Boys arrested in security operations have often been held by intelligence forces, namely Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) in Mogadishu or Puntland’s Intelligence Agency (PIA) in Bosasso. Intelligence agencies decided how they categorized children, how long they kept children, and if and when they handed them over to UNICEF. Independent oversight of screening processes and custody has been severely limited.

Officials and guards have subjected children to coercive treatment and interrogations including cutting them off from their relatives and legal counsel, threatening them, and on occasion beating and torturing them, primarily to obtain confessions or as punishment for speaking out or disorder in the cells. A 16-year-old held for months in a NISA facility in 2016 said: “They would take me out of my cell at night and pressure me to confess. One night, they beat me hard with something that felt like a metal stick. I was bleeding for two weeks, but no one treated me.”

Children also described being held with adult detainees in dire conditions for days without seeing family. A 15-year-old detained in a mass sweep in 2017 and held by NISA for several weeks said: “I couldn’t sleep at night as there was no space and I suffered from excruciating headaches, but received no medication.”

While the criminal prosecution of children is not common in Somalia, the authorities make use of an outdated legal system to try children in military courts, primarily as adults, for security crimes, including solely for Al-Shabab membership, Human Rights Watch found. Since 2016, over two dozen children have been tried in military courts in Puntland alone. Children face proceedings that fail to meet basic juvenile justice standards with limited ability to prepare a defense and in which coercive confessions have been admitted as evidence.

Boys who were first used by Al-Shabab and then detained by government security forces said that felt doubly trapped and victimized. “I feel afraid and let down,” said a 15-year old whom Al-Shabab abducted and then sent to fight in Puntland in March 2016, only to be captured and sentenced by a military court to 10 years in prison. “Al-Shabab forced me into this, and then the government gives me this long sentence.”

While federal and regional authorities have handed over 250 children to UNICEF for rehabilitation since 2015, this has largely been the result of sustained advocacy and often after children have spent considerable time in detention.

Somali authorities should end arbitrary detention of children, allow for independent monitoring of children in custody, and ensure access to relatives and legal counsel. If children are to be prosecuted for other serious offenses, they should be tried in civilian courts that guarantee basic juvenile justice protections, and any punishment should consider alternatives to detention and prioritize the child’s reintegration into society.

Somalia’s international partners should press for civilian oversight of cases involving children, seek independent monitoring of all detention facilities, and call for the credible investigation of abuses against children, including by intelligence officers, Human Rights Watch said.

“The Somali government should treat children as victims of the conflict, and ensure that children, regardless of the crimes they may have committed, are accorded the basic protection due to all children,” Bader said. “Authorities across the country should improve supervision of children in detention and prioritize rehabilitation in addressing their cases. International partners should help bolster child-specific judicial and other procedures.”

Interview: How Security Forces in Somalia Fail to Protect Children

Over the last decade the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab has recruited, often forcibly, thousands of Somali children – under age 18, using many as fighters on the front line. Over the last two years, Somali security forces have arrested suspected Al-Shabab sympathizers – including children. Senior Africa researcher Laetitia Bader spoke to Audrey Wabwire about what happens to these boys in detention, and why protecting their rights has proven elusive.

How is it that children get involved with Al-Shabab in the first place?

Al-Shabab uses many means to recruit children, including enticements, deceit and force. Poor rural communities, with little protection, are particularly vulnerable to this sort of pressure.

Some boys I spoke to said they were taken at gunpoint from Quranic schools, where children receive religious instruction. Sometimes they are told that that they are going to a Quranic reading competition. One boy went to such a competition and won. After winning, he thought he would get a chance to go to another school, and he was dropped off at a school. Later that night, Al-Shabab fighters picked him up and took him to a training camp. He was then trained with other children and sent to fight in Puntland. His father had encouraged him to take part in this competition because he thought he would get money or a prize. This boy was in prison when I was spoke to him, and his father now feels guilty for encouraging him.

Security forces also conduct mass sweeps where they cordon off an area of a recent attack. They then arrest young men or boys in the area for further interrogation. Some boys who are picked up in mass sweeps on flimsy evidence never get to a chance to give their side of the story – including those with no connection at all to Al-Shabab.

Somali authorities are unlawfully detaining and at times prosecuting in military courts children with alleged ties to the Islamist

What is life like for a child who is arrested for being a member of Al-Shabab?

Their life is tough. Boys picked up for security offenses can spend months in detention, held for coercive interrogations, in dark cells, unable to sleep for days because there is no space to lie down. One boy said he got unbearable headaches because he never slept. They are detained with adults, sometimes violent criminals. One boy told me he was hit by a guard when he complained about being locked up with adults. And only those from powerful clans or who are better off financially have any chance of being allowed to get in touch with their parents.

One boy who was 16 when he spent months in the custody of the intelligence agency in Mogadishu, the capital, described being repeatedly interrogated. He was also badly beaten and left with a deep wound. I saw a scar left by this injury.

What is Mogadishu central prison’s juvenile section like?

The conditions are poor. Although children sleep separately from adults, they mingle with adults in a common area during the day including during meal times. At the time of our visit, each child had a mattress on the cement floor, although officials pointed to bunk beds that were being built for the juvenile section. They appeared to have little opportunity for exercise apart from playing in a large open-air courtyard that the adults also use.

The children had no access to education, although we have heard recently that they may be starting to offer some classes.
Launch Map

What happens to the boys when they are released?

None of the boys I spoke to were unscarred by the experience.

Two boys told me they dropped out of school. One felt his reputation was tarnished. A 15-year-old boy said that for people his age, the fear of being recruited by Al-Shabaab or arrested by security forces for being at the wrong place at the wrong time leaves them with very little freedom because they have to constantly watch out for both Al-Shabab and security agents. Several said they’d stopped doing what normal teen-age boys like to do: hanging out in the streets with their friends.

Over 250 children have been handed over to the United Nations and its child protection partners for rehabilitation. This is in line with the government’s commitments. But too often, this has only happened after significant pressure on the authorities, and after the kids have spent months in detention.

Was there any child who really stood out for you?

There was a 15-year-old, an orphan, who was picked up in a security operation in 2015 following an assassination in his neighborhood. He was held at a police station in Mogadishu for several weeks. Others were released to their relatives, but he had no one coming for him, no one bringing him food. They insisted that he must be an Al-Shabab fanatic because he had no friends or family.

One boy was recruited at 14 and spent two years in Al-Shabab’s ranks. Al-Shabab fighters beat him when he tried to find a phone to call his family. He eventually ran away with other boys.

Other boys described the dangerous military operations for Al-Shabab that made them decide to flee. The boys often also got malaria while training. They lived outside in poor conditions, and sometimes the nights were cold and made them particularly miserable.

Why shouldn’t the boys be arrested? The Somalia government has a duty to protect against Al- Shabaab.

Even if a child has committed a serious crime, they still need protection. Under Somalia’s international legal commitments, detention should be the last resort and for the shortest time possible since it is traumatic for children. They need access to their family and to lawyers. They also need to be kept separate from adults.

Somalia’s constitution defines children as 18 and under, though laws in other regions make 15 the age of maturity. Children are also criminally responsible from 15 onward. Even when children commit serious crimes, though, international law requires the justice system to treat them differently than adults, providing greater protection and prioritizing rehabilitation over incarceration. While Somalia has laws that spell out protections for children charged with crimes, these are rarely implemented. The laws need to be harmonized and reformed so that Somali children are protected within a functioning juvenile system.

What can parents do if their children are imprisoned?

I conducted most of my interviews for our report in early 2017, after Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as “Farmajo,” had recently been selected as president. There was an atmosphere of promise and hope in much of the country. The detained boys and their parents were hopeful, too, and believed that there would be justice in their cases if they could be reviewed.

Many parents I spoke to were scared because their children have been sentenced by Somalia’s military court. They feel that if they appeal, they will make things worse. Lawyers at the court told them that appeals worsen the situation, even though this is not always the case. A lot of recruitment happens in rural areas where parents have no means to seek redress for their children who have been treated improperly.

How did you do this research?

I traveled around Somalia in places where children had been arrested, such as Garowe in Puntland. I also traveled to areas where recruitment has been high, for example the Bay region. I spoke to relatives, to understand how children get caught in — and leave — Al-Shabab, and what happens when they return home. In Mogadishu, I spoke to boys who had been arrested during security operations. I also interviewed government officials and visited Mogadishu central prison’s juvenile section, where boys sentenced for Al-Shabab-related crimes are being held.

What’s it like working on a country that faces conflict and insecurity? What keeps you hopeful?

What keeps me hopeful? The incredible stories of survival and hope. It was inspiring to hear from parents who, despite what their children went through with Al Shabaab and while detained by the government, believe that systems can improve.

Incredibly, the boys still have hope for their future, despite dropping out of school and losing friends. One 16-year-old who had spent three months in Puntland prison said he was happy to be receiving education while in prison. There is an education program in the prison because of international support. He said that with his knowledge of English, he could later become a translator.

The Somali government has genuine security concerns. However, so many people still believed it was worth their while telling us their story. No one had ever shown interest in these boys or asked them what happened. It was a privilege to hear these often painful accounts for the first time, and to let us tell their story.

Abstract: Al-Shabaab has become one of Africa’s deadliest terrorist groups in recent years through its use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Technological sophistication from abroad, especially from al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, may explain some exceptional recent attacks. However, al-Shabaab’s purge of external influences, reliance on local materials, and refinement of bomb deployment all indicate the importance of local expertise in its current IED campaign. Responses focused primarily on breaking international ties or taking out tech-savvy foreign-born or foreign-trained bomb makers are therefore unlikely to be sufficient or to succeed.

On October 14, 2017, Somalia suffered its largest terrorist attack in decades when two truck bombs exploded in the capital city,1 killing at least 350 people and wounding hundreds more.2 While unclaimed, it is likely the work of al-Shabaab, and the attack—the 33rd car bombing in Mogadishu in 20173—highlights the terrorist group’s increasing explosives capabilities. Al-Shabaab has become one of Africa’s deadliest terrorist groups primarily through a precipitous increase in the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Al-Shabaab’s record 395 IED attacks in Somalia in 2016—almost 11 times the number in 2010 and nearly a 50-percent increase over 2015—more than doubled IED-related injuries and more than tripled IED-related deaths over the previous year, according to a recent study by Sahan Research.a Al-Shabaab also managed to carry out only the third recorded suicide terrorist attack on a commercial passenger flight, bombing a Daallo Airlines flight in February 2016 with an IED sophisticatedly disguised as a laptop.

The rise of al-Shabaab’s IED attacks is often seen as the result of a technology upgrade going hand-in-hand with the organization’s growing international connections. Emerging from the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) around 2006, al-Shabaab progressively affiliated with al-Qa`ida and conducted attacks abroad against targets in Kenya, Djibouti, and Uganda. Today, al-Shabaab’s ties to al-Qa`ida’s affiliate in Yemen remain the most consequential of its international links. Yemen, long a source of fighters for al-Shabaab,4 has become a source for IED detonators and detonating cords.5 Moreover, the analyst Kathleen Zimmerman stated in U.S. congressional testimony that al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) “almost certainly provided the equipment or the expertise for al-Shabaab’s 2016 laptop bomb” on the Daallo flight.6 The same year, Somali Foreign Minister Abdisalem Omer “cited the use of laptop explosives as well as the ‘sophisticated engineering’ of truck bombs that are now leveling buildings ‘four or five blocks’ from the site of the blast as evidence of heightened collaboration between al-Shabab and AQAP.”7 Furthermore, the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea reported in October 2016 that al-Shabaab has “used increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive device technology in its operations, facilitated by the continued arrival of foreign trainers, and involving the transfer of knowledge from other conflict areas.”8

But the tendency to understand the growth in al-Shabaab’s lethal IED power primarily or exclusively through new technologies imported through intensifying international contacts is incomplete. This interpretation overlooks important actions taken to limit and reduce foreign influence in recent years. The situation today is unlike a decade ago when foreign influence within al-Shabaab was quite significant. Even before the group emerged, there were reports of the presence of foreign fighters in training camps run by al-Shabaab’s precursor militia in the ICU.9 Early on, veteran al-Qa`ida foreign fighters with experience in Afghanistan occupied key positions within al-Shabaab’s leadership. They were instrumental to the introduction of guerrilla tactics, such as suicide attacks, and they played a major role in training al-Shabaab members in bomb-making and other IED explosives skills.10 Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al-Qa`ida East Africa member, trained al-Shabaab fighters in asymmetric tactics, including suicide bombings and advanced explosives.11 Conflict in Somalia drew foreign fighters of diverse backgrounds, skills, and experiences. Al-Shabaab embraced and encouraged their arrival,12 and a sharp increase in IED attacks followed in 2007 and 2008, likely a result of mounting foreign fighter influence.13

However, the foreign influence reached something of an apex around 2010. Counterterrorism pressure intensified, stoking concerns among terrorist operatives about outsiders and spies, and broader disputes within al-Shabaab over strategy, ideology, and leadership came to the fore. Emir Ahmed Abdi Godane eventually moved against challengers and eliminated critics,14 including high-profile foreign fighters. By the end of 2013, through a combination of military action and internal housecleaning, key al-Qa`ida-linked international figures in al-Shabaab—Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Bilal al-Berjawi, Omar Hammami—were dead, leaving the remaining foreign fighters cowed.15 In subsequent years, more attractive theaters for foreign fighters (like Syria) arose, al-Qa`ida may have adopted a less-centralized organizational model,16 and Somalia’s conflict entered a phase of increasingly internal and clan-based dynamics.17 While it continued to integrate foreign fighters, none from the sizeable Kenyan contingent, for example, achieved a top leadership role.18 Today, al-Shabaab occasionally directs some recruits from Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to return to their homes to fight,19 and the group continues to execute foreign fighters on accusations of spying.20 The destructive capacity of al-Shabaab’s IED attacks significantly increased in the same period that there was a purge of foreign fighter influences in the group, suggesting there is more behind this trend than the “continued arrival of foreign trainers” and “transfer of knowledge from other conflict areas.”

Moreover, al-Shabaab operatives do not need to go abroad for basic IED materials, most of which are sourced locally. In addition to unexploded ordnances that litter the country after a quarter century of conflict,21 al-Shabaab gets IED main charges from its enemies in Somalia. According to a recent IED assessment, about 60 percent of the explosives contained in al-Shabaab attacks along the Kenyan border come from counterterrorism forces, obtained either from sub-munitions dropped by Kenyan war planes or through plunder of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).22 Al-Shabaab has successfully overrun several AMISOM forward operating bases (FOBs). At one point, the group attacked three AMISOM FOBs in seven months—Leego in June 2015, Janaale in September 2015, and El-Adde in January 2016—and made off with large quantities of military equipment, weapons, and explosives.23 In January 2017, al-Shabaab once again overran a Kenya Defence Forces FOB at Kolbiyow and claimed to have captured military vehicles and weapons.24

Access to military materials has meant that al-Shabaab most commonly uses military explosives as its IED payload, notably cyclotrimethylene variants such as military-grade RDX.25 When military sources for main charges are unavailable, al-Shabaab substitutes them with TNT harvested from highly explosive artillery shells or anti-tank mines26 or with fertilizer (seized from farmers or purchased at local markets), which is legally imported and widely available in Somalia through aid organizations promoting agriculture.27 Al-Shabaab gets many other IED components locally as well. Motorcycle alarms and mobile phones, commonly used as triggers, are inexpensive and readily available at Mogadishu markets, as are pressure plates mounted on top of a spring—typical triggers for IED landmines.28 None of these components are beyond al-Shabaab’s budget. If early on al-Shabaab relied on financial support from external charities, the diaspora, and Eritrea’s sponsorship,29 the group today is far more self-sufficient, overseeing a remarkably effective ‘taxation’/protection system across south-central Somalia30 and making money off illicit trade in sugar and charcoal,31 as well perhaps as kidnapping for ransom32 and piracy.33 Through seizure and purchase of materiel available in Somalia, al-Shabaab has all the pieces it needs for IEDs.

Finally, al-Shabaab’s IEDs are becoming more deadly and complex, but the growing impact of attacks comes not just from imported technology, but also from innovative deployment. Notwithstanding the U.N. Monitoring Group’s finding that al-Shabaab is using “increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive device technology,” most of the group’s IEDs are not particularly technologically advanced. Setting aside outliers like the Daallo laptop and the recent Mogadishu truck bombings, news reports suggest that when “compared with IEDs found in other parts of the world, the al-Shabaab IEDs are of relatively poor quality and construction.”34 IEDs recovered from Somalia feature crude triggers, such as “pressure plates rigged with metal sheets separated by pieces of paper, pressure plates using saw blades, and bombs rigged with salvaged rocker switches like those found in a house to turn the lights on and off.”35 In fact, the quintessential signature design feature of an al-Shabaab suicide vest includes simple “male-female quick-connect devices such as those used in car stereos, or white plastic rocker switches.”36

The key evolution is that al-Shabaab has become more adept in its deployment of bombs, tailoring its IED attacks through refined tactics, techniques, and procedures. In ambushes of security convoys and patrols along main supply routes, al-Shabaab strategically positions the IED to stop vehicles in a pre-determined ‘kill zone’ exposed to small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. To defend its own camps, al-Shabaab sets out systems of multiple IEDs, either linked together in a daisy chain or detonated separately and arranged for area saturation. Yet another technique involves sending vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs) or suicide vehicle-borne IEDs (SVBIEDs) to break through a security perimeter, followed by fighters with small arms and light weapons, sometimes wearing IED suicide vests, to enter the breach and kill large numbers before dying themselves. This IED tactic has been used against FOBs, official buildings and compounds, and hotels and restaurants in Mogadishu and other parts of southern and central Somalia.37

To punish first responders and to inflict maximum damage at soft targets, al-Shabaab has developed still other approaches of deploying secondary IEDs in complex secondary attacks, like those conducted against the Ambassador Hotel and Naaso-Hablood Hotel in Mogadishu in June 2016, where delayed VBIEDs hit first responders as they arrived at the scene after the initial explosion.38 Al-Shabaab has even refined IED tactics to overcome specific AMISOM and Somali National Army (SNA) countermeasures. In Merca, for example, al-Shabaab set up a double IED trap: a small motorcycle alarm IED served as bait to lure in a bomb unit, while a second, much larger IED lay buried deeper than usual (in order to prevent detection by bomb sniffing dogs) exactly under the spot where the bomb-recovery vehicle would park while disarming the first IED.39

Conclusion
The purge of foreign influence, reliance on local materiel, and sophistication in bomb deployment all point to al-Shabaab’s local IED skills—warranting concern on their own merits. Al-Shabaab’s most sophisticated attacks may indeed rely on new technologies imported from abroad, but it is nonetheless the group’s Somali operatives who establish the makeshift IED factories in abandoned industrial facilities, storage sites, and garages; conceal the bombs in false floors or as cargo in trucks and minivans; distribute IEDs without detection throughout the capital and south-central Somalia; and implement them to deadly effect.40 Responses such as isolating al-Shabaab from AQAP and other external actors and/or applying a ‘find, fix, and finish’ logic to a handful of tech-savvy bomb makers are therefore unlikely to fully resolve Somalia’s new challenge. To the extent that recent IED attacks indicate advancing internal abilities to make, move, and deploy cheap and crude but effective bombs, al-Shabaab will continue to propel Somalia’s conflict forward through its devastating IED campaign. CTC

Daisy Muibu is a Ph.D. student at The School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., where she focuses primarily on the Horn of Africa. She holds a master’s degree from the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Follow @daisy_muibu

Benjamin P. Nickels is Associate Professor of Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, where he focuses primarily on the Sahel, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. He holds a doctorate and master’s degree from the University of Chicago.

Substantive Notes
[a] Sahan research materials were provided to the authors in fall 2017. Sahan is a think-tank with offices in Somalia, Kenya, and the United Kingdom focused on security and development in the Horn of Africa, East Africa, and the Middle East.

Citations
[1] Hussein Mohamed, Eric Schmitt, and Mohamed Ibrahim, “Mogadishu Truck Bombings are Deadliest Attack in Decades,” New York Times, October 15, 2017.

[2] Abdirahman O. Osman, “The latest number of casualties 642 (358 dead, 228 injured, 56 missing). 122 injured ppl flown to Turkey, Sudan & Kenya,” Twitter, October 20, 2017; Jason Bourke, “Mogadishu truck bomb: 500 casualties in Somalia’s Worst Terrorist Attack,” Guardian, October 16, 2017.

[3] Bill Roggio and Caleb Weiss, “Jihadist Hit Mogadishu with Car Bombs, Suicide Assault,” Threat Matrix, A Blog of FFD’s Long War Journal, October 15, 2017.

[4] Sudarsan Raghavan, “Foreign Fighters Gain Influence in Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabab Militia,” Washington Post, June 8, 2010.

[5] Kalume Kazungu, “Shabaab bombs use explosives seized from Kenyan bases, expert says,” Daily Nation, July 1, 2017.

[6] Katherine Zimmerman, “Al Qaeda’s Strengthening in the Shadows,” American Enterprise Institute, July 13, 2017, p. 7.

[7] Ty McCormick, “U.S. Attacks Reveal Al-Shabab’s Strength, Not Weakness,” Foreign Policy, March 9, 2016.

[8] “Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 2244 (2015),” United Nations, October 2016, p. 39.

[9] Roland Marchal, “A tentative assessment of the Somali Harakat Al-Shabaab,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 3:3 (2009), p. 389.

[10] Rob Wise, “Al Shabaab,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, AQAM Futures Project Case Study Series: Case Study Number 2 (2011), p. 8.

[11] Stig Jarle Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 55.

[12] “JTIC Special Report: Foreign fighters and foreign policy in the Somali jihad,” IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Monitor, Couldson 12:1 (2012), 8; Roland Marchal, “The Rise of a Jihadi Movement in a Country at War: Harakat al-Shabaab al Mujaheddin in Somalia,” SciencesPo/CERI, March 2011, p. 16.

[13] Sudarsan Raghavan, “Foreign Fighters Gain Influence in Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabab Militia,” Washington Post, June 8, 2010.

[14] Matt Bryden, The Reinvention of Al-Shabaab: A Strategy of Choice or Necessity? (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2014), p. 5; “Somalia: Open Letter to Al-Shabaab Leader Reveals – ‘Yes, There Are Problems,” Hiiraan Online, May 1, 2013; Stig Jarle Hansen, “An In-Depth Look at Al-Shabaab’s Internal Divisions,” CTC Sentinel 7:2 (2014), p. 10; Rashid Nuune, “Al Qaeda, Al-Shabaab Pledge Allegiance…Again,” Somalia Report, February 9, 2012; Abdulkador Khalif, “Al-Shabaab foreign fighters flee Somalia,” Daily Nation, February 24, 2012; Ken Menkhaus, “Al-Shabaab’s Capabilities Post-Westgate,” CTC Sentinel 7:2 (2014), p. 5.

[15] Menkhaus, pp. 4-5.

[16] Andrew Byers and Tara Mooney, “Al Qaeda in the age of ISIS,” Hill, July 7, 2017.

[17] Christopher Anzalone, “The Resilience of al-Shabaab,” CTC Sentinel 9:4 (2016), p. 13.

[18] Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, p. 128.

[19] Thomas Joscelyn, “Shabaab spokesman calls on Kenyan jihadists to form an ‘army,’” FDD’s Long War Journal, May 22, 2017.

[20] Dominic Wabala, “Al Shabaab kill Kenyan fighters over spying suspicion,” Standard Media, April 02, 2017.

[21] “UNMAS: Central Mogadishu free from all known unexploded ordnance,” United Nations, April 11, 2014.

[22] Kazungu.

[23] Cyrus Ombati and David Ohitio, “KDF soldiers kill Al Shabaab leader who plotted deadly raid,” Standard Media, January 22, 2016.

[24] “Al-Shabaab attacks Kenyan army base in Somalia,” eNCA, January 27, 2017.

[25] “Feature: IEDS – An indiscriminate killer,” Defence Web, July 28, 2015; Kazungu.

[26] “Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea Pursuant to Security Council Resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009),” United Nations, March 2010, pp. 50-51.

[27] Kazungu.

[28] “Feature: IEDS – An indiscriminate killer.”

[29] Christopher Harnisch, “The Terror Threat from Somalia: The Internationalization of Al Shabaab,” Critical Threats Project, American Enterprise Institute, February 12, 2010; Marchal, “The Rise of a Jihadi Movement,” p. 66.

[30] Tricia Bacon, “This is why al-Shabab won’t be going away anytime soon,” Washington Post, July 6, 2017.

[31] Kevin J. Kelley, “UN: KDF Makes money on illicit charcoal exports from Somalia,” Daily Nation, November 6, 2016; Elsa Buchanan, “UN report finds Kenya still funding al-Shabaab terror group through illegal sugar and charcoal trade,” International Business Times, November 8, 2016.

[32] “Somalia: Al-Shabaab demands ransom for the release of kidnapped aid workers,” Garowe Online, July 16, 2017.

[33] Robyn Kriel and Briana Duggan, “CNN Exclusive: Somali pirate kings are under investigation for helping ISIS and al-Shabaab,” CNN, July 10, 2017; Bacon.

[34] “Feature: IEDS – An indiscriminate killer.”

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Sahan research.

[38] Ibid.

[39] “Feature: IEDS – An indiscriminate killer;” Kazungu.

[40] Sahan research.

Background

Save the Children’s Emergency Food Security and Livelihoods team responds to emergency food crises worldwide, and cash transfers are one of the essential approaches that can be used to help families meet their basic needs before, during, and after a crisis. In 2016-2017, with funding from USAID/FFP, Save the Children implemented a project that targeted 11,074 households (HHs) (66,444 people) in the Bari, Nugaal, and Hiran regions of Somalia with monthly cash transfers for food assistance using mobile money. The purpose of the project is to increase the access to and availability of diversified and nutritious food for households in the region. Building on the project experiences, Save the Children commissioned a study with three leading questions:

To what extent has the mobile money project influenced the use of mobile money among the cash recipients?

What are the key barriers and enabling factors in influencing uptake and use of mobile money services?

What steps can Save the Children take to leverage current projects to expand the use of the e-wallet and other financial services?

Research Methodology A team of two external consultants led the study. The consultants conducted the fieldwork in Puntland (Bari, Nugaal regions) and Hiran; fifteen villages were purposively selected to include some of the most remote communities in the project, with the representation of different livelihood zones. A total of 377 household surveys, 23 Focus Group Discussions, and 35 Key Informant Interviews were conducted. Eight of the villages were observed taking inventory of the services in the villages and the potential for the residents to use mobile money to pay for goods and services.

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