Al-Shabab’s Parallel Financial Practices in Somalia Allow Islamist Expansion

July 11, 2022

Somalia’s al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group al-Shabab has built a sophisticated network of taxation mapped onto key transportation hubs, in tandem with opportunistic use of the country’s poorly regulated banking system, to finance its almost two-decades-long war against the East African state and to find other jihadist operations that are delegitimizing states across the geopolitically crucial Horn of Africa region.