ICC Note:
Following the death of al-Shabaab’s former leader late last month, a recent United Nations report on the Islamic insurgency leaked to the press revealed that despite recent setbacks, the groups is as capable as ever to commit acts of atrocity. Responsible for the public beheading of Christian converts, the assassination of key underground pastors and essentially the eradication of Christianity from Somalia, many now fear al-Shabaab is planning its next attack, with vengeance.
10/15/2014 Somalia (The Standard) – War-torn Somalia’s government remains riddled with corruption while Al Shabaab Islamists are as deadly as ever, United Nations investigators warned in a damming report seen by AFP Monday.
The report also documents that weapons sent to the national army and supposed to be used to defend the country’s internationally-backed government have instead been seen on open sale in at least one market where Shabaab agents bought arms.
“Underlying corruption as a system of governance has not yet fundamentally changed and, in some cases, arguably has worsened,” the new report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea read.
The UN Security Council last year allowed a partial lifting of an arms embargo on the country to allow the national army to rearm, but “some of the weapons and ammunition have been diverted to arms markets in Mogadishu,” the report read.
Financially, the UN experts said they had “consistently found patterns of misappropriation with diversion rates of between 70 and 80 percent.”
“The indications are that diverted funds are used for partisan agendas that constitute threats to peace and security,” said the 482-page confidential report, which was provided by a UN source.
Around a third of revenues from the capital’s busy seaport, a key source of income totalling millions of dollars for the internationally funded government, cannot be accounted for.
Meanwhile the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shabaab have shifted tactics in the face of sustained military assaults by the 22,000-strong African Union force and repeated air strikes, including last month’s assassination of insurgent commander Ahmed Abdi Godane.
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