In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

246 AT THE ISRAELI National Security Council’s Counterterrorism Bureau, located at a military base not far from Tel Aviv, one particular stream of threat reporting commanded the nearly singular focus of senior officials for several weeks in the summer of 2008: kidnappings. And those kidnappings were happening on one particular continent: Africa. Ever since the October 2000 kidnapping of Elhanan Tannenbaum, Israeli intelligence regularly uncovered information suggesting that Hezbollah was planning more such kidnappings. The targets, as with Tannenbaum, were Israeli businesspersons , most of them former military officers or government officials. In February 2002, for instance, Hezbollah considered kidnapping an Israeli businessman in Belgium, and in April, Hezbollah agents planned to abduct an Israeli businessman in the Netherlands. Another plot, which spanned several months starting in November 2002 and running into 2003, targeted an Israeli national in Spain.1 By late 2003, Hezbollah operational planners shifted their attention south. In December 2003, they were plotting to kidnap an Israeli military-officer-turnedbusinessman in Cyprus.2 The Cyprus plot was foiled, but Hezbollah planners were already focused on kidnapping opportunities in Africa. Perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, targets in Africa proved plentiful. In October 2003, Israeli intelligence officials warned of a Hezbollah plot to kidnap Israeli businesspersons and diplomats in the Horn of Africa.3 The warning included both general threat information related to Hezbollah activity in East Africa— focused in particular on Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania—as well as detailed intelligence identifying at least one specific diplomat as a target. According to Israeli officials, the warnings came from a number of sources and were given extra attention in light of threats by Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah to “work day and night to abduct more and more Israelis” if a prisoner swap then being mediated by the Germans was not imminently concluded. (On January 29, 2004, the same day a Hamas suicide bomber struck downtown Jerusalem, Israel released several hundred prisoners in return for Tannenbaum and the bodies of 9 Finance and Logistics in Africa Finance and Logistics in Africa 247 three Israeli soldiers.) Asked in October 2003 if such a prisoner swap would not embolden Hezbollah to kidnap more Israelis in the future, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon replied, “If they could kidnap someone right now, you think they wouldn’t do it? They would kidnap now and they will try to kidnap in the future.”4 Later that year, Hezbollah operatives sought to kidnap a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) colonel and diamond trader in Cameroon.5 Israeli officials feared the kidnapping threat was especially acute in the Horn of Africa: “For Hezbollah, Africa constitutes a very comfortable base of operations. On the one hand, there is a strong base for extremist Islamic groups there and, on the other hand, the local security forces and intelligence agencies are very lenient.”6 Describing Hezbollah’s financial support activity in West Africa, one US official cautioned that even such support networks are “always a bit operational.”7 It therefore should not surprise that Israeli Counterterrorism Bureau officials saw the development of an effective traveler-warning system—one that would protect sensitive sources and methods while earning and maintaining the Israeli public’s trust—as one of its highest priorities. Officials built such a system and later partnered with a major Israeli research university to study whether the public trusted and followed the warning system. Sometimes the warnings were general; other times, they were incredibly specific and warranted a detailed briefing to the intended target. In one case, an Israeli living in Madrid was on Hezbollah’s radar as an easy target. In another , the European lover of an Israeli businessman was working with friends in Hezbollah who planned to kidnap the Israeli when the two spent a weekend away.8 Hezbollah’s interest in kidnapping Israelis appears to have been an Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) innovation—a new take on an old tactic—executed as a means of collecting intelligence and securing the release of comrades incarcerated in Israel’s and other countries’ jails, completely different from the classic model of kidnapping for ransom. In summer 2008, six months after Imad Mughniyeh’s assassination, the Israeli Counterterrorism Bureau issued a warning specific to Hezbollah plots to attack Israeli citizens in West Africa. Unlike in previous cases, the bureau did not issue a general travel advisory warning against traveling to Africa. Instead, Israeli security officials traveled to specific communities in West Africa to warn visiting or resident Israelis...

Share