The Islamic State group’s Somalia branch has become a crucial hub for financing terror across Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, according to recent studies.
Islamic State-Somalia (ISSOM) operates out of the mountains of northern Puntland, placing it at the center of IS’s network reaching from Afghanistan to Mozambique. From that position, ISSOM funnels arms, fighters and millions of dollars in cash to IS affiliates across the region.
Once considered a minor security threat, the group’s al-Karrar office has become a major player in the broader IS system. In February, ISSOM fighters killed nearly 100 people and wounded 60 more in an attack on a Puntland military base.
As a result of ISSOM’s actions, the group’s leader, Abdulqadir Mumin, has become a rising figure in IS’s transnational operations.
The group has grown from managing about $70,000 in resources in 2019 to handling as much as $6 million a year now.
“The Islamic State in Somalia packs a considerable punch despite its limited operational clout,” researchers with the Crisis Group wrote in a recent report. “Mumin’s potential emergence as global leader signals that IS-Somalia could play a role in the jihadist movement well beyond its homeland.”
Informal cells of IS loyalists in South Africa play an important role in bringing revenue into the organization and serving as intermediaries by coordinating expenditures.
Through a mix of cryptocurrency exchanges and person-to-person hawala networks, ISSOM operatives move hundreds of thousands of dollars raised through ransom kidnappings, extortion, illegal taxes and other means to counterparts in South Africa. From there, the money is transferred to IS affiliates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali and Mozambique.
As an example of ISSOM’s growing influence, its financial support has been vital to the survival of the DRC-based Islamic State Central African Province (ISCAP), according to research by the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University. That financial support has enabled ISCAP, locally known as the Allied Democratic Forces, to recover from the loss of other funding and expand its attacks.
Although cryptocurrencies use digital wallets that can be identified, hawala networks use brokers on each end of a transaction to provide money to recipients.
Under the honor-based system, a client gives money to a broker at one end and the recipient receives that amount from a broker at the other end. In that way, money is transferred without moving through international financial networks. The brokers eventually settle accounts between themselves.
One hawala group, known as the Heeryo network, transferred more than $400,000 from ISSOM to operatives in South Africa over a period of 18 months, according to Program on Extremism researchers. From there, the funds were sent to IS operatives in various African nations and the United Arab Emirates.
“Authorities shut down this network in September 2021, but it can be assumed that parallel networks operated during this same time period and after,” researchers wrote.
Although ISSOM remains smaller and less influential within Somalia than its rival al-Shabaab, its location in the sparsely populated tip of Puntland gives the group space to operate largely unimpeded, according to analysts with the Crisis Group.
“IS-Somalia’s role as a regional financial hub has been key in enabling the group to widen its operations to the continent,” Crisis Group researchers wrote. “That said, the threat that IS-Somalia poses to Somalia and the region derives more from its future ambition than its current capacity.”