Kidnapping European hostages: Africa a popular market for ISIS and al-Qaeda

Armed groups, especially the al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist
organizations, rely on kidnapping and looting to extort the hostages’
countries.
Despite these groups’ attempts to delude the world that they
have succeeded in imposing their conditions, reality says otherwise, as
internal divisions and security and military prosecutions push these
organizations to the brink of abyss.
Dangerous deals
In October, Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM)
released a French hostage in Mali, Sophie Petronin, who was kidnapped on
December 24, 2016, after which the authorities in Bamako decided to release
more than 130 militants, as well as pay a large sum of money to the terrorist
group, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda.
In February and July, Chinese workers in Nigeria were
subjected to kidnappings, extortion and ransom payments, which led to a loss of
$20 billion for the Chinese that was paid to Boko Haram for their release.
Since 2003, the kidnapping of European hostages by terrorist
groups has witnessed a boom, most notably the kidnapping of Pierre Kamat, who
was kidnapped and held by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from November
24, 2009 to February 23, 2010, when he was released under an exchange with Hamada
Ould Mohamed el-Kheirou, founder of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West
Africa. In April 2010, Michel Germaneau was kidnapped by AQIM and was killed on
July 22, 2010, after the Mauritanian forces failed to liberate him.
Security Council resolutions
While many countries, especially European ones, have paid
large sums of money in exchange for the release of their citizens kidnapped by
extremist organizations, other countries have refused to do so.
Due to the intensification of the terrorist threat in recent
years and the simultaneous developments of terrorist financing patterns, the UN
Security Council has taken a number of additional decisions to address new
means of financing terrorism, including by targeting the link between
terrorists and organized crime groups and by addressing fundraising activities
through kidnappings for ransom.
The Security Council expressed its concern about the flow of
funds to terrorists and the need to suppress all forms of terrorist financing.
Therefore, the United Nations began to emphasize the need to combat terrorism
and strengthen the capacity of states to meet the requests of interested
countries for technical assistance in the field of combating terrorist
financing.
In addition, many areas where ISIS and al-Qaeda are
concentrated have witnessed widespread kidnappings of diplomatic and military
employees, businessmen, and relief organizations employees, which they use to
demand large sums of money in exchange for the hostages’ release. However, many
terrorist organizations have then announced the execution of their hostages
even after receiving a ransom.
In 2019, US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea stated that ISIS “still has the potential
to obtain millions of dollars.”
After participating in a meeting in Luxembourg focused on
combating ISIS, Billingslea told reporters that he expects the terrorist organization’s
financial operations to “move from the central model in Iraq and Syria to an
approach that depends much more on regions” in an effort to absorb the killing
of its late leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Billingslea expected ISIS to rely on “its various regional
agencies for greater self-sufficiency,” especially by obtaining ransoms from
kidnappings, extortion and even the theft of cows in Nigeria, where it has a
presence.
The extremist groups loyal to AQIM are the most influential
in Africa’s Sahel region, which covers large areas of Mali, Burkina Faso,
Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Mauritania, as they are the primary beneficiaries of
ransoms. One such kidnapping took place in Benin in 2019, while a member of the
French Special Forces was killed in an operation in Burkina Faso in 2019.