, enacting propaganda, violence, race, and religion as tools of repression of Palestine solidarity organizing.
When I meet with Naomi Barasa, the Chair of the Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement, she begins by placing Kenya’s repression of Palestine solidarity organizing in the context of Kenya as a capitalist state. “Imperialism is surrounded and buffered by capitalistic interest,” she states, then lists on her fingers the economic connections Israel has created with Kenya in the name of “technical cooperation.” These are in agriculture, security, business, and health; the list is alarming. It reminds me of my first memory of Israel (after the nonsense of the promised land that is)—about how Israel was a leader in agricultural and irrigation technologies. A dessert that flowed with milk and honey.
Here we see how propaganda represses, even before the idea of descent is born: Kenyans born in the 1990s grew up with an image of a benign, prosperous, and generous Christian Israel that just so happened to be unfortunate enough to be surrounded by Muslim states. Israel’s PR machine has spent 60 years convincing Kenyan Christians of the legitimacy of the nation-state of Israel, drawing false equivalences between Christianity and Zionism. This Janus-faced ideology was expounded upon by Israel’s ambassador to Kenya, Michel Lotem, when he said “Religiously, Kenyans are attached to Israel … Israel is the holy land and they feel close to Israel.” The cog dizzy of it all is that Kenyan Christians, fresh from colonialism, are now Africa’s foremost supporters of colonialism and Apartheid in Israel. Never mind the irony that in 1902, Kenya was the first territory the British floated as a potential site for the resettlement of Jewish people fleeing the pogroms in Europe. This fact has retreated from public memory and public knowledge. Today, churches in Kenya facilitate pilgrimages to the holy land and wield Islamophobia as a weapon against any Christian who questions the inhumanity of Israel’s 75-year Occupation and ongoing genocide.
Another instrument of repression of pro-Palestine organizing in Kenya is the pressure put on Western government-funded event spaces to decline hosting pro-Palestine events. Zahid Rajan, a cultural practitioner and organizer, tells me of his experiences trying to find spaces to host events dedicated to educating Kenyans on the Palestinian liberation struggle. He recalls the first event he organized at Alliance Français, Nairobi in 2011. Alliance Français is one of Nairobi’s cultural hubs and regularly hosts art and cultural events at the space. When Zahid first approached Alliance to host a film festival for Palestinian films, they told him that they could not host this event as they already had (to this day) an Israeli film week. Eventually, they agreed to host the event with many restrictions on what could be discussed and showcased. Unsurprisingly they refused to host the event again. The Goethe Institute, another cultural hub in Kenya that offers its large hall for free for cultural events, has refused to host the Palestinian film festival or any other pro-Palestine event. Both Alliance and Goethe are funded by their parent countries, France and Germany respectively (which both have pro-Israel governments). There are other spaces and businesses that Zahid has reached out to host pro-Palestine education events that have, in the end, backtracked on their agreement to do so. Here, we see the evolution of state-sponsored repression to the private sphere—a public-private partnership on repression, if you will.
Kenya’s members of parliament took to heckling and mocking as a tool of repression when MP Farah Maalim wore an “Arafat” to Parliament on October 25. The Speaker asked him to take it off stating that it depicted “the colors of a particular country.” When Maalim stood to speak he asked: “Tell me which republic,” and an MP in the background could be heard shouting “Hamas” and heckling Maalim, such that he was unable to speak on the current genocide in Gaza. This event, seen in the context of Ambassador Michael Lotem’s charm offensive at the county and constituency level, is chilling. His most recent documented visit was to the MP of Kiharu, Ndindi Nyoro, on November 2. The Israeli propaganda machine has understood the importance of County Governors and MPs in consolidating power in Kenya.
Yet, in the face of this repression, we have seen what Naomi Barasa describes as “many pockets of ad hoc solidarity,” as well as organized solidarity with the Palestinian cause. We have seen Muslim communities gather for many years to march for Palestine, we have seen student movements such as the Nairobi University Student Caucus release statements for Palestine, and we have seen social justice centers such as Mathare Social Justice Centre host education and screening events on Palestinian liberation. Even as state repression of Palestine solidarity organizing has intensified in line with the deepening of state relations with Apartheid Israel, more Kenyans are beginning to connect the dots and see the reality that, as Mandela told us all those years ago, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.”
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site every week.
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