Shangole and I

I knew Fuad Mohamed Khalaf “Shangole” when he was a lad.

Yes, the notorious Fuad Shangole, one of the top leaders of Al Shabab and a man on whose head the U.S government has placed a $5 million bounty.

Simply put, we crossed paths as children.

Shangole always hummed with energy, and he used to dawdle in the streets of Mogadishu acting tough and thuggish. Fortunately, that was in the 1970s and Al Qaeda and Al Shabab did not yet exist.

The truth is I had a personal grudge against Shangole, the lad. In a way, he was something I was not: tough and street-smart.  We both grew up in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood, but, at the risk of immodesty, I was the mild-mannered youngster who steered clear of street fights or hanging with rough kids.   

Shangole was acquainted with me but he never knew my name. The age difference, perhaps, was the reason why we never associated; he was five years my junior. I used to see him come and go at his grandfather’s compound where my uncle, Abdi Gurey, had his car rental business, “Auto Noleggio Wajir.” From time to time, I assisted my uncle with his paperwork. His place was the hub of the northeasterners living in Mogadishu because many used his postal box “702” for their mail. All kinds of people would come to his agency checking their mail, and there were always people there sipping tea or cappuccino, talking, and playing dominos.

I loved hanging with these adults as they conversed and joked around. But the biggest reasons I used to help my uncle were the sense of feeling responsible in the running of the business and, frankly, the occasional cash windfall.

In my small juvenile world, young Shangole was a minor nuisance. He minded his own business and never talked to the adults in the agency as he trudged past them on his way to his grandfather’s home upstairs.

My puerile grudge against him, though, was purely accidental.

One day, Shangole was passing by when one of my uncles made a perfunctory remark about him. “I love this boy because he is brave and exceptional,” my distant uncle said. He used the word “fariid” which in Arabic and Somali means unique and exceptional. Being the only youngster in the agency, my uncle’s statement was like a punch in the stomach. But I managed to maintain a veneer of politeness. I knew things about Shongole, the naughty boy, that my poor uncle did not.

My uncle never spent time with Shangole, nor did he know the lad well enough to issue such a proclamation. In a way, his little exuberance about Shangole was understandable. He was indeed sending a message to me: Go and spend time with children your age instead of hanging with adults. Furthermore, my uncle knew my aversion to fighting and hustling.

I concurred with my uncle that Shangole was aggressive, pugnacious, and street smart. The lad was the type who would exhibit traits of juvenile delinquency, although I had no proof that he was ever sent to a juvenile hall in Mogadishu.

I have not seen Shangole since the mid- 1970s. His life has had no shortage of drama. I heard that he settled in Sweden, as a refugee, sometime in 1992 and later became a citizen of that country. While in Sweden, Shangole, perhaps, went through a personal transformation. He became religious and even served as an imam before finally moving to Mogadishu in 2004. His years in Sweden, as an imam, supposedly revealed little trace of dogma.

Shangole’s meteoric rise in the Al Shabab movement was breathtakingly swift. During the brief reign of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), Shangole was the head of the department of education. After the expulsion of UIC from Mogadishu in 2007, Shangole became one of the top leaders of Al Shabab and the man in charge of issuing fatwas, religious edicts. According to the Associated Press, on December 7, 2010, Shangole threatened to attack the United States. “We tell the American President Barack Obama to embrace Islam before we come to his country,” he bellowed. Reports have claimed that he was involved in sadistic brutality like personally killing Al Shabab enemies and even cutting off the hands of people who violated the group’s decrees. He has developed a binary view of the world: You are either with Al Shabab or you are against it. Four years ago, there was an attempt on his life when a bomb exploded in a mosque in Mogadishu where he offered religious lessons.

What intrigued me was that Shangole, the adolescent street thug, became a full-blown terrorist in his adult life.

For me, I haven’t changed that much in terms of disposition. When I became a father, however, my oldest son, Mohamed, somewhat reminded me of my limitations as an action hero. He, like any 6-year- old, was enamored with action films. One day, I stumbled on a note he had scribbled about the men he admired the most. There were the names of Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Uncle Zaki. The latter was a friend of the family with a commanding physical presence. Zaki was a burly man, 6’4 tall, adventurous, and very adept at life in the outdoors. He was born in Washington, D.C to an Egyptian diplomat. I shared with him height—6’3—but not other notable attributes. This man,interestingly, used to go to a Chinese all-you-can eat cafe and consume large quantities of food. One day, the owner called his friend and invited the friend to come anytime to eat for free as long as he did not bring Zaki. The latter would laugh every time he told that story in an effort to demonstrate his prowess and a penchant for ravenous eating. To his credit, Zaki had no fat, only muscle. He passed away in 1995.

Mohamed’s list of the admired was telling. My name was nowhere to be seen. Yes, I was never into hiking, karate, or hunting, nor did I display any knowledge of military matters. My son, I suppose, merely saw me as a man who would ramble on about books.  When it came to physical activities, I was, for all practical purposes, boring to him. On one hand, I was disappointed that I did not make it to that ‘prestigious’ list. Any father would like to see his son list him among people he admires.  However, I could not contain my glee when I saw my son at least list the name of a family friend, a real man, among the action film stars. 

A decade later, of course, my son would rehabilitate me and upgrade my status as his hero, by parsing real life from fiction.

These days, Shangole’s career is at a crossroads. He is on the run and in hiding. He has made an impressive array of enemies−the Somali government, Puntland, the U.S, and bounty hunters, not to mention ordinary Somalis who do not want the terrorist in their backyard.

I wonder what my uncle, who has since passed away, would have thought about today’s Fuad Shangole, a fugitive from justice, and the fact that I have been writing about Shangole’s militant group. It is a situation rich with irony: Two former youngsters, one carrying an AK-47 and the other a pen.

Such is the misfortune of our current circumstances.