Pitfalls in responding to armed groups’ supply chains: lessons from Cameroon and the Sahel.

Policy interest in how armed groups and terrorist organizations fund their operations was elevated throughout the ‘War on Terror’ and has remained a significant concern. This interest has generally been primarily focused on financing, and on attempts to block financial flows to armed or proscribed groups. Much of this depends on trying to regulate their use of banking infrastructure and electronic payment systems, rather than cash-based transfers.

While financing is key to buying the materials that armed groups may need for their operation – arms, fuel, cars, fighter salaries and so on – it does not, as a unit of analysis, consider the other ways in which armed groups acquire those resources. In recognition of this, there is also a growing focus on responding to supply chains providing operational resources to non-state armed groups in West Africa. This has typically sought to apply the same logic around ‘blocking’ or banning flows.

But transplanting such approaches to countering operational resource flows carries significant risks – some of which have crystallized in the wake of attempts by West African governments to block flows of fuel, motorbikes and other commodities to non-state armed groups.¹ The key harms from such approaches have been felt by communities in the relevant regions, who often rely on the same supply chains.

Ambazonian separatists: Following the money in armed group financing

Ambazonian separatist armed groups are a cluster of armed groups, of varying size and degrees of organization, that began forming in 2017 after a crackdown by the Cameroonian government on activism by the Anglophone population, who were campaigning for better representation of the English language and speakers in national institutions, which have been dominated by Francophones since independence. Sensing a dead end in their opportunities for social and political advancement in Cameroon, and with no clear peaceful avenue to compromise, a more militant, separatist agenda emerged from protests that had previously been calling for a federalist state. Diaspora activists, based mostly in the United States and Europe, have been instrumental in shaping the conflict and its direction.

From the beginning of the armed conflict in late 2017, groups willing to fight Cameroonian state forces have needed money. One of their significant needs was arms, given that the groups were originally poorly armed – either with sticks or bladed weapons, or with hunting rifles. While Ambazonia fighters were able to seize various military arms during their clashes with Cameroonian forces, they also took to buying large numbers of weapons from Nigeria, which were trafficked to the Anglophone region.²

In the early days of the conflict, separatists benefitted from substantial support from the Anglophone Cameroonian diaspora. Certain activists in the diaspora developed large, influential followings on social media, and also pushed hard-line separatist narratives, supporting armed struggle over potential political solutions such as federalism. These activists also became effective fundraisers, soliciting donations from the wider diaspora.³ As described by a journalist who has extensively covered the conflict:

At the time when the armed groups were being formed, you would see some of the diaspora leaders who published videos [on social media] of the guys on the ground. And they are saying (in the video): ‘We are here, we just formed this group and this is the village where we find ourselves. We don’t have shoes. We don’t have this. We don’t have that. We are pledging allegiance to this diaspora person.’ And there’s always a way for the diaspora leaders to reach out to them, provide these things and then start controlling them. These groups came up on their own and simply pledged allegiance to Ayaba Cho [a prominent diaspora activist] and other leaders who are in the diaspora.⁴

Ambazonian fighters and close observers say that the financial transfers were chiefly for buying weapons.⁵ These might be purchased in Nigeria by diaspora networks or by the armed groups themselves.⁶ The Cameroonian government made substantial and varied efforts to counteract and intercept the money transfers being sent from the diaspora to Ambazonian armed groups. These efforts took several forms.

One such initiative was lobbying the activists’ countries of residence, particularly the United States, for assistance in preventing these transfers. This has yielded some encouraging results. For example, in September 2023, Eric Tataw Tano, a US-based businessman and activist in Cameroon’s Ambazonian separatist movement, was arrested in the US. Tano was accused of trying to intimidate a witness and shape their testimony in an ongoing investigation into his business practices surrounding allegations of wire fraud. He allegedly tried to instruct the witness on how they would testify to a grand jury on several issues, including his ‘role in the Cameroonian separatist movement, or about various kidnappings and acts of violence in Cameroon’.⁷ This suggests the grand jury case (details of which are not public) may be related to financial support for the separatist movement. This case comes just months after another case was concluded, which, like Tano’s, took place in Maryland, where several people were convicted of a conspiracy to illegally export a container of firearms – including sniper rifles, assault rifles and ammunition – to Nigeria for onward movement to separatists in Cameroon.⁸

However, despite these recent developments, Cameroonian officials express frustration at the limited cooperation they have received from western governments in regard to Ambazonian separatists, including tackling diaspora financial transfers.⁹

A more promising avenue of intervention for the government, at least for a time, proved to be tracing the money transfers and arresting those who came to collect them. According to the Cameroonian National Agency for Financial Investigations, they began to realize that money transfers for armed groups that had been sent through commonly used international transfer services (including MoneyGram and Western Union) tended to be collected early in the mornings in the Anglophone provinces.¹⁰ Monitoring these collections, according to the agency, led to intelligence and arrests. The government also increased taxes on mobile money payments and limited the amounts that could be sent in a single transfer.¹¹

As a result of these arrests, senders of the transfers diversified the means through which they sent money, with the government attempting to keep up with these adaptations. The use of informal intermediaries rose. Cameroonian individuals or businesses would be handed a sum of money by an intermediary (often based in Nigeria), who in turn had been given it by diaspora activists or their contacts. They would then either pass it on to an appointed person or deposit it on the premises of a business frequented by intermediaries of the armed groups. Such transfers, according to an activist from Bamenda who has contacts with the armed groups, were much harder for security services to follow. Cryptocurrency payments were also used, although these are not believed to be a widespread form of transfer.¹²

Attempts to trace financial flows thus yielded some successes, although the separatists were able to diversify external funding channels to evade such tracking. Notably, there has been a gradual reduction in money transfers to the Ambazonian separatists, however these were primarily driven not by government interventions, but by a loss of trust in separatist leaders by the wider diaspora community. This was due to the rise in criminal activity and violence – particularly kidnapping – by the armed groups against civilians,¹³ as well as suspected financial mismanagement, political disagreements and, according to some observers, deception about how the money was being spent.¹⁴

JNIM in the Sahel and the dilemmas of countering resourcing

Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) is the largest and most active armed group in the Sahel. JNIM is an amalgamation of four Sahelian jihadist movements, including the Sahelian branch of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb that merged in 2017.¹⁵ Its objectives can be characterized as the overthrow of regional governments and the installation of Islamist governance, as well as expanding its influence beyond the Sahel, particularly into coastal West Africa.¹⁶

While also leveraging violence, JNIM has proven adept at presenting itself as the guardian of local livelihoods, particularly when those livelihoods involve illicit economies, and which state officials have attempted to regulate or crack down on. JNIM’s ‘offer’ to communities dependent on illicit and informal economies is simple. They will repel the state’s presence and ensure it does not return, in exchange for deference to their authority. However, they will also exploit those illicit economies to resupply themselves.

One of the most widely smuggled commodities in the Sahel is fuel. In many places, this is simply because licit fuel is not available. Kompienga province in Est region, Burkina Faso, does not contain a single licit fuel station.¹⁷ The entirely of northern Mali is likewise only supplied by smuggled fuel, in this case from Algeria.¹⁸ However, the price difference between smuggled and licit fuel is also an important factor where licit fuel is available, with most buyers preferring the cheaper smuggled fuel. For example, in 2022 on the border between Benin and Burkina Faso, licit fuel was priced at 650 CFA Francs (FCFA) per litre, but could be purchased for FCFA 250 per litre at the side of the road (notably, price dynamics in this area have changed following the May 2023 lifting of government subsidies on fuel in Nigeria).¹⁹ Given that fuel is an essential good for civilians as well as armed groups, helping to keep this illicit trade running is a valuable role JNIM can play.

As a Burkinabe journalist said of the situation in the W-Arly-Pendjari complex: ‘The armed groups kill customs (officers) and foresters. But they get on well with the traders, because these traders are in charge of bringing these products to market. Petrol, motorbikes – it’s the same merchants who smuggle these that supply the armed groups.’²⁰

JNIM use the illicit fuel market for resupply in several ways. Although not ubiquitous, they were known to tax small-scale illicit fuel smugglers, justified as ‘protection payment’, including in Nadiagou, Est region, Burkina Faso in late 2022. They also reportedly resupplied their own stocks from this smuggled fuel.²¹ They have further been alleged to have close links with highly organized fuel smugglers that work on a larger scale. Some of the individuals arrested in a major fuel trafficking case in Burkina Faso in 2021 were businessmen who owned fuel warehouses for smuggled Nigerian fuel in areas where JNIM are extremely active and known to source fuel from, including Barsalogho, Pissila and Pensa.²²

However, interventions to try and stop fuel smuggling are extremely controversial in the eyes of residents, particularly if they are already struggling to afford the cost of living. Documented reactions to such efforts have ranged from indifference to outright resistance. Benin attempted to forbid fuel sales within 20km of national borders, to little avail. Attempts to tax and control fuel imports from Algeria in northern Mali were met with civil unrest in Gao in October 2017.²³

Although these fuel interventions were not always directly targeting armed groups, armed group use of fuel smuggling has been a source of concern for regional governments. For instance, military interventions on the Benin–Burkina Faso border, in the disputed smuggling hub of Kourou/Koualou in September 2021, were conceived in part to break JNIM’s control and exploitation of fuel smuggling networks. However, as the article examining state interventions in Benin’s fuel smuggling market in this Risk Bulletin shows, these operations have complex impacts also on civilians, who rely on smuggled fuel.²⁴

A similar situation is evident in regard to JNIM’s supply of motorbikes. Motorbikes are a significant source of expenditure for JNIM²⁵ and have been a game-changing addition to their operations. Motorbikes, particularly large or heavy models, are the only form of transport that functions in many parts of the rural Sahel. They are cheaper and more fuel-efficient than cars and can navigate roads and terrain that cars cannot access. Larger models also allow two or more riders per motorbike, allowing combatants to drive and shoot from a single vehicle.²⁶

JNIM’s suppliers are predominantly local dealers who source untaxed motorbikes from trafficking networks, or the trafficking networks themselves. (Since local JNIM units have substantial autonomy over their resourcing, there is no single source.)²⁷

Motorbikes in the Theatre Populaire district of Ouagadougou, known for its vehicle and parts shops. Reportedly, stolen motorbikes are frequently taken to shops here for modification and resale, even though most businesses in the area serve the licit market.

Photo: Eleanor Beevor

These trafficking networks tend to source the motorbikes from importers based in major regional ports, such as Lomé or Lagos. The importers, who source from Asia, reportedly divert a significant proportion of motorbikes from the licit, taxed supply chain once they reach the port.²⁸ These are then sold on to illicit networks. Given the higher prices that goods fetch in landlocked Sahelian states, many of these motorbikes are smuggled north over the borders for resale in Burkina Faso, Niger or Mali.²⁹

The governments of Sahelian states are keenly aware of the importance of motorbikes to non-state armed groups, including JNIM. As a result, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have all made use of a variety of bans on the kinds of motorbikes that JNIM favours (larger, more durable models with larger fuel cylinders and stronger shock absorbers).³⁰ These include bans on the sale, circulation and import of these types of motorbikes in armed group affected zones. Bans on motorbikes have been experimented with by Sahelian governments since 2014,³¹ but the vast majority were put in place after 2019. The consistent renewal of many of these bans – some of which have endured for several years – on the grounds of armed group activity makes clear that they do not seriously inhibit this activity.

Figure 1 Motorbike bans in the region.

In terms of restricting supply, the bans appear to have been fairly ineffective. Some observers, including some law enforcement officers, believe that the bans have actually increased reliance on motorbike trafficking networks by both armed groups and civilians, while damaging the business of legitimate suppliers.³²

A key factor in the lack of success of these bans lies in what they mean for civilians. Banning them effectively forces a halt to civilians’ ability to access markets, schools, hospitals and so on. Even circulation bans that only apply in night hours have severe ramifications, particularly for the informal motorbike transport sector and the hospitality sector. This may risk causing resentment among local populations and, in turn, risks turning those who are ambivalent towards JNIM into supporters of the group, or at least towards tacit acceptance of it.

Civilian-centric interventions to counter armed group financing and resourcing

Both of these case studies make clear that there are few simple options when trying to counter armed group financing and resourcing, including through illicit supply chains. However, attempts to trace and block illicit financial flows to armed groups can – when finely targeted – yield substantial results.³³ Attempts to block armed group resourcing in West Africa have been less successful, and yielded significant unintended consequences, particularly in harming communities. This is particularly so because armed groups and civilians are similarly dependent on goods such as fuel and motorbikes, which underpin the operations of many non-state armed groups.

A ‘civilian-centric’ approach should guide future efforts to prevent armed groups from exploiting illicit supply chains for resourcing. However, for as long as civilians cannot afford price hikes or access licit supplies, policymakers may be forced to tolerate a degree of illicit activity. They would also be advised to target their interventions against armed groups much more precisely, if they wish to avoid alienating civilians and boosting support for armed groups.

Notes