SOUTHERN AFRICA: Region attractive to terror groups, says report

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 12 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - Southern African countries are vulnerable to terror groups, as many nations lack adequate resources and legislation to tackle the problem, says a new report.

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) paper, 'Organised Crime and Terrorism: Observations from Southern Africa", argues that the region could be advantageous to transnational terror groups "if it can be used as a source, transit zone or market for high value narcotics" and money laundering.

The author, Charles Goredema, told IRIN the region also had widespread poverty, "which is always going to be a breeding ground" for ideologies that advanced by violent means.

In countries like South Africa, where "there's poverty, the resources that are not equally distributed feed into an ideology that says, 'if the resources are much more equitably distributed [through force] the circumstances of the poorest would change positively'".

The region has been blessed and cursed with natural resources, such as diamonds and oil, which have fuelled conflicts like Angola's 27-year civil war, and were also a lure for terror groups. When added to the burgeoning transnational trade in narcotics, it made a potentially explosive combination.

"Narcotics are known to have been supplied for consumption to some of the perpetrators of terrorism in the sub-region ... They are [also] important for their economic value, like precious extractive resources [such as diamonds]," the report argued.

These resources could provide "a relatively anonymous source of revenue, to be used to fund terrorist or related activities" - there was no doubt of the significance of Southern Africa as a source of cannabis for European countries, for example.

"It is believed that proceeds eventually follow the reverse path from abroad into Southern Africa in a money laundering cycle," the paper noted.

A recent study revealed the nature and, to some extent, the scale of money laundering activities to which the entire region was exposed.

"Transnational terrorism is ... bound to find outgoing and incoming money laundering potentially valuable. In this regard, the channels for laundering funds between countries in [Southern Africa] deserve attention. There is evidence of the growth of these channels between Tanzania and Malawi, as well as South Africa and Zimbabwe. Added to this is the spectre of offshore financial centres, as established in Botswana and Mauritius, which bristle with opportunities to infiltrate illicit proceeds," the report commented.

Dysfunctional systems for sharing intelligence within and between many states in the region only aggravated the situation. "Furthermore, delinquent governmental systems and structures, as well as dysfunctional economies that worsen poverty levels, exert an unbearable pressure on financial regulatory structures, such as central banks," the author pointed out.

The report concluded that the need for regional security in Southern Africa was as great as ever, "given the size of the region and the strategic position it occupies geographically and in terms of resources". The region was thus "equally attractive to legitimate entrepreneurs and terrorist groups and money launderers".

But the reality was that security in Southern Africa has been characterised by inadequate policing and legislation, "and understaffed and under-resourced law-enforcement agencies".

Although a number of countries in the region had established counter-terror units, the study warned that "they are not yet all structured to collect, analyse and be able to share intelligence on terrorism, so that pre-emptive or preventive measures can be taken".

[ENDS]