How does the West view the Somali Al-Shabaab movement?

By: Amal Khairy

Since the beginning of the civil war in Somalia about 20 years ago, prominent political figures have been rising and falling. In light of the war, militant groups have been on the rise; some classified as terroristic following the 9/11 events. Amongst those groups dubbed as terrorists is Al-Shabaab Movement, sometimes called Harakat Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahideen, which launched in retaliation against the Ethiopian invasion.

The question here is: how does the West view the Somali Al-Shabaab Movement? Are they seen as a Jihadist group or a rebel group? The answers to these questions can be extrapolated from the study presented by Matteo Guglielmo titled “Unraveling the Islamist insurgency in Somalia: The case of Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen”, which was published on April 2011. The study includes a number of studies conducted by other individuals regards the issue of “regional security in the post-Cold War Horn of Africa.”

Rebel or Jihadist?

Guglielmo begins his study by classifying the Jihadist Islamist movements in Somalia as rebel movements, who began to rise in the period between June and December 2006 when the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) took control of Mogadishu, followed by the Ethiopian invasion in support of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi. Since that time, Islamists overtook the Somali scene, aided by the lack of security forces possessed by the transitional government and the withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces in January 2009. As a result, the Islamists control a great share of south-central areas of Somalia.

According to Guglielmo, a number of studies pointed out that the formation of the Islamic Courts in Somalia should be considered more as a process led by interest groups and strongmen based in Mogadishu, committed to re-establishing a degree of security in the capital, rather than as the outcome of a real ‘bottom-up’ political process. It is widely believed that the ICU’s financial framework came from the Mogadishu-based business community in an effort to support the stabilization and normalization policies introduced by the courts’ leadership.

Although originally the courts were created by and served specific local sub-clans in districts of Mogadishu, they raised a very high degree of mobilization among the major clans and sub-clans of the capital, especially from the Hawiye. This process was also helped by the strategic compromise between two of the capital’s major clans: Abgal and Haber Gedir (both from the Hawiye clan family), which since the outbreak of civil war in 1991 have constituted the majority of the capital’s population.

However, the configuration of the ICU never achieved any official institutionalization, stated Guglielmo, its structure remaining deeply divided between a ‘moderate’ wing led by the chairman of the Islamic Courts’ ‘executive council’, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (Abgal), and, owing mainly to his political position, the ‘radical’ wing led by the chairman of the courts’ shura (legislative council), ex-Colonel Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys (Haber Gedir).

Guglielmo ensured that the rise of the courts system in south-central Somalia occurred at a very particular political moment, at both local and international level. In 2005, Mogadishu was hit by an unprecedented sequence of killings and abductions, which targeted some of the Islamic elite and prominent politicians. These abductions and killings were carried out by a new armed movement that appeared officially in late 2006 under the name Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter-terrorism (ARPCT). The ARPCT was a loose coalition of warlords and militiamen with strong ties to the Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) and financially backed by the US, in accordance with the new War on Terror strategies in the Horn of Africa.

Apart from the battle, which pitched the warlords’ militias against those of the Islamic Courts, the expansion of the ICU in the south-central regions happened peacefully, through a massive absorption of both administrations and militias. In late 2006, several militiamen opportunistically shifted their support from the Alliance (ARPCT) to the ICU, placing weapons at the courts’ disposal, making them stronger than ever.

From resistance to escape

Guglielmo affirmed that before long, and upon official invitation from the Transitional Federal Parliament, Ethiopia intervened in Somalia, facing much resistance from- what he called- insurgent groups, led by a movement known as muqaawama (means resistance), which brought together various groups opposed to the Ethiopian presence in Somalia. Following the Ethiopian Army’s entry into the Somali capital and US air force-led bombing raids on villages on the Somali-Kenyan border, most of the courts’ leaders moved first to Yemen, then to Asmara. There, in September 2007, the political branch of the anti-Ethiopian front was formed under the name of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).

Due to the escalation of the Ethiopian Army in the capital and the main south-central towns, a humanitarian crisis was created. Residents of the capital were gripped by a terrifying campaign of violence that killed and injured hundreds of civilians, creating the largest displacement of a civilian population for many years, and shattering the lives, homes and livelihoods of thousands of people.

Throughout all of this, the group that emerged as the most important within the insurgency – especially from a military point of view – was Harakat Al-Shabaab Mujahideen. This group claimed most of the attacks against the Ethiopian contingent and the TFG’s loyal militias. Al-Shabaab’s best-known leader, until his death in May 2008, was Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, from the Ayr sub-clan (Haber Gedir/Hawiye). Ayro began his political career in Somalia under Hassan Dahir Aweys’s wing (from the same sub-clan). However, their relationship deteriorated when Aweys joined the ARS.

In late 2008, al-Shabaab’s political and ideological position grew increasingly radical, especially after the US decision in March 2008 to put the organization on the ‘terror blacklist’. The refusal by the US and the TFG to deal with the insurgency, which was continually depicted as the actions of a local offshoot of al-Qaeda, helped create a ‘regime of conditionality’. The Washington-led War on Terror strategy unleashed numerous bombing raids between 2007 and 2008. In one of these air strikes, in the town of Dhusomareb, Commander Aden Hashi Ayro was killed. The Shabaab reaction was fierce, targeting mainly the Western presence in the country.

Al-Shabaab…history and ideology

Guglielmo went on to state in his study that he does not agree that this movement as a mere reflection of global confrontation, disconnected from the local dynamics of the Somali conflict. Although it is true that the political strategies of international and regional players undoubtedly influenced the movement’s development, it is crucial not to make the error of considering al-Shabaab as just an emanation of wider global or Qaedist strategies.

Under Siad Barre’s regime, had strictly limited any contact with the outside world. Somalia’s vicinity to the Arabian Peninsula and the growing influence of Wahhabism on religious teaching also had an impact on the very foundation of Somali society. Secularization and globalization increasingly contributed to the disconnect of religion from its local expression, locating it in de-territorialized spaces, yet at the same time divorcing it from local political realities. This trend found its expression particularly among the more charismatic and fundamentalist religious practices, such as Salafism, Neo-Sufism and Tabliigh. In order to understand al-Shabaab, it is important to emphasize that these forms of apparently de-territorialized militancy, as in the case of Salafsm, tend to be used as an ideological foundation to oppose global enemies, and are often coupled with a rhetorical expression of the jihad concept.

The international media have reported at length how al-Shabaab’s leaders trained extensively in Afghanistan in the second half of the 1990s. To date, there is no conclusive evidence of any direct contact between al-Shabaab fighters and the Qaedist leadership in Kabul, though some Shabaab leaders claim long periods of militancy spent within other Somali Islamist organizations, such as al-Ittihad al-Islamiya and al-I’tsiam Kitab wal Sunna.

Leadership and structure

Guglielmo in his study mentioned a number of the most prominent members of the movement, including Sheikh Mohamed Mukhtar Abdirahman ‘Abu Zubeyr’, Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, Fuad Mahamed Khalaf Shongole, and Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki.

Despite the lack of detailed information regarding its apparatus, al-Shabaab clearly began organizing itself into governing structures immediately before having to administer the territories it occupied following the Ethiopian withdrawal in January 2009. It should be emphasized that, initially, al-Shabaab had no intention of direct administration in these territories, but sought instead to appoint local figures for this task.

Although opinions differ as to the nature of al-Shabaab’s governing structure, the most widely accepted and convincing hypothesis would identify at least four areas. The first is the shura, which resembles – in terms of function and responsibility – the same organism set up by the Islamic Courts Union when it governed in Mogadishu. The head of the shura is the movement’s emir, Sheikh Mohamed ‘Abu Zubeyr’, who appears not to have total control over al-Shabaab, since all important decisions are made along collective and/or local lines.

Second is the al-Da’wa, meaning ‘propaganda’ or, according to the local definition, ‘proclamation’. Under al-Shabaab, this section of the movement would be fundamentally devoted to the recruitment of new militiamen.

The third area, which seems to have no single superintendent, but instead is locally controlled by representatives of the administered territory, is the al-Hesbah, a sort of religious police whose role is to watch over and maintain respect for Islamic customs. The Hesbah would have been responsible for the destruction of Sufi mosques and sanctuaries in the south-central area of the country.

The fourth governing area, completing the movement’s political-military structure, is known as al-Usra, al-Shabaab’s armed wing, which is responsible for training the recruited in training camps dispersed throughout the area.

Local emulation or Al-Qaeda affiliation?

When al-Shabaab’s militias claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks of 11 July 2010 in Kampala during the final of the FIFA World Cup, the international media were quick to ascribe this major terrorist action to planning by al-Qaeda, with its execution by al-Shabaab. Even acknowledging the possibility of contact between al-Shabaab and the Qaedist network, viewing the Somali movement as the mere executor of the terrorist network’s global strategy led by Osama bin Laden, seems excessive. And though this view is a little forced and imprudent, it nonetheless tells us much about the difficulties of analyzing Somali events if interpreted solely in the light of the paradigm imposed by the War on terror. To date there is no conclusive evidence of al-Shabaab taking direct orders from the Qaedist establishment.

Although it is hard to gather concrete information regarding al-Shabaab’s funding strategies, it is possible to affirm that the Somali diaspora plays a fundamental role, sustaining the al-Shabaab cause through donations. This is true for at least two reasons, the first being that al-Shabaab has shown some ‘populist’ features. For example, its activities include operations to prevent businessmen selling expired food or dangerous products, and actions to remove illegal checkpoints, enabling Somalis to travel freely in the south-central region.

The second reason for the diaspora’s support of al-Shabaab concerns the political agenda of the movement, which has marked differences to that of other armed groups – even in a ‘national’ context. Al-Shabaab’s emergence as an inter-clan movement has increased its attraction for various Somali communities living in Western countries, especially among ‘youths’.

Source: www.islamonline.net