Caves and crypto: The secrets behind the return of ISIS

0:00Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow. Coming up on The Daily with me, Neil Patterson. Islamic State is back. Or more accurately, it never went away.

0:37Special correspondent Alex Crawford has followed ISIS to its stronghold in Somalia. What she found will terrify you. Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.

1:20A new kind of ISIS has emerged in Somalia. Persuading people to cross oceans and deserts to join them Moving money around the globe And orchestrating attacks far beyond these borders Look, if you thought the West defeated ISIS years ago I'm afraid we've got news for you They've been rebuilding And from Puntland, a rather remote location in the wilds of Somalia and Eastern Africa ISIS is once again extending its reach International recruitment, drone warfare, cryptocurrency. They may live in caves, but there's a sophistication to the operation that not only gives it global reach, but global ambition.

2:06Our special correspondent Alex Crawford followed the supposed demise of Islamic State in Somalia almost a decade ago. She recently returned to see ISIS up close and the efforts by the Puntland army to wipe them out once and for all. Alex, look, I might be being a bit daft here, but I thought we had dealt with ISIS, but clearly we haven't. Neil, you and I both covered what was termed as the end of ISIS when they thought that they had taken back territory which they'd claimed in Syria and Iraq all those years ago. We know that wasn't the case, really. I'd heard for quite a long time that even as the ongoing battle in Iraq and Syria was going on, they were already regrouping and reforming in other parts of the world, in particular in parts of Africa.

2:57And they have been embedded there for many years now, many, many years. And they have been growing quietly, silently, building not just a very fearsome fighting force, but also a massive global financial empire. And it has already proved that it is being used to devastating effect. So have you been keeping tabs on ISIS since your last visit? Or was there a specific reason that took you back to Somalia? I've been keeping an eye on it. I'd already touched base with the Puntland forces way back in something like 2017, when they had noticed that there were ISIS cells operating within the north of Somalia in this semi-autonomous region called Puntlan.

3:47Fast forward to 2025, at the end of 2024, and the Puntlan forces who've kept in touch got in touch with more extensive detail, saying that they wanted me to come back and they needed me to come back now. They wanted me to see just how big this network was and the challenges that they were facing in trying to root them out, track them down and finish them finally. And in the meantime, in that interim period, they have really grown like a coronavirus. They have grown massively. And not only were we shown a sort of extensive network of caves, you know, so this involves time and effort and people to carve out a network of caves where you stash weapons and where you grow a network, you recruit fighters, foreign fighters to come to, you train them, and you also make a huge number of rockets and bombs, improvised explosive devices and suicide vests.

4:56I mean, some of the hideouts that we saw were the size of several British villages in their geographical area that they took up and what they were doing there. I mean, they had medical facilities. They had makeshift homemade gyms. They had they rigged up electricity in these very remote areas where most of them don't have electricity. They managed to take up generators and computers, fridges. We saw coffee machines. But the very central, the foundation of the reason why this community was there was that they were making bombs. There was a huge welding section. There was a cache of weapons with hundreds and hundreds of AK-47s, which the Puntlan forces found.

5:42Alex, just describe the part of Somalia in which ISIS is based. I mean, how do you actually get there? How does the army get there? Well, the normal route from Bosasu, the main key port city in Puntland, if you went by road, which involves going off the road and going off track and doing a lot of off-road travel, it can take up to 18 hours, I was told, because they have to avoid certain areas. They're worried about security. They're worried about ambushes. There are checkpoints. There are IEDs to navigate and roadside bombs, and they're constantly being ambushed. These are the challenges they're up against.

6:19Even when you get to that forward operating base, which looks, the first sight of it looks like you're basically landing on Mars. It's just this huge, dusty, rocky area with all their little tents all peppered around and them looking incredibly dusty and dirty and worn down by it all, all taking up positions and trying to guard the perimeter from any further attacks. Because there's only one road in and one road out, they're having to clear manually every day, sometimes several times a day, to make sure that it's clear of mines.

7:00We're forced to stop frequently. The terrain is unforgiving and constantly exploited by the militants who carry out regular ambushes. There's a corpse just over to our right. still very strong stench of deteriorating flesh. You can see military fatigue still on him. He was not only killed, but also one of his fellow fighters. Two others got away, so it seems they're still very active in this area. So the conditions are extremely harsh, very, very difficult for forces to operate in, and they have suffered hundreds of casualties. They say that they have killed 600 Islamic State extremists. And out of those 600, five of them were found to be Somali.

7:53The bulk were foreign fighters who come from a range of different countries, a German passport that we saw there. So they are having a quite powerful impact on recruiting foreign fighters to this very remote, tough, rough part of the region. in northern Somalia. And that has made it perfect for them to exist silently. Casualties in the hundreds, that suggests to me ISIS membership in the thousands. I mean, can we put a number on it? And indeed, can we say with certainty where the money's coming from? I think any number count has got to be a little bit of guesswork. But as you pointed out, if the casualties of the deaths are in, you know, around about 600, they've captured a couple of hundred more.

8:42We're talking about probably a network of several more hundred bigger than that. They got the money in a variety of different ways. Extortion was a big one, and they extorted a lot of the businesses and the shops and the individuals in the key areas, particularly the port city of Basasu. That was definitely one way of doing it. They used locals through coercion, threats and violence to move money for them digitally. They got money from even mining up in those remote areas. We saw evidence of them mining small, on a very small scale, but gold and other minerals were being mined, which they were selling.

9:24They seized livestock from the community and used to transport those. And they used the very natural geographical advantages, which is the Gulf of Aden, around the Horn of Africa, and their connections, which they're building up with the Houthis in Yemen to transport goods in kind to get money back. So we're talking about gold bars and goats at the same time being transported along these waterways and people, recruits, fighters and families being smuggled in and out. What is the ambition of this iteration of ISIS? Are we back to talking about pan-global caliphates or is there a more sophisticated long-term goal for this group?

10:09They've got plenty of pretty decent weaponry, don't they? They've got a lot of weaponry and they've learnt from their mistakes. So whilst a lot of the captured prisoners, the captured IS fighters talk about how the focus was on first taking over Somalia, then other neighbouring countries and then on to the larger world, they're finding that they can farm out terror attacks by funding them. And that seems to be what the Somali intelligence and counterterrorism agents have discovered. On these phones, they are digitally moving and gambling using cryptocurrency and transferring money to other extremist groups who might be aligned with them or follow the same ethos and have the same aims and ambitions.

10:58And that money is being used to fund terror attacks far away from Somalia. So, for instance, they found direct links, according to the Somalis and according to U.S. intelligence, between money raised and generated and coordinated by ISIS in Somalia to fund the bombing of Kabul airport in 2021 as international troops, particularly U.S. troops, were pulling out from Kabul airport. That bomb, which killed hundreds of Afghan civilians, including 13 US military personnel, was funded and raised and coordinated by ISIS Somalia. What, Alex, do we know of the leader of ISIS, the current leader of ISIS?

11:44Who is he? And what's this I hear about a London connection? Well, Abdul Qadir Mumin is certainly a very significant figure in ISIS global network. There's some debate amongst ISIS experts and the intelligence community who are investigating this about whether he is actually the leader. But he is very definitely a significant figure and he is the leader within ISIS Somalia. He's someone who appears to be quite an eccentric figure. He's very notable because he's got this fiery henna-dyed beard, which makes him look very different and recognisable, and gleaming white teeth, which one of the intelligence officers described as evidence that he had access to very good dental use or dental services.

12:42He was born in Puntland, but he spent some time in Europe, I believe it was Sweden, before ending up in Britain. And he became quite a recognisable figure, not least because of his physical appearance, but because of the oratory that he used to deliver in mosques in Leicester, and then in London. He was accused and believed to be heading a very determined and energetic recruitment drive for young Somali men, particularly in London, trying to persuade them to go to fight jihad in Somalia. And then not long after he was discovered to be doing that, He then made the trek himself and turned up again in Puntland.

13:31And right now, his whereabouts are still unknown, and he appears to be still operating. But you actually met one of those ISIS fighters that had been captured by the Puntland military, the Puntland Army. I mean, what was that like? Well, we met a couple of them. Now, one of these prisoners was a 24-year-old man from Yemen. He said he had come over to Somalia on that sea route from Yemen through the Gulf of Aden before arriving in Puntland specifically to join the Islamic State. He was still a very young man. He was accused of being an ISIS commander, a sniper and part of a two man bomb squad. I'm just trying to work out if you're in any way regretful about joining ISIS.

14:23Are you regretful? What are your feelings now about joining up this organization? Now, if I regret it or not, I'm sentenced to death. Regret or joy are of no use to me. I'm sentenced to death. But you knew that the whole aim was to kill people. If I knew that it would harm anyone, I wouldn't have done it. I didn't come here to kill Muslims. But you must have heard within the ISIS community that you were killing people because people were being blown up. Yes, I know this, but they don't kill all people. What did you think about killing anybody? They don't kill everyone, only infidels. I thought the whole interview was absolutely mind-blowing.

15:18He really displayed no empathy at all, no regret at all for anything he was accused of carrying out. Although he's on death row and awaiting execution by firing squad, he just laughed when I asked him about that. But when I asked him specifically about any regrets, he said, I have no regrets. You can take me out now and you can hang me now. I have no regrets. And then gave this rather chilling smile. Alex, is the international community finally waking up to how much of a threat ISIS already poses and the greater threat they could pose in the immediate future? I think the US has clearly got it on its radar because it was the first military actual action that Donald Trump took in his second presidential term in February.

16:11And he delivered a sort of a threat to ISIS saying, we will find you and we will kill you then. And they have carried out a number of US airstrikes ever since. The world is so full of problems right now and everyone is so focused on multiple other conflicts and wars and suffering around the world. I honestly think that the focus isn't on this particular problem just yet. And that is definitely how the Somalis feel. Now, I spoke to the Puntland army chief and he was very critical of the lack of international involvement, particularly he wants to see more British involvement. Britain has got long historic ties with Somalia and has got a very large Somali diaspora in Britain itself.

17:05And he says while they are getting help from Britain in certain areas, such as intelligence sharing and other cooperation, he wants to see much more. How much of a threat then does an organisation like ISIS in its current state pose to the United Kingdom? I think it must pose quite a substantial threat because of the historic ties between Somalia and Britain, because of the ability of this network to exist on very little, living extremely simple lives with zero creature comforts that we're all used to, and yet still managing to extort money, digitally move money, fund global terror attacks. Even if only half a dozen extremists are doing that, that poses a threat.

17:57The fact that international travel is so much easier, the fact that you can get in and out of that country relatively easy because there are very loose legal borders, some are crossing legally and a lot are crossing illegally on land and on sea, never mind by air, it's got to be a big problem. Alex and team, thanks very much indeed and if you haven't seen Alex's full documentary Hunting for ISIS, A Warning from Africa yeah, I really would urge you to head straight over to skynews.com well worth your time the Sky News Daily is back again tomorrow

18:40Hello, Ed Conway here here is what might sound like a slightly random question what do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common. On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how, together, they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.