KENYA SOCIALIST DEMOCRATIC
ALLIANCE (KSDA)
Thursday 17th July 2003
al-Barakaat, The Untold Saga
An Investigative Piece by
Onyango Oloo
in Montreal, July 17, 2003
Cab drivers can be mobile encyclopedias
and most of the ones I have encountered are very mentally agile. This last
Sunday I found out more about an African business empire while ensconced
in the back seat of a taxi moving between the Runnymede/Bloor and the Queensway/Windmere
in Toronto’s west end.
The driver was a young Somali looking man. I say Somali looking because I
have learned to my cost, never to jump to conclusions about where people
were from based on how they looked. I almost got thrown out of a taxi several
years ago when I gleefully fingered my hired chauffeur as an Ethiopian. I
only found that I was talking to an irate, thoroughly
insulted Eritrean when the vehicle screeched to a halt as the offended driver
demanded, “What did you call me?!”
So this time around, I decided to play it safe. After the greetings and the
normal pleasantries, I offered that I was from Kenya and when he could not
speak a word of Kiswahili, I ventured tentatively whether he
was a Somali.
He answered in the affirmative; he was from Mogadishu; left his place of
birth in 1988 and had spent the intervening years in the UK and other parts
of Europe before relocating to Ontario.
Soon we were in animated chitchat.
Somehow we started talking about al-Barakat. I may have asked something about
what happened to one of the Ottawa based directors of this operation who
at point was being tagged as one of the Al Qaeda money
bags in Canada.
The taxi driver- let’s call him Abdi told me a story that never made it on
CNN or CBC.
He informed me that he made about $500 every week ( yes, that is in our Canadian
pesos, you puffed up American dwellers with your mighty Yankee dollars) doing
his driving gig. For the last six years he told me, he had been putting all
his money in an al-Barakaat account where he had transferred all his money
after transferring all his funds from the mainstream banking institutions
like the Royal, TD Canada Trust, Bank of Montreal and CIBC. At its peak,
he had about $50,000 locked away in
al-Barakaat. This money helped support his family and was the reservoir he
hoped to draw upon later on in life.
Abdi informed me that he was not the only one. Tens of thousands, if not
hundreds had all followed suit and taken their money out of Western financial
institutions into al-Barakaat. He told me of dozens of Somali tycoons investing
upwards of millions of dollars in the operation.
Then one day, just like that, all those savings and funds were gone just
like that.
Abdi says he lost $50,000. He says he knows of people who lost $100 million.
I can not vouch for the accuracy of these figures except to underscore that
the financial loss was devastating.
As he dropped me off at my destination, Abdi hinted darkly that even though
he was a member of the same clan as American marine turned Mogadishu war
lord Hussein Aideed, he would personally volunteer to shoot the war lord
dead for the kind of devastation he had caused to countless Somali families
around the world.
Surprised, I inquired what Aideed Jr. had to do with this. Abdi told me that
it was Hussein who suggested to the Americans that al- Barakat may have been
linked to the feared terror network as a conduit for transferring Al Qaeda
funds around the world. It was a bit bizarre to hear that the son of the
man credited for handing the Americans one of their most humiliating defeats
could be an accomplice in a paralyzing action against so many of his compatriots.
But the taxi driver insisted that the former Marine blathered on to the Yankees
about how his father used to hang out with a certain Saudi born millionaire
contractor turned
ascetic cave-dweller.
Over the next five or six hours, as I traveled back to Quebec, my head swam
with a zillion notions about al-Barakat, Al Qaeda and the disengagement of
Third World people from the global financial system.
Initially my own knowledge about al-Barakat was quite vague, limited to the
gleanings from the newspaper headlines and sound bites from prime time news
to the snatches of conversations from Somali friends and associates in and
around Toronto.
At first, I thought that al-Barakat was just a large hawala clearing house.
For those not in the know, hawala is a system that many of you may have used
without even realizing.
I remember back in the early nineties many Kenyan immigrants, especially
from Mombasa had a sure fire way of getting money from Canada to their folks
back home. You would go to the house of this thirtysomething Swahili woman
and tell her that you wanted to send say 150 dollars to your father in Kibokoni
or Port Reitz, but that you wanted them to receive it in Kenyan shillings.
You would give her the money over here in Canada and she would tell you to
phone your people to go and pick up
the chapaa from Mzee so and so. Since I personally never used the system,
I am not sure if you paid a little fee or if the money you gave her was simply
deposited in a Canadian bank account to be used by that home based mfanyibiashara
whenever he happened to be in North America.
The hawala system was based on trust and a network of people who knew each
other. Most of the people I knew who were involved with hawala were Waswahili,
Wasomali or Wahindi, but of course the practice was quite widespread in the
Middle East, the wider Muslim world, and the South Asian communities given
the Indian origins (where it is called hundi),
of the phenomenon.
Of course after 9/11 hawala has been increasingly criminalized. (See the
following links)
http://www.interpol.int/Public/FinancialCrime/MoneyLaundering/hawala/def
ault.asp
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/hawala.htm
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=16102001-025648-5774r
http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,178227,00.html
So I thought that al-Barakaat had been shut down because it was seen as a
sinister hawala operation. But the facts turned out to be much more complex
than that.
As is my wont before I write any digital essay, I do extensive research.
And I found out a few things about al-Barakat.
I found out that the key figure in al-Barakat was Sheikh Ahmed Ali Jima’ale
who lived in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. A Somali national, Sheikh
Jima’ale oversaw a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that operated in 40
countries. The al- Barakat empire included banks, telecommunications companies,
internet service providers, travel agencies and construction businesses.
Al Barakat was Somalia’s largest employer and in a country pulverized by
civil war, its only financial and communications lifeline. Every year, al-Barakat
channeled at least $500 million into Somalia- remittances from the hundreds
of thousands of Somalis living in the Gulf, Europe, North America and all
over Africa. Abdi the taxi driver explained to me that al-Barakat had ensured
that even the most humble camel herds boy had a cell-phone through which
he could get confirmation of a money
transfer from a relative abroad.
The Somali Diaspora, a fiercely patriotic lot, despite the clan driven carnage
of the long civil war spontaneously decided to support al-Barakat which they
saw as one of their own. Perhaps, people like Abdi and others took very extreme
measures by withdrawing totally from the mainstream Western financial system
but there is no doubt that they were driven by more than a bit of economic
nationalism in supporting a Somali and Muslim run financial operation that
was deemed to be less exploitative and alienated from its clients.
The Americans alleged that al -Barakat was a” quartermaster of terror” and
a “pariah in the civilized world”. They accused Sheikh Ahmed Ali Jima’ale
of being close to Osama bin Laden and that he was a member of al-Itihaad
al-Islamiya, dubbed a terrorist outfit by the United States. A former member
of al-Itihaad, Hussein Ali Elmi came forward with claims that he and Sheikh
Jima’ale had been members of that organization in the 1980s.
Sheikh Jima’ale denied all these accusations stating that he had never met
Osama bin Laden and citing his solid business contacts in Europe that led
for instance, to his close collaboration with the Irish telecommunications
firm, Microcellular Systems whose parent InterWave is listed on the Nasdaq
in rolling out al-Barakat’s GSM mobile network in Somalia at low cost and
getting interWave to assume all risks for the venture- something of a feat
in one of the places considered among the most lawless on the entire planet.
There was a time when the United Nations used to pay its Somali staff through
al-Barakat and even used it to transfer money into Somalia- hardly the sort
of thing you would expect the world’s largest multilateral network to do
with a presumably shady terrorist linked hawala outfit.
Nevertheless, on November 7, 2001, the Washington based Office of the Coordinator
for Counterterrorism included the following enterprises as falling under
President Bush’s Executive Order 13224 blocking the assets of organizations
and individuals with links to terrorism:
al-Barakaat
al-Barakaat Bank
al-Barakat Bank of Somalia
al-Barakat Finance Group
al-Barakat Global Telecommunications
al-Barakat Group of Companies Somalia Limited
al-Barakat International(aka Baraco Co.)
al-Barakat Investments
al-Barakat Wiring Service
Barakaat Boston
Barakaat Construction Company
Barakaat Enterprise
Barakaat Group of Companies
Barakaat International
Barakaat International Foundation
Barakaat North America , Inc.
Barakaat Red Sea Telecommunications
Barakat Bank and Remittances
Barakat Computer Consulting Group(BCG)
Barakat Global Telephone Company
Barakat International Companies(BICO)
Barakat Post Express(BPE)
Barakat Refreshment Company
Barakat Wire Transfer Company
Barakat Telecommunications Company Limited(BTELCO)
Red Sea Barakat Company Limited
Somali Internet Company
Somali Network AB
In addition, several Somali figures, including Sheikh Ahmed Nur Ali Jima’ale
had their personal assets seized and frozen.
On Sunday, November 13th, Arabic News.Com quoted Somali President Abdul Qasem
Salad Hassan as stating that al-Barakaat was innocent of accusations linking
it to al-Qaida. He further denied rumours of al-Qaida's training camps in
Somalia.
Apart from the direct and heavy hits the investors of these al-Barakaat ventures
took, the impact was far greater among ordinary Somalis. I have already cited
the testimony of “Abdi” the Toronto taxi driver who lost the $50,000 he had
toiled for six years in saving.
On the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the London based Guardian
newspaper published an account from Adam Hassan, a Somali refugee worker
in London who fled the civil war in the east African country. Here is an
excerpt from his piece:
“ As a Muslim and a human being, I cannot condone what happened in America.
There is no doubt that it was a horrific attack. There is no doubt also that
the implications from that attack have had long lasting ramifications for
people everywhere. It affected my Somali community because some Somalis have
been associated with the attack. There was a bank used by Somalis to send
remittances to their relatives and loved ones, mainly for maintenance of
people who have nothing. That bank was closed down because of accusations
it was involved with transferring money for al-Qaida. I was among many Somalis-
hundreds of thousands of Somalis in the Diaspora-who used the bank to transfer
money.
For the first couple of months, the closure created confusion as money people
sent through al-Barakat didn’t go there, and I know people whose relatives
are still waiting for that money. People have lost their savings because
the money was frozen- it is still sitting somewhere. Imagine, a lot of people
depended on that maintenance for their schooling, health, education, medication,
their food, their rent- there are people who have been kicked out of rented
houses, there are people who are bankrupt. For an already disrupted and dislocated
people like the Somalis, on the breadline, the impact has to be enormous..
As far as I’m concerned, they had no evidence linking al-Barakat to al-Qaida.
But there is no one in Somalia who can say: ‘Show us the evidence or leave
the bank alone.’ So it gets frozen. Bush doesn’t care about Somalia, or whether
tons of thousands of Somalis who worked for the bank lose their jobs or others
die. All he cares about is him, and that is what is causing a lot resentment.”
Many people have echoed the sentiments expressed by Adam Hassan, especially
the questions about the lack of evidence linking al-Barakat to al-Qaida.
Was it just because the two organization’s names are preceded with the al-
prefix?
A Somali born, Ottawa based Canadian citizen, Leiban Hussein was briefly
incarcerated on suspicion of Al-Qaida ties based on his status as the Chairman
of the now defunct al-Barakat North America Foundation. The charges against
him were later dropped and he was cleared.
To my mind, there is an element of terrorist links with the al-Barakat story,
but not from a source you would think of straight away. To my mind, there
has been a clear case of terrorist activity involved in the al-Barakat case.
But this is terrorism AGAINST al-Barakat, against Somalis, against Africans
and against Muslims.
This terrorism is not coming from an obscure cave in Afghanistan. Rather
it emanates from one of the shadowy federal buildings of the United States
government. I charge the United States government with conducting state terrorism
against legitimate African and Muslim owned businesses and their peaceful
and law abiding owners. When some of us talk of imperialism, we are not just
using tired stock phrases from yesteryear. Imperialism has a very specific
meaning in political and economic terms. It means the unfettered rule of
international finance capital. In our era, this has to be qualified to emphasize
that it is dominated by American corporate interests trying to elbow everyone
out of the way to claim global supremacy.
Apart from the obvious and overt racist and vengeful act of shutting down
the largest Somali owned company in the world as payback for the 1993 debacle
in Mogadishu(which inspired the revisionist Black Hawk Down horror/action
flick) one must see the move against al-Barakat in its very naked economic
and financial manifestations. Surely, some corporate competitor would have
loved to get their hands in that lucrative pie in supposedly devastated Somalia.
On the 30th of April 2002, the BBC announced on its website that “ a new
Somali telecoms company has bought out al-Barakat... The new company, Hormud
Telecom Somalia, has spent $ 2 million buying the equipment and premises
of al-Barakat Telecommunications, said shareholder Abdikarim Ali Mohammed...The
company said it had no links with al-Barakat, which had more than 40,000
subscribers...”
Who owns Hormud? I am still trying to find out. What is even more galling
than witnessing the United States move its massive might to crush a flourishing
African business on the basis of racist innuendo and unproven hearsay is
the blatant double standards.
ENRON, by now a by word for corporate sleaze bilked billions from its clients
and the American taxpayers. Yet most of its key figures like Ken Lay are
walking around scot free, thanks to their election campaign contributions
and personal and business ties with George Bush and company.
For more on ENRON check out:
http://multinationalmonitor.org/enron/enronindex.html
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/mm10worst01.html
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PII.jsp?topicid=145
http://www.thedailyenron.com/
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/1998430
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/business/specials/energy/enron/
The al-Barakaat saga tells us several things.
It underscores the reality of global capital and what it will do to stifle
any burgeoning national bourgeoisie in the Third World seen to be inimical
to pose a long term regional threat, no matter how minor. It illustrates
the continuing demonization of all things Muslim by tarring it with terrorist
links.
It exposes the hypocrisy of the United States which sheds crocodile tears
while decrying African poverty when it does not bat an eyelid to crush one
of Africa’s biggest employers and success stories. It is also a foretaste
at the coming imperialist incursion in East Africa and the Horn of Africa
region as the United States and her allies move in to safeguard their security,
economic, ideological and geo-political strategic interests.
As Kenyans we must stand in solidarity with our neighbours the Somalis who
have such close cultural and historical ties with the Kenyan people- an entire
region of our country is home to Kenyans from various Somali ethnic groups
and clans. As Kenyans we must call on our government to bring forth the question
of al-Barakaat at the continental African Union meetings, and the international
UN and Non-Aligned Movement gatherings.
The key demand is to unfreeze the assets of the al-Barakaat conglomerate
and to share the results of any investigations linking al-Barakaat to al-Qaida,
as well as supporting any legal actions taken by al-Barakaat and its supporters
seeking judicial redress because the gross injustices they have suffered
since the fall of 2001. And we should not rush to cheer the next time our
government bans flights to Somalia.
Onyango Oloo
Montreal
Thursday, July 17, 2003
KSDA is a revolutionary Socialist Alliance
which fights for Socialism in Kenya and the World. The Alliance believes
that the fundamental social, economic and political crisis facing Kenya today
requires a democratic Socialist revolution with Kenyan working class taking
a leading role in the struggle. The Alliance advocates for the formation
of a Workers' Party in Kenya and the abolition of capitalism in the country.
Contacts: KSDA Box 74, 123 22 Farsta, Sweden. website: http://www.kenyasocialist.org.
Tel: 00 46 736533068.