By Babucarr Ceesay
In the early 2010s, West African countries imposed stricter environmental regulations, anticipating a steady decline in timber exports due to Ecowas restrictions on endangered rosewood. Instead, The Gambia saw an increase in rosewood shipments through its capital’s seaport, amid the ongoing Casamance insurgency and Gambia government’s imposition of what looked symbolic or rhetorically-motivated sanctions of timber trade. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reported on June 11, 2020, that about 1.6 million trees were harvested from Casamance and exported via Gambian ports. A 2022 EIA/UNODC study further revealed over three million tons of rosewood trafficked from West Africa to China in five years, which was valued at over $2 billion, highlighting an escalation in illegal timber trade. By 2025, the EIA cautioned that escalating Asian timber demand and industrial-scale logging would further strain African supply chains, particularly in Gambia, where enforcement have been inconsistent.
Furthermore, recent domestic and regional reporting demonstrates that the crisis in conflict timber is not a past phenomenon but an active system unfolding in real time, The Gambian Ministry of Environment seized twelve trucks of illegal timber on April 12, 2025, reported The Point, a local newspaper. However, while this demonstrate government’s resolve in halting timber trade, the enforcement actions are episodic, reactionary and mainly target minor smugglers, while larger networks remain largely unchecked. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) further reecho these sentiments by estimating that Africa loses $17 billion yearly to illegal logging, with The Gambia as a significant transit point for timber controlled by The Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) rebels, despite existing trade bans.
This situation is intertwined with the ongoing Casamance conflict, as MFDC rely on rosewood trafficking for their economy. The persistence of The Gambia as a transit hub for illegal timber is attributed to entrenched political-economic systems rather than governance failures, with traffickers obtaining fake re-export certifications that help them evade accountability. This activity not only undermines international regulations such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, (CITES) but also poses a national-security threat as it orchestrates a formidable MFDC whose clashes with other groups spills over into Gambian territory, reinforcing the need to address the underpinnings of the illicit timber trade.
The trade in rosewood is closely tied to the political economy of the Casamance conflict, where the MFDC rebels, engaged in a fight for autonomy from Senegal since the 1980s, rely heavily on this trafficking for funding their insurgency. They control logging areas, impose taxes on timber, issue their own permits, and manage the transport of logs to Gambian landing sites. This involves nighttime transport using donkey carts and bribing police at numerous checkpoints. The logs are ultimately shipped to Chinese markets from the Gambia Seaport, illustrating how the insurgency economy by MFDC is intertwined with Gambian administrative and commercial systems, facilitated by the involvement of various parties including rebels, traffickers, and corrupt officials.
These dynamics are explored through three critical lenses: Marxist analysis of surplus-value and alienation reveals how immense global profit is extracted while local communities bear the costs; Polanyi’s concept of the state as a material condensation of class relations illuminates how bureaucratic institutions stabilize the illicit market to maintain elite power and social order; and Gramscian hegemony explains how consent is produced, normalizing the trafficking through narratives of “national interest” and economic necessity. Taken together, these factors explain why conflict-related wood timber endures in transit despite legal bans and mounting evidence of its ties to armed groups.
The article concludes by demonstrating that national security can only be restored if the Gambian state dismantles the incentive structures that bind intermediaries, institutions, and political players to the wood business. Without decisive dismantling of these structures, the conflict timber will remain one of the most persistent and destabilizing drivers affecting Gambian sovereignty and statehood.
Interestingly, the surplus-extraction concept helps to explain why illegal wood continues even when official restrictions exist, but a fully Marxist analysis must also consider alienation. The EIA’s 2020 study estimated that between 2012-2020, over 1.6 million trees worth more than US$470 million were exported, yet The Gambia and its workers received only a minute fraction of this immense exchange-value. This disparity is not merely revenue leakage; it is evidence of a massive surplus-value captured by international brokers and Chinese buyers. Crucially, the Gambian workers (e.g., loggers, truckers, port officials receiving bribes) are alienated from the immense profit of their labor and, more fundamentally, from the use-value of the forest itself. Their labor and the resource are transformed into an external power (global capital) that actively degrades their local environment and fuels insecurity. They sell their capacity for a pittance (a wage or bribe) and are thus disconnected from the global commodity chain, externalizing the environmental and security costs onto the Gambian populace.
Moreover, The Gambian state institutions do not simply fail to control the trade; they actively stabilize it, a dynamic explained by Polanyi’s concept of the state as a material condensation of class relations. The state apparatus acts as a mediating force, making concessions to capitalist pressure, in this case, facilitating illicit trade to sustain the elite class order. The creation of documentation, the stamping of permits, and the customs clearance (as revealed by the EIA’s undercover footage) are not procedural errors; they are administrative practices that stabilize a highly lucrative illicit market. This institutional mediation provides vital, untraceable revenue streams (rents, bribes, or official kickbacks) that are essential for the political survival and legitimacy of the ruling class.
By allowing the trade to continue, the state effectively secures funding to maintain its patronage networks and perhaps even pump money into selective ‘development’ projects, thus mediating the systemic pressures of global capitalism through a corruption-fueled concession that preserves the social order. The bureaucratic routine makes the illegal commodity circulate as if it were lawful to sustain the interests condensed within the state.
Ideas about manufactured consent assist in explaining why public opposition to conflict timber remains low, despite broad awareness of its dangers. This is a classic example of Gramscian hegemony, where the state, as the leading political and moral force, successfully frames its self-serving actions such as bypassing bureaucratic procedures and engaging in conflicts of interest as being in the ”national interest.” Local narratives frequently portray timber exports as a necessary source of jobs, port activity, or cross-border trade, a framing that is amplified by officials and often left unchallenged by media reliant on government support.
This hegemonic project neutralizes potential counter-narratives. The resultant consent is not enthusiastic approval; it is the internalization of a belief that the trade is inevitable, economically useful, or not worth the political risk of resistance. This ideological accommodation allows the state to evade accountability and permits traffickers to operate under minimal public scrutiny by making the illicit activity appear to be a normalized, routine ”business.”
Taking together, these processes explained why Conflict timber has become a national security issue due to excessive extraction that reduces state revenue and governance, fostering corruption and obstructing reform. In Casamance, armed groups take advantage of rosewood smuggling, escalating regional violence and affecting Gambian border communities through spillover effects. The consequence is a highly stable, yet parasitic, political-economic structure that prioritises elite profit and external dependency over national sovereignty.
Meaningful reform in the Gambia requires breaking the links between state institutions, brokers, and the timber economy. Key actions include enhancing cross-border intelligence sharing, digitizing permit systems, and investigating trafficking networks to restore regulatory authority and prevent conflict timber from threatening statehood.
The author is a governance and policy researcher whose work spans democratic transitions, and human rights in transitional states. He has contributed to election observation, field-based research, and policy engagement with international and local organizations. He is currently an MA candidate in Political Science (International Relations) at the Universitas Islam International Indonesia, where he studies institutional reform and democratic consolidation. His writing examines governance and political change through the lens of institutional reform, diaspora political rights, and the mechanisms that shape accountability and democratic resilience in post-authoritarian states.
