Somalia's Islamic Groups: Assets or Liabilities?

“When an elephant is down, even the frog will kick him.” An Indian Proverb.
***
In Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, there is a story cursorily mentioned about a group of Somali militants who were planning to disrupt Obama’s inauguration through use of explosives. There was “a credible intelligence” about the plot to the extent that the White House had “a contingency plans to cancel the inauguration”. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, is quoted as saying, “We might have to shut this down. We would have to be prepared for that”.

There is no explanation in the book as to why Somali militants would attack the inauguration proceedings of the incoming American president especially when they had not been able to dislodge a weak TFG entity in their very own capital of Mogadishu? There has never been an incident in American in which a presidential inauguration was disrupted. Nevertheless, the people in the White House were not taking a chance about the impending Somali terrorist attack. No one should be surprised when it comes to the chronic failures of America’s intelligence community. It was only a month ago when a story was uncovered about a petty shopkeeper in Quetta, Pakistan, who had deceived the CIA, the Pentagon, Britain’s MI6, and the Afghan government by posing himself as a top Taliban leader. The man was given thousands of dollars and he even met Afghan president Hamid Karzai. The latest episode of intelligence meltdown is the Wikileaks conundrum. An army private, Bradley Manning, who was stationed in Iraq, found, downloaded, and copied hundred thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents and gave them to Wikileak group. It is mind-boggling that a petty soldier such as Manning had access to such classified information and would cause diplomatic nightmare for the USA across the globe. To add insult to injury, the United States government spends $53 billion dollars a year on intelligence. Someone must have fed these poor American intelligence officers the wrong information about the alleged Somali militants’ long arm reach.

Yet, such has been the case of Somalis for the last two decades. The country has become the boogeyman for all sorts of characters. It wasn’t very long ago when Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh told a visiting American delegation, “If you don’t help, this country [Yemen] will become worse than Somalia”. It takes the head of one failed state to recognize another failed-state.

Somalia has not made things any easier for itself. The country has made conflict an art form; no effective central government for the past 20 years, experienced tortuous civil war, sustained forced and voluntary mass exodus, watched part of its territory secede, tarred by brutal religious extremism, invaded by a neighboring country all the way to its capital, and still dabbles with rampant international piracy?

Why is the conflict in Somalia dragging for so long? What are the factors that make peace in Somalia difficult to attain? Why did all the twenty attempts of reconciliation conferences fail? Is Somalia a terror-riddled country? What are the Islamic Groups that are contending for power? Why has the United States’ role in Somalia been pockmarked with failures? What needs to be done to save Somalia from itself? These are questions that the three books discussed here have raised. The focus in this article will be on the Islamic groups that comprise the lion’s share of these books.
***

Books Discussed In This Article
Afyare Abdi Elmi, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam, and Peacebuilding, London: Pluto Press, 2010.
Shaul Shay, Somalia between Jihad and Restoration, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2011. Bronwyn Bruton, Somalia: A New Approach. New York, Council on Foreign Relations Special Report No. 52, 2010.
***
Afyare’s book, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration, is unique because the author provides a new perspective on the Somali quagmire. He brings the Islamists’ viewpoint in the current state of affairs. In the book’s introduction, Afyare makes no qualms whatsoever of placing himself in the research that he has done. He was influenced by two heavyweights in Somalia’s cultural and religious spheres; Poet Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame ‘Hadrawi’ (Habar Jeclo), and Sheikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan (Hawadle). Hadrawi was, and still is, a cultural icon whose resistance to Siad Barre’s regime landed him in prison. Afyare was influenced by Hadrawi’s poems and the poet’s deep commitments to peace, justice, equality, non-violence, and the preservation of the Somali people’s culture. Hadrawi has blamed what he calls “Western colonialism” for causing “all the social ills” that Somalis are suffering from today.

As for Afyare’s religious influence, it was that of late Sheikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan whose name is not as well-known as Hadrawi’s but whom still had immense influence over many Islamists. Sheikh M. Moalim Hassan was undoubtedly the father of Islamic revivalism in Southern Somalia. He was pivotal in planting the seeds for Somalia’s religio-political movement, before he got arrested in 1975 and then languished in prison for many years thereafter. Afyare, though not a student of Sheikh Mohamed Moallin in the 1970s, was indirectly influenced by the Sheikh through the latter’s disciples.

For starters, Sheikh Mohamed Moalin was a graduate student at Al-Azhar University in Cairo in the 1960s when president Jamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt was cracking down the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon). When Sheikh Moalim returned to Somalia, he began his famous Tafseer sessions in Abdulkhadir Mosque, better known as Maqaam, in Mogadishu. His students were mostly young and impressionable youth who imbibed his new approach of presenting Islam as a way of life. The predominant mode of thinking at the time was the traditional way Somalis view religion; as a sphere for wadaads (clerics) who do marriages, divorces, healings, etc. Sheikh Moalim was instrumental in showing his students the relevance of Islam as a spiritual, political, social, and economic force. That in itself was quite revolutionary.

The million dollar question is what the fate of the Islamic revivalism would have been had Sheikh Mohamed Moallim not been arrested in 1975 at the time when the young Islamists’ student movement, al- “Al-Ahli”, was gaining momentum The movement was led by Abdulkhadir Sheik Mohamoud (Lel-Kase). Within three years of the Sheikh’s incarceration, the young Islamic movement splintered into two groups. (Afyare is wrong when he says that the two groups were Jama’a Islamiya and Islah). In actuality, the two groups were ‘Takfir Wal-Hijra’, led by Abdulkhadir Sheikh Mohamoud, who at the time was in exile in Makkah, and Jama’ Islamiyah. Mohamoud Isse (Abgaal) was the leader of the Jama’ movement, and it attracted many followers and harnessed new allies. The Wuhdatul Shabab group from the North merged with Jama’ Islamiyah and the union morphed into what became the largest Islamic group in Somalia. The name of the organization became Al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI) under the leadership of Sheikh Ali Ismail Warsame (Habar Jeclo).

Afyare’s discussion of the Islamic movements is refreshing and perhaps it is arguably the best part of the book. But his treatment of these groups with kid-gloves exposes the very problem of the researcher being a part of the research. In his book, Afyare argues that Islamists have a national agenda and that they should be included in the peace process. While there is nothing wrong with that view, there is nowhere in the book when one will encounter any kind of critical portrait of the Islamists; past and present. If you want to know how AIAI managed in the Northeast between March 1991 and June 1992, or Luuq afterwards, or how the Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam have been running the areas they control in Somali South, then you will be disappointed. In passing, Afyare states that AIAI was well-loved by the populace in the Northeast until a certain figure named Abdullahi Yusuf (Majertein) organized a revolt against them by portraying the militants as Hawiye invaders. Afyare’s one-sided analysis of the Islamists, as choir boys, raises questions of his impartiality as a scholar. Here are some of the issues that Afyare discusses that are worth-mentioning;

1. Afyare’s discussion of Islah organization is an attempt to rewrite history. Islah is the branch of the International Muslim Brotherhood in Somalia. There are two types of Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Somalia; the local Ikhwan and the International Ikhwan. While to the layperson all Islamists are “Ikhwan”, these groups in fact come in incalculable varieties and see themselves as distinct ideological groupings. The Islah organization is the branch of Muslim Brotherhood that is a member of the International Muslim Brothers which is based in Cairo. Islah was founded in Saudi Arabia in 1978 by five Somali immigrants/students in the Kingdom. They were Sheikh Mohamed Garyare (Sheekhaal), Ali Sheikh Ahmed (Sheekhaal), Mohamed Yusuf Hassan (Sheekhaal), Abdalla M. Abdalla (Reer Aw-Hassan), and Ahmed Rashid “Hanafi” (Hawadle). The local Ikhwan group is the Tajamuc which at times is referred as “Ala Sheikh” as of Sheikh Mohamed Moallin Hassan. The two groups have a common ideology but, for a while, they also had a common antipathy to one another. Many years ago, one of the founders of Islah told me a preposterous story that Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, who at the time was a political prisoner, was in fact a paid informant for Siad Barre’s government. These days the two groups have established a modicum of cooperation. The Islah group is not a mass movement and the Tajamuc followers are numerically insignificant. The Tajamuc members are likely to align themselves with various Islamic groups but the Islah, which not long ago, was officially known as “Al-Harakah al-Islamiyyah” (The Islamic Movement) has generally eschewed in entangling with political alliances. What Afyare does not challenge is the notion that there was an organized International Brotherhood (Islah) presence in Somalia before the 80s. There was none. The difference between Sheikh Mohamed Moallin and Sheikh Mohamed Garyare was the fact that Sheikh Moallin was very involved, on the grass-roots level, with the youth; both guiding them and critiquing them. Sheikh Garyare, a highly-respected religious figure, was more or less a loner who did not hold religious circles like Sheikh Moallin and Sheikh Ibrahim Suuley (Dir). The Islah group, however, has been very active in the relief and educational sectors and was instrumental in founding and running Mogadishu University campuses, both in the capital and in Bossasso. The movement is seen by some as an elitist group. According to a Crisis Group Report, “Somalia’s Islamists”, _“Al-Islah organization is dominated by highly educated urban elite whose professional, middle class status and expatriate experiences are alien to most Somalis.” Other than succeeding in recruiting former TFG president, Abdiqassim Salat Hassan, the Islah can now boast of having several cabinet ministers in Farmajo’s TFG government. Islah is a moderate Islamic group compared to the Jihadist groups like AIAI, al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam. But its secretive nature and ties to an 82-year old anti-democratic International organization might be problematic. (For two contrasting views on The Muslim Brothers see, The Muslim Brotherhood: Burden of Tradition, by Alison Pargeter and, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, by Lorenzo Vidino. Ms. Pargeter, the optimist of the two writers, urges the West to engage in a dialogue with this major movement whereas Vidino of the Rand Corporation sees the Brotherhood as wolves in sheep’s cloths because the movement shares ideas with the very militant groups such as al-Qaeda that the West is fighting against). Given the high level educational background of Islah leaders, the movement has yet to share with the Somali populace what its national program is. It is easy to say, “Islam is the Solution”; a true and noble proclamation. But that slogan does not help one to run a country. In fact, all the Islamic groups in Somalia lack a national program to lead the country out of its abyss. After all, according to Afyare, the Islamists would inevitably rule Somalia.

2. Afyare also sees the now defunct Al-Ittihad Al-Islami as a major Islamic movement that was very popular when it briefly controlled Luuq and Bossasso before the group was defeated by Somali militias such as Somali National Front (Marehan) and Somali Salvation Democratic Front (Majertein), respectively. He argues that the AIAI brought safety and corruption-less rule. There is an anecdote of a young witness testifying in court. The judge asks him what would happen to him if he lied. The Witness says,”Yes, I will go to hell”. Then the Judge asks, “What else?” The witness gets irritated and screams, “Isn’t that enough?!” The question for Afyare is; “What else”? What else did the Islamists do in Luuq and Bossasso other than bring law and order? Perhaps, repression, intolerance, and blatant invasion of people’s privacy. In other words, they brought a world where fear and humiliation became the norm and not the exception. Joseph Stalin ran a complex super power regime by imposing discipline and order but he killed millions and led by reign of terror. The AIAI was welcomed by the Northeastern people with open arms and without residual animosity or ill-feelings regarding their clan makeup. But it did not take long before the AIAI alienated the very people that had received them. It is amazing how many Muslims initially welcome Islamic groups without prejudice and how many of these groups fail to capitalize on the goodwill because they lack the basic political awareness to function properly. The Salafis and the Ikhwan unfortunately share this phenomenon. For instance, Hamas which is a Muslim Brotherhood entity that controls the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza without any challenge from other Palestinian groups yet it has shown the world how a repressive one-party regime truly works. Yes, there is an economic blockade on Gaza but the militant group missed an opportunity of sharing power with other segments of the society by suppressing freedom of speech and gathering. The Sudanese Brothers under Hassan Turabi did the same after 1989. In fairness, in 1997 the AIAI leaders realized their own disastrous actions and opted for disbanding their organization.

3. Afyare ably identifies the important roles of clan identity and Islamic identity among the Somalis. Islam serves Somalis as a unifying force and a rallying point when there is an external threat. Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan used Islam to fight against British colonialists, and even the leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) used Islamic slogans against the invading Ethiopians. The problem is that clan identity and Islamic identity can be fluid and at times it might be difficult to an Islamist, or unpredictable, as which one will emerge the most dominant. During the AIAI battle with Mohamed Farah Aidid, the leaders of that multi-clan organization were reported being divided along clan lines. One former AIAI leader told me some time ago while I was doing research on the Islamic movements, about this paradoxical dichotomy. “Some Hawiye members of the AIAI did not want to fight against Aidid at the Arare Bridge standoff near Kismayo,” said this Islamist who himself is Hawiye with a PhD in Islamic Studies. The AIAI leadership sent an all-Hawiye delegation to Aidid to negotiate with him so the warlord would not attack the armed militia. A member of that delegation told me that Aidid received them well but rejected the AIAI’s offer to withdraw. Aidid told them he wanted to crush Darod forces which were holed in Kismayo and that the AIAI fighters were standing in the way of him accomplishing his goal. He asked the Ittihad militia to lay their arms and go unharmed. It is interesting to note here that Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the current leader of Hizbul Islam, was part of that AIAI delegation but, in fairness, he was not one of those in favor of accommodating Aidid. To go back to the point of reconciling clan identity and Islamic identity, there is a general perception, or misperception, of Islamisits being a Hawiye phenomenon. Afyare himself states that “the overwhelming majority of Islamists are from the Hawiye sub-clans…While the Islamic identity cuts across all Somali clans, the Hawiye clans’ dominant position within the Islamic movements disproportionally affects Somali politics. Many Somali clans have opposed the domineering Hawiye for the last two decades.”

Overall, Afyare’s book is an important addition to Somali studies. The author has good ideas about conflict resolution and provides practical recommendations that students of Somalia and the country’s leaders will find valuable. Afyare’s discussion on why Somalia’s peace conferences failed is ground-breaking as he identifies key variables that led to the demise of these gatherings.
***
Shaul Shay’s Somalia between Jihad and Restoration was first published in 2008, but the first paperback edition, has just come out recently. It is ironic that Shay, an Israeli ‘scholar’ who heads the Israel Defense Forces History Department and is a Fellow Researcher at International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, has written a polemic. Unlike Afyare’s scholarly book, Shay’s book is a travesty and is replete with so many factual mistakes that would make students of Somalia cringe with indignation. It is obvious that Shay is not interested in Somalia as a complex country but sees the country in the narrow prism of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Shay sees Somalia as a country riddled with Islamic terrorists who are a threat to neighbors and to the West. He likes what he sees in Somaliland in terms of its political and economic developments and argues that it should serve as a model for the lawless South and its Islamic radicals. Shay’s other recommendations are; the strengthening of the TFG, the formation of a national army, sealing the country’s borders “at sea, in the air and on land…in order to prevent the infiltration of Islamic Jihad entities, and to thwart the smuggling of combat means to subversive factors…”. Moreover, Shay urges that the world should recognize Puntland and Somaliland as independent states.

Shay’s book is a collection of materials that he had written about radical Islamic groups such Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. He has failed to even update the paperback edition which still has outdated information. Professor Saadia Touval was the first Israeli scholar who wrote his Ph.D thesis on Somalia which was later published as a book, Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa (Harvard, 1963). That book is still used by students of Somalia even after four decades of its initial publication. Unfortunately, Shaul Shay’s prosaic and pedestrian book will, at best, be forgotten, because it is does not contribute towards understanding Somalia.

***
Bronwyn Bruton’s report, Somalia: A New Approach, is short, concise, well-written and well-argued. Bruton addresses the United States policy to Somalia; what went wrong and how to deal with the current realities. She and Afyare are cognizant of America’s past fumbles regarding Somalia; from neglecting the country several years after Black Hawk Down incident, the arming of Mogadishu warlords in the name of War on Terror; the indirect undermining of the Union of Islamic Courts, the backing of Ethiopia’s invasion and Bush Administration’s single focus on hunting down three al-Qaeda leaders. Bruton recommends what she calls a “Constructive Disengagement’ strategy. This paradoxical oxymoron of a phrase is not what it seems. Bruton recommends that America not waste resources in the weak TFG entity because it is futile. She wants the United States to combat terrorism while at the same time promoting stability and development. It is better for Washington, she argues, not to pick a winner among warring factions vying for power in the country. Instead, if an Islamist authority emerges as the winner, the USA should accept said entity as long as this group a) does not impede humanitarian and relief aid, and b) does not pursue international Jihadi agenda. Meanwhile, the United States should hunt down al-Qaeda and other terrorists in Somalia by whatever means is necessary (drones, cruise missiles, occasional ground military operations by Special Forces, etc). Bruton contends that al-Shabab is “an alliance of convenience and its hold over territory is weaker than it appears”. Therefore, “Under the right conditions, it will fragment”. What is good for Washington may not be good for Mogadishu. When all is said and done, it is obvious that “Constructive Disengagement” is another attempt to meddle in the affairs of Somalia by exploiting what Bruton calls “fissures” among factions and by attacking at will whomever Washington deems as being ‘dangerous’.
***
In a nutshell, Somalia’s Islamic groups can be seen as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you have the jihadist groups like al-Shabab which enjoy some support among war-weary people in the South who crave for order in an anarchic environment. On the other hand, there are other “less-Jihadist” groups like al-Ictissam (successor of now defunct AIAI), Islah, the Tajamuc, and the Ahlu Sunnah Wal-Jama (ASWJ). The latter is a Sufi-inspired and Ethiopian financed group, and is mostly concentrated in Central Somalia. The militia is a new phenomenon (a fighting Tariqa group with military hardware from Addis Ababa). With the exception of ASWJ, the afore-mentioned groups are not pacifists by nature but they have either opted for a non-violent approach or they are too weak to make a military difference. So far, Islamic groups have done well in the areas of relief and humanitarian aid. These groups have also been crucial in opening and operating schools, and the Islah group, in particular, has done admirable work in the field of higher education. The political development and maturity of these groups leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately Somalia does not have Islamists with the caliber of, for instance, Turkey’s Justice and Development (AK) Party; an Islamic group that can negotiate easily between Islamic activism and political leadership in a democratic society. If the Islamic alternative is another reincarnation of the Union of Islamic Courts in Somali South, then the country is doomed to experience a perpetual civil war, coupled with constant military intervention from Ethiopia. Yes, it is true that Mogadishu experienced relative peace and order during the six months in 2006 when the city was under the UIC control. But what else? Imposition of an Islamic penal code in a country that has been devastated by war and hunger, intolerance, perpetual marginalization of women, aggressive rhetoric and pronouncements, kidnapping of journalists, assassinating aid workers, censorship, declaring Jihad on Ethiopia before the latter even invaded the country, and most of all seeing a dangerous group like Al-Shabab flourish under the watchful eyes of UIC leaders. Alas, Aden Hashi Ayro (Ayr) was the military commander of the UIC and we all know what happened after the collapse of the UIC; he became the al-Shabab leader. It is time that we refrain from wallowing in nostalgia and stop romanticizing about the UIC’s brief and repressive regime. Just because the UIC was better than Mogadishu warlords does not mean that it was a model entity that should be replicated. Somalis have already seen what many of these groups are capable of; from regulating personal conduct to the core (beards for men, no bras for women, no sports or entertainment, etc) to hiding behind slogans that throb with emptiness. The question that begs itself is; “what else can these groups offer?”