confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
Who's bugging who – and why?
Blue Lines
Although journalism has been facing all manner of economic and political pressures during the pandemic, it is gratifying to see a team of skilled investigators produce revelatory stories about the state of diplomacy and espionage.
Foreign affairs specialists have long known about the operations of Israel's NSO and its proximity to that country's intelligence services. But the scale of its ambition and that of its clients – a roster of telephone numbers including France's President Emmanuel Macron, Morocco's Mohammed VI, South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa and Pakistan's Imran Khan – is shocking if not surprising. It will exacerbate pre-existing distrust in the case of India and Pakistan or South Africa and Rwanda (one of NSO's biggest clients in Africa). Given that Rwanda has been running assassination campaigns against its political dissidents exiled in South Africa, it is logical for it to spy on Ramaphosa and others. More surprising is why South Africa hadn't discovered this earlier and the timidity of its official response.
France, which is investigating claims that Morocco's security services targeted mobile phones belonging to President Macron and 15 French ministers using NSO spyware, may also try to downplay the issue. It depends on Moroccan security for intelligence on Islamist militants in Europe, and doesn't want to jeopardise that mosque-level cooperation. The sting is slightly eased by the revelation that Rabat's service was also spying on Mohammed VI, who has been holed up in the royal palace at Fez for a curiously lengthy period.
