Common enemy drawing Africa’s spy chiefs closer

What you need to know:

  • The threat of terrorism and the international reach of its masterminds are forcing intelligence agencies across the continent to share information.
  • African states are scrambling for a co-ordinated and coherent response.

At the Safari Park Hotel on the outskirts of Nairobi, intelligence agents from across Africa circle each other, nibbling on queen cakes and samosas and making small talk.

For years many of these agents spied on each other’s countries, and still do, but these days they spend a lot of time just talking to one another.

The threat of terrorism and the international reach of its masterminds are forcing intelligence agencies across the continent to share information and work more closely in their counter-terrorism operations.

The agents from 40 African countries were attending a meeting organised by the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (Cissa), a sort of annual general meeting of the continent’s top spies moderated by the director of Kenya’s National Counter Terrorism Centre Isaac Ochieng.

Critics say Cissa meetings are just an opportunity for the spy masters to hang out at luxury hotels and exchange gossip.

Not so, says Francisco Madeira, who runs the African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT), which operates under the African Union.

“Although many terrorist groups work with locals in Africa and in specific countries, the ideology and thinking is international, by people we have no control over,” he said.

“Our counter-terrorism efforts require better planning and wider co-ordination by agencies across the continent, and this requires trust and confidence. The only way to build trust is for the intelligence agencies to meet and build personal rapport.”

SCRAMBLE TO RESPOND

Intelligence agencies across the continent have been formally holding conversations since 1992, when African leaders meeting in Dakar, Senegal, first raised concern about growing radicalisation and extremism on the continent.

The emergence of Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al Qaeda in the Maghreb and, now, the declaration by the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) of a caliphate in the Middle East has given urgency to those conversations as African states scramble to respond to the threat.

“We are not just dealing with localised terrorist threats,” said Mr Ochieng, who considers these trans-national groups an existential threat. “We are dealing with groups that want to destroy the existing nation states and replace them with Islamic caliphates.”

It is a popular view among the spymasters.

“What we are witnessing is a power struggle, not just to change policy, but to redraw boundaries and take over states,” said a veteran intelligence chief. “This is a new war between ideological crusaders, a new era of cultural confrontation.”

African states are scrambling for a co-ordinated and coherent response. At the end of the Cissa meeting in Nairobi last week the spy chiefs made a “solemn declaration” in their final communiqué, that “a terror attack on any country in Africa should be considered a terror attack on all”.

NEED TO CO-ORDINATE

But they know that counter-terrorism operations need a lot more than solemn declarations.

“Just studying and researching is not enough,” said Mr Madeira, a veteran Mozambican diplomat. “There is a need to co-ordinate and plan responses jointly.”

At the ACSRT office in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, a computer software trawls the Internet every morning before sending out an alert with all terrorism-related news to intelligence agencies across the continent.

The plan is to grow this into a database that offers real time actionable intelligence to countries.

But the ACSRT, like many well-intentioned African Union organs, is poorly funded, as are many intelligence agencies.

Yet they have to deal with terrorist groups that are sophisticated in their fund-raising, propaganda and operations and are better at sharing resources than Africa’s intelligence services.

For instance, some of the terrorists who attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi a year ago carried European passports. Al-Shabaab has received technical and financial support from al Qaeda.

But Africa is not necessarily a net importer of terrorists or extremists. Between 2011 and 2013, 1,902 Tunisians, 1,807 Libyans, 400 Moroccans, 273 Algerians and three Sudanese were killed fighting alongside the rebels in Syria.

Intelligence chiefs privately worry about these numbers and the likely upsurge in extremist violence when these fighters return home.

Sharing intelligence and conducting joint operations, including joint border patrols — as currently happens with Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon — is a good starting point.

In addition, they say, governments need to invest more in law enforcement, from detection to prosecution.

While there are benefits from sharing intelligence and working jointly with other countries, Mr Madeira says counter-terrorism efforts have to be built on solid governance at home.

“African governments must govern democratically, otherwise they will alienate people and push them into the hands of extremists,” he said. “The governments also have to deliver on health, education, avoid corruption and create jobs so that youths do not become easy targets for radicalisation.”

While the threat of terrorism is mostly external in most African countries, it is the potent threat of large, young, unemployed populations that worries them most internally.

Whichever grand hotel hosts these summits (the next one is in Equatorial Guinea) these threats are not a cup of tea, but at least the spies are talking to one another.