Charcoal from Somalia is prized in Gulf nations: Made from acacia trees, it’s slow burning and gives a sweet aroma to the region’s beloved grilled meats and to tobacco burned in waterpipes. It is also banned by the United Nations, because its shipments rake in millions of dollars a year for al-Qaida-linked militants.
Yet on a recent day, thousands of bags of charcoal believed to be from Somalia were videotaped by an Associated Press journalist being loaded off a cargo ship in this isolated Omani port and piled into trucks to be shipped through the mountains into the neighboring United Arab Emirates.
Khasab port, a longtime smuggling hub, has become a major transit point into Gulf nations for Somali charcoal, frustrating international efforts to cut off the cheap-to-make product that is a major moneymaker for al-Shabab, the militant group behind September’s deadly attack on a Kenyan mall. The U.N. is pressing Gulf countries to do more to shut off the trade.
Despite the Security Council ban imposed in February 2012 , total exports of Somali charcoal have risen to 24 million sacks a year valued at up to $384 million, according to a July report by a U.N. monitoring group. Much of it is headed to the Gulf, with al-Shabab and others in the supply chain sharing the benefits, the monitors say.
“The reality is if there is a market in the Gulf, then charcoal will find a way out of Somalia,” Matt Bryden, a former U.N. monitor who is now director of Sahan Research, a think tank focused on Horn of Africa.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the main markets and “until they act, it is going to be very difficult in Somalia — which is relatively lawless, where a government is weak, where ports are uncontrolled — to block the flow of charcoal at its source,” he said.
Charcoal may be a modest product, but it’s a lucrative trade for al-Shabab, the al-Qaida branch in Somalia that has fueled turmoil in the East African nation. Much of the production happens in al-Shabab-controlled parts of southern Somalia, according to U.N. monitors.
Al-Shabab takes a $2 “tax” on each of the estimated 600,000-1 million bags of charcoal loaded every month onto ships at the southern Somali port of Barawe, which the group controls, according to the monitors report.
The United Nations Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group, which is tasked with enforcing the ban, has sent letters in recent weeks to the governments of Oman and the United Arab Emirates raising concerns about continued shipments of suspected Somali charcoal.
They notified Omani authorities on Nov. 20 that at least four ships last seen taking on charcoal at Barawe were observed moored or docked in Khasab, according to one of the letters obtained by The Associated Press.
Emirati and Omani officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The United Arab Emirates, home to the port city of Dubai, has taken steps to clamp down on the trade. The country is a major transportation and logistics hub for the wider Middle East and has well-established charcoal distribution centers.
It told U.N. inspectors in September 2012 it impounded a shipment of 100,000 sacks of Somali charcoal, though the loaded ship later left port and sailed to Saudi Arabia, according to the U.N. Emirati agents stopped another ship, the Energy 3, and seized its cargo of charcoal in August, according to traders.
The heightened vigilance at Emirati ports is pushing the sea trade to neighboring Oman, the monitors and charcoal dealers say.
Source: AP
