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Somalia may become the world’s next extremist stronghold
Written by
Michael Petrou
When a Maclean’s reporter reached Somali journalist Abdi Ahmed Abdul on
his cellphone as he walked back to his home through the streets of
Mogadishu, he quickly ended the call, apologizing later that evening by
explaining that it would not be safe for him to be heard speaking
English by members of al-Shabaab—the Islamist militia that controls much
of the country and whose leadership has been linked to al-Qaeda. “I am
scared,” Abdul said. “If they see me talking to somebody in English, I’d
be in danger. If anybody is speaking in English, they think he is a spy.
It means I am passing information to foreigners, what they call
Christians or infidels, people they don’t like.”
Abdul lives near one of the main markets in Mogadishu, a place he calls
a “stronghold of the Shabaab.” He asked that his real name not be
printed. “If they read this, they will come and look for me and blow my
brain up.” His family has fled twice to other parts of the country. He’s
considered leaving himself, but is now afraid to try.
Abdul’s description of Somalia under al-Shabaab is similar to that of
Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule. Al-Shabaab’s rule is guided by a
medieval and repressive interpretation of Islam, and it has attracted
foreign jihadists—who may have international ambitions—to Somalia.
This spring, Abdul says, two teenage boys and a teenage girl were
sentenced to be lashed 100 times for having premarital sex. The sentence
has not yet been carried out, but in June, four men accused of stealing
cellphones all had a hand or foot hacked off with machetes after they
were convicted by an al-Shabaab Islamic court. And in October, a
13-year-old rape victim was stoned to death in front of some 1,000
spectators. “It happens—the amputations, the stoning to death, the
whippings, forbidding music,” he says. “They tell women to wear the
hijab. They banned films. They even control the memory cards of mobile
phones to check if there are pornographic films or films that are
anti-Islamic. No cinemas. No music. They even force people to pray.”
Al-Shabaab, meaning “the Youth” in Arabic, grew out of the Islamic
Courts Union, which briefly controlled Somalia in 2006. Ethiopian troops
and covert American Special Forces toppled the Islamic Courts Union in
2006 and 2007, and a “transitional” government was installed in its
place. The most radical elements from the ICU then formed new Islamist
groups, such as al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, meaning “Party of Islam,”
to oppose the government, which since January has been led by Sheik
Sharif Ahmed. Ahmed was previously leader of the Islamic Courts Union
but is a moderate Islamist compared to those in al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab receives money and arms from Somalis in the diaspora, from
wealthy Arabs in the Gulf, and from Eritrea. Along with its allies, it
controls all but a few pockets of Somalia outside the de facto
autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland—the latter of which has
become famous of late as an epicenter for piracy. The Transitional
Federal Government has not been toppled because of the protection of
some 4,000 African Union soldiers. Its writ barely extends over a few
square blocks of Mogadishu. In recent weeks, Somalia’s security
minister, Omar Hashi Aden, was killed in an al-Shabaab suicide car bomb
attack, and scores of parliamentarians have left the country. Barely
half remain. “Even an AK-47 bullet fired by the opposition groups can
hit the presidential palace,” says Abdul.
Abdul says most Somalis don’t support the Shabaab, but are “ruled by
fear.” Some still fight against it. When militants desecrated graves and
mosques sacred to followers of the spiritual Sufi branch of Islam,
normally peaceful Sufis took up arms on the side of the government
against al-Shabaab, defeating them in several battles in central
Somalia.
In a country that has not had a functioning government for almost 20
years, and where much of the population is malnourished, the fighting
has made an already devastating humanitarian situation even worse. Tens
of thousands have fled Mogadishu in recent months, and already there are
some 250,000 Somali refugees in Kenya. Daniela Kroslak, deputy director
of the Africa Program at the International Crisis Groups, describes
their conditions as “dire in all aspects.” And, she told Maclean’s, “The
Somalia situation is one of the worst, if not the worst, situation on
the continent.”
What most worries the United States and other Western governments,
however, is not the humanitarian crisis, but the possibility that
Somalia may become a base for international terrorism.
Many of the ingredients are there already. Al-Shabaab has sheltered
several Islamist terror suspects with links to al-Qaeda, including Aden
Hashi Ayro, who was trained by al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and
conducted numerous attacks against foreigners in Somalia before he was
killed in a U.S. air strike last year, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammad, who
is wanted by the United States for his alleged involvement in the 1998
U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Al-Shabaab has also opened its camps to international jihadists. The
suicide bomber who killed four South Korean tourists in Yemen in March
was trained in Somalia, according to Yemeni security, and might have
been the attacker who blew himself up in an attempt to murder the South
Korean ambassador and investigators a few days later.
Even the insurgency inside Somalia has taken on international
dimensions. Osama bin Laden, in a March audiotape address, described the
conflict as “a war between Islam and the international crusade.” Al-Shabaab
echoes this. “They don’t recognize borders,” says Abdul. “They say this
world is for Muslims, and there is no difference between an Afghan and a
Somali. They do not use the word ‘foreigner’ to describe a non-Somali
fighting alongside them.”
These foreign fighters in the ranks of al-Shabaab are another worry.
Abdul says al-Shabaab no longer tries to hide their presence. They come
from all over the world and number at least 1,000, according to J. Peter
Pham, an Africa security specialist at James Madison University with
contacts in Somalia and elsewhere in East Africa.
“The danger is not only that these fighters operate there,” Pham says.
“But also there are ethnic Somalis from the diaspora who are taking
excursions to fight in Somalia, including young men from the United
States and western Europe. The real danger is that while there, they
link up with other non-Somali extremists who may have an agenda that
directly attacks or at least targets the United States and its allies.”
We have already seen what might have been a precursor to such attacks.
In October 2008, a series of suicide bombings in Somaliland’s capital,
Hargeysa, killed at least 20 people. One of the bombers was an American
of Somali origin.
So what can the United States and its allies do to mitigate the danger
coming from Somalia? It’s a vexing question, in part because all too
often it’s near impossible to know just how serious a terrorist threat
is until it’s too late. This is especially so in Somalia, where,
according to a knowledgeable source, the CIA has only “an attempt” at a
station. “Everyone knows who and where they are,” the source says.
“One of the problems that the United States faces is that there are a
lot of poorly governed spaces around the world where al-Qaeda, or allies
of al-Qaeda, or loose affiliates of al-Qaeda, could potentially set up
shop,” says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the
Council on Foreign Relations who previously taught at the U.S. Army War
College. “If every time one of them comes up on the radar screen we
decide that it’s going to require a massive effort by the United States
to respond, then we’ll bankrupt ourselves.”
The other dilemma is whether responding to the threat might not make it
worse. Sending soldiers risks provoking resentment. Air strikes can
eliminate wanted terrorists, but often at a heavy price. It took the
U.S. several attempts to finally take out Aden Hashi Ayro last May. The
failed assassination attempts killed civilians and almost certainly
increased popular anger against the United States.
“It comes down to this question: can we intervene without doing harm?”
says Brownwyn E. Bruton, an international affairs fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations. “If you want to deal with it properly, you’re
looking at an Iraq-style investment, where 20,000 peacekeepers isn’t
going to do it—maybe 40,000, maybe 60,000. You’re talking about building
a government and security forces from the ground up. It’s going to be a
10-year effort. And there’s going to be a lot of violence in the short
term, as there was in Iraq.”
Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, a former resident of Ottawa and deputy prime
minister of Somalia until Sheik Sharif Ahmed’s government was sworn in
this year, hopes that the international community will shoulder this
burden. In an interview with Maclean’s, he drew comparisons between
Somalia and Afghanistan and argued that the international response
should be similar. He wants the United Nations to send troops. While
some Somalis would reject any international presence, Adan believes most
would accept it as necessary. “Somalis are killing each other every day
here on the streets, so why wouldn’t they accept anyone who is coming to
save them?”
But any large-scale intervention in Somalia would require a massive
American contribution. And with its hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Pakistan, it’s unlikely the United States would contemplate such an
investment. This leaves less intrusive options.
Some analysts, such as Daniela Kroslak, believe al-Shabaab and its
allies need to be brought into the government. “We have to offer
something to those people to share the cake,” she says. “There is no way
around negotiating with the insurgency.” Adan, the former deputy prime
minister, considers this view naive. “This is what we tried to do in
2008, when I was in government,” he says. “I was leading the government
delegation in a peace process. We tried everything possible to include
them in the process, and they didn’t want to be a part of it. So anyone
who now says there needs to be a dialogue with them simply doesn’t
understand the reality of the situation.”
It is difficult to imagine much room for common ground between
al-Shabaab and any Western-backed government. President Ahmed agreed to
implement sharia, or Islamic law, but is nonetheless dismissed by
al-Shabaab as an infidel’s stooge. Bin Laden declared him to be an
apostate.
But betting everything on a government that is unable even to control
the capital is also risky. The problem with trying to create a strong
central government is that it discounts the decentralized and tribal
nature of Somali society. “We keep investing in illegitimate top-down
approaches, and Somalia has traditionally never had anything but
bottom-up movements,” says Pham. “It’s a society where power is
traditionally diffuse.”
To the extent that it’s possible, the West should engage directly with
the Somali people. They have traditionally followed a moderate version
of Islam and are therefore not natural allies of al-Shabaab. “The Somali
people in that respect are our best asset,” says Bruton. “The Shabaab
are so foreign and so harsh and so un-Somali in their conduct, that
they’re just never going to be able to make it work. And if you accept
that, then the best thing you can do is just let them go on and shoot
themselves in the foot. What you don’t want to do is galvanize the
population into seeing the Shabaab as a defense against outsiders, who
they really don’t like either.”
Bruton suggests investing in humanitarian relief, economic support, and
microcredit projects. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for more
direct, forceful intervention. Pham says the arms and money pipeline
from Eritrea needs to be shut down. And high-value terror suspects
should be tracked and captured or killed. But these operations must be
conducted with precision and care.
Finally, it might be time for the international community to become more
engaged with Somalia’s breakaway regions of Somaliland and Puntland.
Engagement with Puntland might have the collateral benefit of
undercutting piracy in the region, while Somaliland has constructed a
stable, comparatively democratic society but remains diplomatically
isolated. Protecting and strengthening Somaliland would restrict
al-Shabaab’s potential to spread. It would also provide Somalis with a
visible alternative to the radical and violent Islam of al-Shabaab.
“Partly it’s a conceptual problem,” says Jamal Gabobe, a writer for the
Somaliland Times who now lives in Washington. Al-Shabaab and its allies
have offered their answer to Somalia’s broken society. “If there is
another model that is working, you can say, ‘You don’t need to go that
way. You can have a peaceful consensus that is not opposed to Islam.
It’s a moderate way to express your belief.’ ”
None of these strategies promises quick results. And meanwhile, Somalis
are dying from starvation and war, or suffocating under al-Shabaab’s
interpretation of Islam. There is also the risk that al-Shabaab’s camps
are already home to those plotting attacks abroad. Should such threats
materialize, any strategies proposing patience and restraint will appear
recklessly foolish. Somalia is a problem with no easy solutions.
Source: Macleans.ca, July 16, 2009
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