The latest report by UN experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), presented on June 13 to the United Nations Security Council, obviously could not refer to the attack carried out three days later against a high school. in Uganda. A cruel assault attributed by Kampala to the Islamist extremists of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which cost the lives of around forty people murdered overnight with machetes and axes, according to the testimonies of some survivors. It is one of the worst massacres committed in Uganda by the ADF in years.

The findings of UN investigators suggest that the martyrdom of Lhubiriha high school in Mpondwe, located not far from the Congolese border, is probably not the last. Experts have indeed uncovered international financing networks for terrorist attacks in East Africa carried out in the name of the Islamic State (IS or Daesh, in Arabic).

“Based on documentary evidence and significant testimonies”, the panel of experts thus succeeded in establishing for the first time that ISIS had provided financial support to the ADF since at least 2019, through a ” complex financial system” involving several countries on the continent: from Somalia to South Africa, via Kenya, Uganda and ultimately the DRC, where the ADF have established their base.

Originally, the rebels came from northern Uganda, struggling against the autocratic power of Yoweri Museveni. In 2016, they would have pledged allegiance to IS. The ADF was classified as a terrorist organization in 2021 by the United States, which is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information on its current leader, Seka Musa Baluku. In November 2021, the Ugandan and Congolese armies launched the joint operation “Shujaa” (“bravery” in Swahili) to reduce ADF strongholds in the DRC. Few details filter on this military campaign which, according to certain sources, would have succeeded in weakening the movement.

An international movement

The UN report shows, however, that the organization is not isolated but that it is part of an international movement. The investigators have thus managed to dissect some of the group’s financing systems, which therefore go back to the Horn of Africa. According to them, “at the center of the financial apparatus is Suhayl Salim Mohammed Abdelrahman (alias Bilal Al-Sudani), a member of Daesh in Somalia under the command of Yusuf Abulqadir Mumin, founder of IS in that country.

Under Al-Sudani’s direction, “Abdirizak Mohamed Abdi Jimale, another Somali national working in the financial department of Daesh in Somalia, allegedly transferred between 2019 and 2020 more than 400,000 dollars to two Daesh agents based in Johannesburg”, can -we read in the report. These two men, Maisa Cissa (alias Missa Issa and Maise Isse), a Ugandan national, and Sheikh Abdi Oromay, an Ethiopian, used “a hawala system [informal money transfer system] through Heeryo Trading Enterprise, a company registered in Somalia and South Africa”.

Part of the funds then went back to Nairobi, Kenya, then to Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique. UN experts say “Hawala and money transfer services, such as Mama Money and Selpal, have become a backdoor for Daesh and other criminal networks to facilitate huge flows of money into the whole region”.

Alongside these opaque funding channels, the panel obtained “for the first time documentary evidence of clear organizational links between the ADF and Daesh operatives in South Africa.” Are identified Abdella Hussein Abadigga and Farhad Hoomer, two activists placed under sanctions by the United States, in March 2022, because of their links with Bilal Al-Sudani and Daesh.