Kenyan forces say flush out suspected Islamist militants in forest

The U.S. State Department is offering a $27 million bounty for information on the whereabouts of six key leaders of al-Shabab, a Somalia-based terrorist organization that has killed thousands of people in the Horn of Africa region.

According to the report, al-Shabab makes $12.2 million a year from levying taxes on sugar trucks.

Since then, the al-Qaeda-affiliated group has orchestrated dozens of attacks in Somalia and neighboring countries.

According to the report, 150,000 tonnes of illicit sugar comes into Kenya via the port city of Kismayu each year. “(The) Somalia authority themselves appreciate that there are so many makeshift ports that are unpoliced”, said Col Obonyo.

“The most disturbing thing is the implication that the Kenyan security services is essentially in business with al-Shabab”, said John Githongo, a former senior anti-corruption official in the Kenyan government who is now a prominent activist.

Its investigators found that KDF taxes every sack of charcoal that leaves and every sack of sugar that arrives at Kismayo, earning an estimated $50 million (46 million euros) a year.

Shinn said that if the allegations in the Journalists for Justice report are “independently confirmed by the US government, then it could result in a frank discussion with the Kenyans about what the hell is going on here”.

It accuses Kenyan troops of widespread human rights abuses including airstrikes, missing targets and hitting civilians and livestock as well as allegations of rape and disappearance.

In the years since, Shebab attacks in Kenya have grown in number and scale – including the killing of at least 67 people at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in 2013 and the massacre of 148 people at a university in Garissa in April – with the militants saying the attacks are retaliation for the Kenyan military presence in Somalia and “war crimes” committed by Kenyan troops.

The army dismissed the report by Kenya’s Journalists for Justice.

According to the report, members of the Kenya military are also illegally exporting charcoal from Somalia.

It said the charcoal and sugar business, both ostensibly shut down because of the revenue they provide to al-Shabaab, had the “protection and cooperation of senior political and military figures”. But United Nations and other experts have said the trade continued after that through the southern Somali port Kismayu, where Kenyan forces have a base.

Sugar is also imported through Kismayu and smuggled across the border into Kenya, where it is sold without paying the high tariffs that Kenya imposes to protect its sugar industry.