How are ex-Mossad involved in African elections?
Last August, in the middle of the night, 14 Israelis quietly landed in Ghana.
The group arrived at Kotoka International Airport on a
private plane and immediately went to the Oak Plaza Hotel along Spintext Road
in the capital city of Accra, not far from the shores of the Gulf of Guinea.
A room in the relatively new Oak Plaza, which describes
itself as “secluded,” goes for about $100 a night. Not outrageous but pricey
for a country like Ghana.
When asked, members of the group said they were “information
technology experts,” tech workers who had come to assist local industry.
But according to reports that later came out in the local
Ghana media, the group was not there for ordinary business meetings. They had
come with an agenda to influence Ghana’s national election in December.
A report in September in Ghana’s The Herald named all 14 of
the Israelis, with at least two, Amit Waisal and Adi Danino, relatively easily
identifiable as former Israeli intelligence officers – with the Mossad and IDF.
Other members of the group had hints of similar backgrounds.
From 2010 to 2016, Waisal’s LinkedIn page says, he worked
for the “government of Israel,” a frequently used cover for the Mossad. The
Magazine has learned that since 2016 Waisal has worked in private-sector firms
with strong connections to ex-Israeli intelligence officials, though at the
time he allegedly traveled to Ghana he was not a full-time staff member.
Waisal denied traveling to Ghana, claiming he had not left
Israel since the coronavirus broke out in the country last March. In talks with
the Magazine, he could not explain how his name and photo, confirmed as
authentic, appeared in local Ghana reports. A source did indicate that Waisal
had once applied for a visa there, but that he had never used it or ended up
making the trip. Pressed about Waisal’s denial, The Herald refused to reply.
Danino had worked at Verint Intelligence since 2016 until at
least 2019. From 2011 to 2016, he worked for the IDF’s Information Security
Department. Incidentally, Verint Intelligence’s director of operations also was
a former IDF Information Security official and a number of other Verint staff
have similar backgrounds.
The Magazine spoke to a representative for Verint to request
comment, but after promising to check into the situation, the representative
never responded other than suggesting that Danino is not a current employee.
According to The Herald report, the 14 Israelis snuck into
the country to help incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo of the NPP party rig or
swing the December 7 election.
The article did not specify how or what the group of
Israelis undertook, but described similar incidents of foreign mercenaries
being brought in to influence prior elections.
Incidentally, Akufo-Addo won reelection by a razor-thin
margin of 51% to 47%, with the law in Ghana requiring the winner to pass 50% to
avoid a runoff. His opponent, former president John Mahama of the NDC, asked
the Supreme Court to invalidate the election outcome as illegitimate due to
irregularities and to order a runoff.
On March 4, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Mahama’s
election challenges, though it did insist on the Electoral Commission of Ghana
correcting certain errors that the commission acknowledged.
The Herald alleged a range of covert actions by Akufo-Addo
back in 2016, when he allegedly – with South Africans and Serbians – took
various questionable steps surrounding the election.
“The Israelis, our intel revealed, have been brought and
tasked to undertake activities with their skill, expertise and experience that
will lead to President Akufo-Addo being declared winner of the December 7,
2020, election,” said The Herald’s report.
Did the Israelis help Akufo-Addo sway the election? That
remains a mystery. What is clear, though, is that ex-Israeli intelligence
officials are increasingly and quietly involved today in elections and
government activities throughout Africa.
ON THE one hand, having political strategists from the West
or Israel working in developing countries can be politically and economically
profitable. There is also nothing illegal about that.
But what about former Israeli intelligence officials who use
shadowy techniques they learned in the Mossad or Unit 8200 in African election
campaigns? What if some version of The Herald’s story is true?
In recent years there have been an increasing number of
reports alleging such activities by Israeli companies made up of former
intelligence officials.
Even if not illegal, such campaigns – if involving
disinformation or tactics designed to provoke or destabilize the country –
could be viewed as problematic back in Jerusalem.
Though not addressing the specific story in The Herald, in
October Israel Defense reported that Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael
Advanced Defense Systems were competing to establish a Cyber Emergency Response
Team center in Ghana with involvement of the Israeli government.
According to the report, the future of the project could be
impacted by Ghana’s complex politics and the outcome of the December election.
This means that the Israeli government itself might have had an interest in the
race.
But none of that proves any improper activities. And while
the Magazine could not confirm what these Israelis were doing in Accra, sources
with knowledge have confirmed that a relatively large number of Israelis
started operating in Africa around the time identified in The Herald’s report.
Some sources also speculated that the chances these Israelis
were involved in illegal or problematic election activities is higher because
they arrived at a high-stakes point, late in the election cycle, when
Akufo-Addo allegedly needed a “game changer” to win, in the middle of a corona
wave and under secretive conditions.
Furthermore, sources have said that the incumbent president,
like many in Africa, engaged former European intelligence officials to act
aggressively on his behalf in relation to the election.
On top of that, some sources expressed skepticism that
Ghana’s Election Commission or Supreme Court would overturn an election win of
an incumbent president, regardless of evidence of irregularities.
Without specific evidence, they cited trends in Africa of
election officials and courts being overwhelmingly unwilling to stare down a
country’s ruler.
TO BETTER understand what might have happened in Ghana, it
is helpful to delve into the bigger picture of Israeli involvement in elections
in Africa.
Sources have told the Magazine that there are Israelis
involved in election campaigns in almost every one of Africa’s more than 50
countries.
In addition, almost all major Israeli political advisers and
strategists have some activities there. Some are Mossad agents who were
formerly stationed there and stayed, and others are Israelis brought in through
the extended family of consultants.
Making clear that he had no connections to Ghana, Ari Harow
– a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and campaign
strategist – said that while politics are definitely local, Israelis have an
edge in their digital expertise.
“Tip O’Neil famously said ‘All politics is local,’” Harow
said. “In the age of globalization, I argue that all politics is global.
“Today, campaigns in places like Africa or South America are
very similar to the United States or Israel. While there are cultural
differences wherever you go, the similarities in research, messaging, digital
campaigning are much greater.”
In some cases in Africa, this could mean a hybrid campaign
where 80%-90% of the issues are handled using advanced digital media and
polling methods, and the rest are still handled by local operators with
face-to-face meetings.
Adi Timor, a political adviser with more than 10 years of
experience in Africa, said that the spread of high-speed Internet changed the
continent.
Between 2012 and 2017, she explained, people who received
news using an Internet connection went from under 10% to around 90% in Sierra
Leone.
“Now everyone has a smartphone. There is lots of available
Wi-Fi. The world is open before you,” she affirmed.
In Malawi, Timor worked as a political adviser to President
Lazarus Chakwera, who was elected in June 2020. What Timor found most
significant was that Chakwera was elected in a redo-election after Malawi’s
constitutional court annulled the first one in May 2019 due to vote tampering.
She said the fact that an African country could cancel an
election win for an incumbent president, allowing a challenger like Chakwera a
fair chance to win the rerun race, shows how far the continent has come.
Timor said that she is more accepted as a female political
adviser in Africa than she would be in Israel.
She listed off Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique
as countries with increasing levels of female participation in government.
But not all Israelis in Africa are like Harow or Timor. Many
are former intelligence personnel who joined the private sector after their
government jobs and now work as campaign advisers or consultants across the
continent.
Sources explained that sophisticated technology is now
available almost everywhere for social media information or disinformation
campaigns which aim to manipulate public opinion and election outcomes.
In Western democracies, these kinds of methods are more
likely to be caught than in Africa, where oversight is weaker.
Regarding the mysterious Israeli trip in Ghana, some sources
said it could just be Israelis using fancy data-mining technologies to gather
opposition research – a standard part of any modern campaign.
Part of the problem is that some Israeli companies have been
caught allegedly involved in illegal or shadowy operations in Africa, sometimes
relating to elections and sometimes with local officials. There have even been
court cases against Israeli companies, including a 2016 conviction of Israeli
company NIP Global by an Israeli court for bribery of an official in Lesotho.
WHILE INTERFERENCE in other countries’ politics has become a
worldwide phenomenon impacting even Western democracies, sources claimed there
might be an even greater danger of disinformation in Africa leading to actual
widespread violence.
Which is why in regard to the Ghana story – without clear
evidence of what the 14 Israelis were doing there – there is reason to worry.
In the 2019 Transparency International Corruption Perception index, for
example, Ghana ranked 41 out of 100, with 100 being the cleanest.
The December 7 election was the third in Ghana between
Akufo-Addo and Mahama.
Mahama won and served as president from 2012 to 2016;
Akufo-Addo won and served from 2016 onward; and 2020 was the year they once
again ran against each other.
And while Ghana is a democracy, it has a history of serious
accusations of corruption, both in regular times and as part of elections.
Reuters has reported that Akufo-Addo won in 2016 by
capitalizing on attacks on Mahama regarding an economic downturn due to falling
prices for gold, oil and cocoa exports, and vowing to cut a $1.6 billion budget
deficit. The report also accused Mahama of corruption.
The other, more conspiratorial narrative would be what has
been promoted by The Herald about former Israeli intelligence agents being
smuggled into the country to flip the election.
However, aspects of The Herald’s account of election
tampering by Akufo-Addo (in order to help prove he again tampered with
elections in December) might not make logical sense, because in 2016 he was in
the opposition.
He did not have his hand on any of the levers of state power
which would have helped him tamper with the election, and then-president (now
opposition leader) Mahama did not demand an investigation.
Pressed to explain this potential hole in the argument that
Akufo-Addo is a person who chronically tampers with elections, The Herald
responded to the Magazine, “Very legitimate questions by you. But my simple
answer is that Ghana is a divided country. If then-president Mahama had
insisted on investigating the hacking, many would have said it was a decoy to
hang on [to] power.
“If the electoral commissioner had tried investigating or
indeed investigated it, she would have been accused of using inferior tactics
to rig the election for Mahama because she [was] appointed when the position
became vacant,” said the statement.
A lot about the story, though, remains unclear. Some of the
blanks can be filled in by other recent Western media and Ghana media reports.
On November 17, BBC, Voice of America and others reported
that Ghana’s anti-corruption “czar” quit in protest of Akufo-Addo’s alleged
interference in a report the czar was writing on corruption.
On November 22, local Ghana media reported that Electoral
Commission officials found some ballot papers with duplicate serial numbers.
On November 23, Mahama accused Akufo-Addo of covering up the
corruption of some of his close associates and of a plan to shut down the
Internet around election day to try to control information.
Also on November 23, the Electoral Commission announced that
polling stations would be manned by verification officers who would use
biometric devices to verify all voters’ identification before allowing them to
vote.
That was just before December 7.
Since December 7, Mahama has received support from multiple
representatives who were present at Electoral Commission headquarters claiming
irregularities.
On the flip side, the leaders of the commission say the
election was free and fair, supported by the Supreme Court ruling of March 4.
We may never fully know what those 14 Israelis were up to in
Ghana. In the broader story, Israelis’ election consulting activities in Africa
are likely a huge mix of both standard and aboveboard as well as more
questionable activities.
But the story also is not over. The opposition loyal to
Mahama in Ghana’s legislature still wields sufficient election challenges so
that they may take control.
Only two months after the storming of the Capitol Building
in Washington, DC, the beacon of democracy, how strong can Ghana’s or any other
African democracy remain when sophisticated former Israeli intelligence
officials may be bearing down on them at any moment?
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