The tiny Red Sea state is also allegedly bankrolling Somalia’s pro-al-Qa’eda
Islamists and using British bank accounts to fund an increase in clandestine
aggression across East Africa.
The claims were made in a new United Nations report released on Thursday night
that went on to warn of a rising threat of "large scale" terror attacks in
Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa from freshly-recruited jiahdists.
Three years of planning went into the plot to detonate a series of bombs in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, during an African Union summit in January.
It was foiled by security forces.
Ethiopian rebels were blamed, but the plan was "conceived, planned, supported
and directed by the external operations directorate of the Government of
Eritrea", said the report, from the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and
Eritrea.
The anticipated mass civilian casualties and use of explosives to spread
terror "represent a qualitative shift in Eritrean tactics", the report’s
authors said.
Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 but the two countries soon
plunged back to war. It has supported any armed group which opposes
Ethiopia’s government.
Proxy conflicts between the two enemies spread most recently to Somalia, where
Ethiopia is the main regional backer of the internationally-recognised
administration in Mogadishu.
Eritrea is now sending an average of GBP50,000 a month from its embassy in
Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, to agents of al-Shabaab, al-Qa’eda-linked
insurgents battling Somalia’s government, the UN report said.
That money is transferred from Dubai, where there are significant investments
and deposits of Eritrean government funds.
Because his country exports almost nothing, President Isaias Afewerki taxes
the 1.2 million Eritreans living abroad two percent of their income.
These funds were "the most significant source of revenue" for the ruling
party, the UN report said.
One of the main routes for this diaspora cash is through Ericommerce, a
British-based firm which banks with Natwest and which handles procurement
for Eritrea’s state-owned food import company.
Through its diaspora tax, the report said, "the Government of Eritrea is
estimated to raise tens - and possibly hundreds - of millions of dollars on
an annual basis".
Some of that money is believed to end up being transferred via Dubai and
Nairobi to pay al-Shabaab in Somalia.
"The means by which the leadership in Asmara [Eritrea’s capital] apparently
intends to pursue its objectives are no longer proportional or rational,"
the report stated.
"Moreover, since the Eritrean intelligence apparatus responsible for the
African Union summit plot is also active in Kenya, Somalia, the Sudan and
Uganda, the level of threat it poses to these other countries must be
re-evaluated."
Attempts to reach Eritrea’s government spokesman were unsuccessful on Thursday
night.
The report’s authors separately found fresh evidence that al-Shabaab was
extending its reach into Kenya, and had made "functional linkages with
jihadist groups in northern, western and southern Africa".
Leaders of a Muslim youth centre in Nairobi were found to have links to the
al-Shabaab cell which killed 79 people in coordinated bombs in Uganda during
the World Cup final last year.
The same people were now helping send radicalised Kenyans to fight for the
Islamists in Somalia, where there was now a Kenyan-staffed militia of
between 200 and 500 troops preparing for more attacks outside of Somalia.
"This disturbing trend, highlighted by the Kampala bombings, suggests that
Al-Shabaab…is giving rise to a new generation of East African jihadist
groups that represent a new security challenge for the region and the wider
international community," the report said.
The UN Monitoring Group was established to investigate violations of
international arms embargoes in place on both Somalia and Eritrea.
