visited Iran repeatedly, last week said he was “very much disturbed” by the effort to deliver a huge cache of Iranian weapons to next-door Gambia.
Many Gambians believe the weapons were intended for a rebel group that is based in a Senegalese province that abuts Gambia.
Wade said, “I was very much disturbed by this issue because Gambia does not need these heavy weapons, including the long-range ones. In this case, it is better to take precautions despite assurances from the Iranian foreign minister.”
Wade did not say what precautions he would take and he did not say how the weapons case would impact Senegal’s relations with Iran.
Gambia severed all relations with Iran last month.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki telephoned Wade last week to try to reassure him, as Wade said. But the phone call didn’t do the trick. Wade’s continuing concerns prompted Mottaki to fly to Senegal this week. Mottaki was in Senegal when President Ahmadi-nejad announced he was being sacked. What Wade thought of that hasn’t been revealed.
Thirteen shipping containers packed with weapons but described as construction materials were shipped from Bandar Abbas to Nigeria over the summer. They sat in the port at Lagos for several weeks untouched. Then two Iranians filed papers for the containers to be released and shipped to Gambia. Nigerian police, who had been warned that the containers held weapons, then seized all 13 containers October 21.
Gambia was silent for a month and then severed relations with Iran. It has not yet given any explanation for the severance, nor said anything about the weapons.
Under UN sanctions, Iran is not allowed to export arms and no UN member is permitted to buy Iranian arms.
Senegal almost completely surrounds Gambia. Within Senegal, a rebel group calling itself the Movement for Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) has been in rebellion against the national government for two decades. Casamance is a province of Senegal that abuts Gambia.
Ibrahim Gassama, a Senegalese journalist, told China’s Xinhua News Service, “Since the beginning of the Casamance conflict, the question everyone has been asking is: Where does the MFDC gets its weapons?”
Many people in Senegal now think they have the answer.
But there are other questions. One key question is why Iran should have any interest in helping the Casamance rebels. Iran appears to have excellent relations with Wade, who has visited Iran multiple times and hosted President Ahmadi-nejad in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. It isn’t clear what Iran would gain if the Casamance rebels won a victory—and, if Iran is linked to rebels, it stands to lose much standing in Africa.
There is also the possibility that the arms were not destined for Gambia, but were just being routed through Gambia—as they were being routed through Nigeria—and were destined for others. In Israel, the common belief is that the arms were destined for Hamas in Gaza and that the long journey through other countries was a kind of weapons laundering.
Senegal is clearly suspicious that Gambia is aiding the Casamance rebels. It is, however, possible that the government of Gambia knew nothing about the shipment. But, if that is so, why has Gambia remained silent beyond severing relations with Iran? Why hasn’t Gambia even announced an investigation to find out who was to receive the weapons when they arrived in Gambia? Gambia’s silence prompts many to suspect that Gambia has much to hide about the arms.
Meanwhile, last Thursday, the US Treasury added two Gambian entities to its list of organizations designated for links to terrorism. They are the Kairaba Shopping Center and the Tajco Company, both located in the Gambian capital of Banjul. The Treasury did not explain why those firms were being listed. According to the Tajco website, it owns the Kairaba Shopping Center.
But almost everything about this case is speculation. Nigeria, Gambia and Senegal have all said very little, and next-to-nothing is known at this point.
Iran has argued that the arms sale was a private initiative and that the government of Iran is not involved, but it hasn’t said why it would be selling quantities of state-made weapons to private arms dealers. Furthermore, one of the two Iranian nationals Nigeria has implicated in the arms shipment has diplomatic immunity.