Tanzania dismantles al-Shabaab child indoctrination camp in Tanga region

Children as young as 4 years old were found being indoctrinated 
by al-Shabaab elements in Tanga. Above is a screenshot from 
a video produced by al-Shabaab's media arm al-Kataib, 
showing young boys being indoctrinated in Somalia.

Tanzanian police broke up an al-Shabaab training operation in Tanga region, arresting 69 suspects and freeing dozens of recruits ranging from 4 to 13 years old in a security sweep carried out October 28th to November 5th.

"This has shocked us, we have increased security in Kilindi district and we have deployed enough community police who know the place properly, and through joint operations with our police we are getting encouraging results," Tanga Regional Police Commander Constantine Massawe told Sabahi, confirming the number of arrests.

On the first day of the operation, police rescued 54 children and 32 women who were found at a training facility in Lwande and reunited them with their families the first week of November, according to Kilindi District Commissioner Selemani Liwowa.

Indoctrinating very young minds

Another 20 children, aged between 4 and 13 and who "had been completely brainwashed" by al-Shabaab at a local mosque, were placed in a rehabilitation programme, Liwowa told Sabahi.

When police found them at Madina mosque, the youngsters possessed exercise books which contained teachings on "how to kill using a knife [or] a machete, how to fight aggressors with weapons and without [weapons], how to sabotage the economy and how to liberate East Africa from the hands of the kuffar [infidels]," according to Liwowa.

Al-Shabaab had brainwashed these children to the point that they disowned their parents as not being true Muslims because they intermingled with non-Muslims, he said.

During the raid on the mosque, police also seized 12 videos containing al-Shabaab teachings on how to liberate Muslims in East Africa and the world at large, he said.

The leader of the group, who goes by the name Ayubu and is commonly known as "Master", fled minutes before the police arrived at the mosque, but they arrested his assistant, a resident of Singida region identified as Mr. Jumanne, Liwowa said.

The children were handed over to social workers for a three-week rehabilitation programme, said Tanga District Commissioner Halima Dendego. If they are able, the children will be reunited with their families, she said.

"My surprise is how these young children came in contact with these trainers," Dendego told Sabahi. "You find a four-year-old child whose parents are not known, and you wonder how they got hold of such a young child."

Parents need to be educated about the importance of keeping their children in schools so they do not fall prey to terrorist groups, Dendego said.

A growing al-Shabaab threat?

The presence of al-Shabaab in the district came to light in the last week of October, when aggrieved citizens notified local government officials about the training camp located in the Lwande forest.

"We got the information from Samaritans, especially pastoralists whose cattle were being seized whenever they crossed nearby this training camp," Liwowa said. "Also, [the al-Shabaab trainers] were evicting natives and confiscating land to the extent that they had acquired 500 acres."

Local officials learned that four al-Shabaab trainers had arrived in Kilindi district in 2008 and joined the Madina mosque, but villagers distanced themselves from the trainers after finding their views to be too fundamentalist, Liwowa said.

"After that skirmish late in 2008," referring to a physical altercation that occurred inside the mosque between locals and the al-Shabaab members, "the trainers bought their own piece of land and built a separate mosque which now they used to impart al-Shabaab teachings," he said.

According to information gathered so far, some children who had been trained by al-Shabaab in Kilindi had been sent to Somalia via Mombasa, Kenya, Liwowa said. A number of al-Shabaab instructors from Somalia and Mombasa also came to Kilindi in early 2013, and there appears to be recruitment efforts in other regions as well, such as Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar, Pwani and Mtwara.

The police operation in Kilindi district follows the October 7th arrest of 11 suspected al-Shabaab members undergoing military training in the Mtwara region.

In addition, police arrested Tanzanian businessman Juma Abdallah Kheri October 31st in Tanga on suspicion that he was involved in financing terrorist groups in Tanzania and al-Shabaab's affiliate in Kenya, the Muslim Youth Centre.

When asked what Tanzania was doing to counter the seemingly growing al-Shabaab threat, Director of Criminal Investigations Robert Manumba said police were collaborating with other security agencies to combat the problem.

"We have teamed up all security departments to form a special team. The team includes security officers from the police, army, our national security intelligence service, immigration and the [Tanzania Revenue Authority] who are closely working together to find a lasting solution," Manumba told Sabahi.

Boko Haram Finally Designated as Terrorists

The State Department designated the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nigerian Boko Haram group (aka Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad) as terrorist, after two years of Congressional hearings and repeated requests to do so.

The growth of Boko Haram and the spread of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups throughout Africa was helped by weapons from Muammar Qaddafi’s stockpile, including Libyan SA-7 and SA-24 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (MANPADs), which, according to the State Department, “have been accounted for.”

The logic behind suspending the designation makes you wonder. Seventeen months ago, the Sate Department listed Boko Haram’s leaders Abubakar Shekau, Abubakar Adam Kambar, and Khalid al-Barnawi as Specially Designated Global Terrorists because they led an al-Qaeda-linked terror group that “threaten[s] the security of US nationals or national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.” However, the group itself wasn’t designated until today.

The reason for this absurdity was that ”Many Nigeria watchers in Washington, including former Ambassador John Campbell, have backed the US State Department’s approach, arguing that it [Boko Haram] does not pose a threat to the American homeland” at present, and that “Americans could become a Boko Haram target if the US government is perceived as closely aligning with Abuja’s war against the group.” The same watchers, with an eye toward the exacting requirements for terrorist designation, have also pointed out that Boko Haram hasn’t really attacked the Nigerian government although the group has been attacking military installations …

Moreover, Boko Haram’s splinter group, Ansaru, aka Ansar al-Muslimeen in the Land of Black Africans (Bilad al-Sudan) was also designated terrorist by the State Department for focusing “on Nigerian military and Western targets.”  On January 20, 2013, Ansaru ambushed a Nigerian troop convoy bound for Mali to fight al-Qaeda groups there.

Another odd excuse for not designating Boko Haram as terrorist, voiced by human-rights-groups, was that the Nigerian military has been equally as brutal as Boko Haram in suppressing the group and violating the human rights of the Muslim population in northeast Nigeria.

According to this logic, the Muslims in Nigeria are free to violate the human rights of those they perceive as enemies. Since Boko Haram is a jihadist group, all infidels are considered enemies. Does this mean that for these human rights groups, Muslim rights top all others?

In 2012 Boko Haram announced its intentions “to eradicate Christians” from that part of Nigeria it considers Muslim. And Boko Haram’s leaders have threatened the United States specifically many times since the group’s founding in 2009. Yet, the group’s brutal attacks on Nigerian Christians (infidels), including church bombings on holidays and during Sunday services (a preferred modus operandi), didn’t move the State Department, which apparently didn’t wish to be seen as having a special concern for Christians.

It has been known for a while that the new designation was forthcoming, especially after revelation that Boko was probably involved with al-Shabab in the Kenyan mall attacklast September. This designation, like many others before, was preceded by ample warnings, allowing Boko supporters in the U.S. and elsewhere to cover their tracks.

Recommended Reading:

Daniel Agbiboa: The Ongoing Campaign of Terror in Nigeria: Boko Haram versus the State

NEWS24: Boko Haram: ‘Nigeria’s problem for now’

Hussein Solomon: Boko Haram, Identity and the Limits of Counter-Terrorism

Categories: ACD Blog, Terrorist Financing, U.S. Policy

ALISON WINS TOP GLOBAL EDUCATION INNOVATION AWARD

“ALISON is what a fundamental re-think of the education system might look like”
Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School

Do Banks Take Excessive Risks?

Do Banks Take Excessive Risks? 

Do Banks Take Excessive Risks?

• 1. Banks are essential but risky  Banks provide essential services  Accepting deposits  Making loans  Facilitating payments  But banking is a risky business  Risk from changes in interest rates, exchange rates, or other market prices  Risk that loans will not be repaid  Risk that liquidity will dry up in a crisis Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn, NY Economic Ideas. 
• 2. How much risk should banks accept?  Banks should not try to avoid risk  They face a trade-off: By accepting more risk, they can earn a higher return  But how much risk should they accept?
• 4. Do banks take excessive risks?  Bank regulators fear that banks, left to their own devices, will take risks that are excessive from the point of view of the economy as a whole  Let’s look at some reasons why banks might take excessive risks:  Contagion effects  Moral hazard  Agency problems.
• 5. Contagion effects Contagion effects arise when the failure of a bank causes harm to other parties  Failure of one bank can cause bank runs as depositors take their money from other banks  Fear of more failures causes banks to stop doing business with one another, causing failures to spread  When banks fail consumers and nonfinancial businesses can’t get the credit they need to operate normally.
• 6. Moral Hazard Moral hazard arises when someone who is protected from loss fails to take measures to avoid excessive risk  The term originated in the insurance business, where people who are insured against loss fail to take measures to minimize risk  For example, people who have flood insurance may build in areas that are known to be at risk of flooding
• 7. Moral Hazard and Deposit Insurance The purpose of deposit insurance  During a bank run every depositor tries to be first in line to withdraw funds  Deposit insurance protects against bank runs by promising to pay depositors even if not first in line. Deposit insurance and moral hazard  Without deposit insurance, depositors would be careful to put their money only in banks that were operated safely  With deposit insurance, this source of discipline disappears—even the riskiest banks can attract deposits Deposit insurance can help prevent bank runs like this one at Northern Rock bank in England
• 8. How to avoid the moral hazard of deposit insurance  Grant insurance only to small depositors—use big depositors to provide market discipline  Rely on bondholders and other uninsured creditors of banks to restrain risk taking  Apply risk based premiums – banks with weak balance sheets must pay more to join the deposit insurance system.  Make sure the deposit system is adequately funded
• 9. Moral Hazard: Too Big to Fail  If a bank is so large that its services are essential to the rest of the economy, the government may be forced to rescue it when it is threatened with failure  If banks know they will be rescued, they may take excessive risks— another example of moral hazard  The implicit guarantee gives the largest banks a competitive advantage over smaller banks  Result: They grow even bigger
• 10. Ideas for limiting the TBTF problem  Establish ―living wills‖ to guide the liquidation of even the largest banks  Make sure managers and shareholders bear their fair share of losses when the bank fails  Expose bondholders and other unsecured creditors to ―haircuts‖ in case of failure, that is, make sure they also bear a share of losses http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fat_Gator.jpg
• 11. Agency Problems: Fiduciary Duties of Managers  As agents of shareholders, financial managers have a fiduciary duty to act in their shareholders’ best interests  They should take prudent risks when there is a good chance of a high return for shareholders. . .  . . . but they should not put their personal gain ahead of shareholder interests, or gamble with shareholders’ money Alice and Jim Walton at 2011 Walmart shareholders meeting
• 12. Gambling with your own money When gambling with their own money, many people think the best games are ones like lotteries that  lose most of the time, but not more than they can afford  don’t win often, but have a huge payoff when they do win  These are called positively skewed risks http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/money/lottery.jpg
• 13. Gambling with other people’s money When gambling with other people’s money, the best games . . .  win some positive amount most of the time  rarely lose, but may have very big losses when they do  Once a big loss comes, the game is over, but the gambler keeps past winnings and someone else bears the cost  These are called negatively skewed risks http://www.stockmarketinvestinginfo.com/images/floorpic.jpg Economic Ideas 111314 from Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog
• 14. Misaligned Incentives  Executive compensation plans are often poorly aligned with fiduciary duties toward shareholders  Bonuses for short-term performance  Lack of ―clawback‖ provisions to recapture past bonuses in case of delayed losses  ―Golden parachutes‖ that give large severance payments to executives even when their bad decisions cause large losses  Such bonus-based compensation plans cause managers to seek strategies with negatively skewed risks “Golden parachutes” may tempt executives to take risks that are not in the interests of shareholders
• 15. Hypothetical Example of misaligned incentives Assume a bonus plan that pays 0.1% of net profit each quarter, with zero bonus in case of loss and no clawback Strategy A  5 quarters of $100 million profit  5 quarters of $10 million loss  10-quarter net for shareholders: profit of $449.5 million  10-quarter result for executive: total bonuses of $500,000 Strategy B  9 quarters of $200 million profit  1 quarter of $2,000 million loss  10-quarter net for shareholders: loss of $201.8 million  10-quarter result for executive: total bonuses of $1.8 million Negatively skewed strategy B has higher payoff for the executive but lower payoff for shareholders
• 16. Not just top managers It is not only top managers who have opportunities to gamble with other people’s money  Individual traders within banks  Creditors of bankrupt firms, when they expect bailouts to shift their losses to taxpayers  Bank depositors, when deposit insurance shifts losses to taxpayers UBS blamed trader Kweku Adoboli for $2.3 billion in losses . His defense was that supervisors encouraged him to ignore trading limits as long as he was winning.
• 17. Why did Shareholders Let it Happen? Why do shareholders condone compensation policies that are not aligned with their interests? Some hypotheses:  There is no misalignment—shareholders are also biased toward excessive risks  Technical error: Risk models do not reveal the negative skew of strategic risks  Bidding for management talent is subject to a ―winner’s curse‖ that leads to overly generous compensation plans  Moral hazard (expectation of bailout)  Corporate governance—shareholders don’t like compensation plans, but can’t do anything about them
• 18. ―Shocked Disbelief‖ . “Those of us who have looked to the selfinterest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity are in a state of shocked disbelief” Alan Greenspan Former Federal Reserve Chairman Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform October 23, 2008