The Letters: How Al Qaeda Failed in Mali and Somalia

Recently, two separate letters written in Arabic by Al Qaeda leaders in Mali and Somalia have surfaced. The writings paint a grim picture of the jihadist experience in both countries. The first was found in Mali, and the second is an open letter from a Somali jihadist leader to Al Qaeda supreme leader, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

The first was discovered when reporters from the Associated Press stumbled across a collection of documents that included a letter written by Abdelmailk Droukdel, the emir of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), after that radical group was defeated in Timbuktu, Mali, by French forces. Droukdel (also known as Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud) was appointed by the late Usama Bin Laden to oversee Al Qaeda’s operations in North Africa.

The second letter is presumed to have been written by Ibrahim Haji Jama Mee’aad (Al-Afghani), who until two years ago was the deputy emir of Somalia’s Al Qaeda affiliate, Al-Shabab. The letter has appeared on several websites sympathetic to Al-Shabab and carries Al-Afghani’s nom de guerre, “Shaikh Abu Bakr Al-Zaylici.” It is an indictment of the emir of Al-Shabab, Ahmed Abdi Godane, and his brutal, secretive, “un-Islamic” and ruinous style of leadership which has had tragic repercussions on the course of jihad in Somalia.

Droukdel’s letter is a frank assessment of Al Qaeda’s brief and brutal capture of the northern part of Mali and the draconian rule that the jihadist group imposed on the people. The militants applied what they called sharia (Islamic law) by stoning adulterers, amputating the hands of thieves, whipping petty criminals, curtailing women’s activities, banning entertainment, berating and intimidating people, and destroying tombs and certain archeological sites.

In his letter, Droukdel admonished his fighters, saying that sharia was, for all practical purposes, applied too fast and in haste:  “Our previous experience showed that applying sharia this way, without taking the environment into consideration, will lead to people rejecting the religion, and engender hatred toward the mujahedeen, and will consequently lead to the failure of our experiment.” He went on to lash out at his cohorts for preventing women from going out, whipping women for not covering up, preventing children from playing, and searching people’s houses. “Your [local Al Qaeda] officials,” Droukdel commanded his followers, “need to control themselves.”

Droukdel was aware of other failed Al Qaeda experiences in Somalia and Algeria and the lessons learned from those attempts of unilaterally imposing sharia. He implored his fighters to act cautiously and gently, more like a parent guiding a child too weak to stand on its own, and to be always mindful of the need for patience. “We should be sure to win allies,” he recommended, “be flexible in dealing with the realities, and compromise on some rights to achieve greater interest.”

Droukdel presciently predicted the foreign military intervention that stymied the jihadi tide in Mali in mid-2012 long before it actually occurred in January 2013. He warned his fighters that they lived on the margins of society and hence needed to form alliances with local jihadi and nationalist groups. His prescription, however, was to engage in an elaborate scheme of deception to conceal the grand design of Al Qaeda and its global jihad. Without mincing words, Droukdel asked his fighters to lower their profile. “Better for you to be silent and pretend to be a ‘domestic’ movement that has its own causes and concerns,” he stated. “There is no reason for you to show that we have an expansionary jihadi, Al Qaeda, or any other sort of project.”

A Somali leader of Al Shabab, Ibrahim Al-Afghani, in his open letter to Al Qaeda leader Al-Zawahiri, was more concerned with leadership issues in Somalia than the precise application of sharia. He wrote against the backdrop that Al Shabab had retreated and become the hunted. Al-Afghani, a man upon whose head the U.S. has placed a $5 million bounty, more or less engaged in the blame game. The logical question then is: What happened to Al Shabab which, not long ago, controlled large swaths of land in southern Somalia, including Mogadishu, the capital? For Al-Afghani, the deterioration of Al Shabab as a power to contend with was attributed to the personal conduct and dictatorial leadership of his longtime friend and colleague, Godane, the emir of Al Shabab. 

Speaking on behalf of what he called “the silent majority” of Al Shabab members, Al-Afghani accused Godane of expecting blind obedience, failing to consult with other leaders of the radical group, and placing personal desires above the requisites of sharia; neglecting Islamic teachings of fairness, kindness and gentleness; issuing arbitrary decisions; sowing conflict among the leaders by lavishing his supporters with largesse, and depriving his critics of the basics of survival and starving them; mistreating foreign jihadists; marginalizing Al Shabab scholars; inciting young jihadists against scholars and leaders by issuing threats of liquidation;  preventing certain scholars from publishing, teaching, or even giving sermons; not lending a hand in the jihadi campaigns in Ethiopia and Kenya; and operating secret jails not subject to the jurisdiction of the Al Shabab leadership. These detention centers are reserved, Al-Afghani contended, for jihadists who are not formally accused of any transgression or convicted of any crime.

Al-Afghani lamented the fact that Al Shabab had lost the sympathies and support of the local population because of the militant leadership’s haughtiness and draconian methods. He singled out the unjustified operations that the group regularly conducts which lead to the loss of limbs and lives. He warned that Somalia’s jihadi experience and its “fruits” were in danger of being lost just as in Algeria in the 1990s. Al-Afghani issued a plea to the Al Qaeda International leaders to intervene and take corrective action against the emir of the Somali branch. He reminded Al-Zawahiri that the Somali emir failed to heed his instructions to apply shura (consultation) to the local leaders. The Somali emir, Al-Afghani said, deliberately sabotaged the decisions of a special court specifically set up to address the conflict and discord among the Al Shabab leaders. Instead of going forward, Al-Afghani declared, Al Shabab was going backward. Furthermore, he mentioned the poor treatment of a foreign jihadist from neighboring Kenya, Shaikh Abboud Rogo, who returned to his hometown of Mombasa only to be killed there.

It is not clear whether Al-Afghani has a personal vendetta against Godane. Unconfirmed reports that the Al-Shabab leaders had once decided to replace Godane with Al-Afghani have circulated. However, that decision was conveniently torpedoed by none other than Godane. Moreover, Al-Afghani’s grievances represent the views of the Al Shabab leaders who favor the globalization of jihad by the Somali branch. Over the last few years, debate has simmered among Al Shabab leaders about the best way to ensure that the group survives Somalia’s ever shifting and volatile political landscape. One group favors building alliances with local groups and perhaps making temporary political accommodations that will guarantee the group’s relevance and lift its isolation. This wing sees the gradual expulsion of foreign jihadists as an absolute must in order to take these necessary and existential steps.

The second group sees Al Shabab as an integral part of an Al Qaeda that is more committed to global jihad and less to the country’s local issues and concerns. No one group ironically has been able to fully exert its will on the entire movement. Bin Laden’s instruction to Al Shabab, when the latter applied to join Al Qaeda, was one of caution. According to documents found in the terrorist’s compound in Pakistan when Bin Laden was killed by American forces, he advised the emir of Al Shabab to conceal the Somali group’s ties to Al Qaeda so as not to draw unfavorable attention from the West. Bin Laden’s successor, Al-Zawahiri, however, has taken just the opposite position and does not object to the African group’s flaunting its international affiliations. The fact that Al-Afghani is taking an active stand in advocating the cause and the plight of foreign jihadists in Somalia, a segment that has been increasingly marginalized, is an indication that he sees Somalia as a staging ground for global jihad. Al-Afghani’s views also mirror those of the American jihadist in Somalia, Omar Hammami, who has gone public by issuing videos that accuse his Al Shabab colleagues of attempting to personally liquidate him and emphasize what he terms the “local focus” instead of supporting a global jihad. Al Shabab’s Twitter response to the Alabama-born fighter was terse. It reprimanded Hammami for engaging in a “narcissistic pursuit of fame.”

These two letters are precise manifestations of the view that the jihadi experience in Mali and Somalia has been a failure because of poor and harsh policies implemented by the Al Qaeda militants that just alienated local populations. The militants have adhered to a convoluted understanding of basic Islamic teachings of moderation and natural evolution, possessing unrealistic expectations and exhibiting poor planning and leadership with but a limited vision. The fact is that Al Qaeda remains a pariah in a modern world that is well aware of its dangerous ideology and destructive operations.

Mali and Somalia share a commonality as they are certified failed states and, hence, there remains a power vacuum. They are also distressingly poor countries. Al Qaeda can conveniently find fertile ground in countries like Somalia, Mali, Yemen, and Afghanistan. It is not surprising then that Al Qaeda radicals in Mali and Somalia have shot themselves in the foot as they failed to capitalize on their brief control of many parts of these two countries. Here is the salient fact about the jihadi groups: It is a lot easier to grab power than to establish a viable government.

 

One Woman's Tale and the Myths of Happiness

“Every moment wasted looking back keeps one from moving forward.” —Hillary Clinton.

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In a San Francisco airport lounge, I was reading Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky’s new book, The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy but Doesn’t What Shouldn’t Make You Happy but Does (January 13, 2013), when a woman who seemed to be in her forties approached me. She was from one of the countries in the Horn of Africa.

“Oh, you are reading about that thing,” she muttered. I told her I was interested in the field of positive psychology.

Strangers, it is said, will at times share with you more about the story of their lives than a friend or relative. The repercussion for the narrator is minimal because the chance of the two parties ever meeting again is extremely rare.

The woman, whom I will call “Jasmine,” came to the U.S. in the late 1980s. After two years in Chicago, she met an American man two years her senior. He was relentless and methodical in his pursuit of her. Phone calls and flowers became her daily fare and started flowing like a stream of water. She was equally smitten and married the man at age 23. The two came from two different backgrounds: different races and different socio-economic backgrounds. His family was quite well-off and bought their only son and his new bride a house which was a shrine of ostentation: It had six bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a big swimming pool. Jasmine was a young woman of modest means and had lived a relatively sparse life. But the two were full of life, full of energy, and full of love. He was tall, handsome, and brilliant with a lot of charm and charisma. Their first year was memorable. They were best friends and each other’s confidants. They spent a great deal of time together and talked about everything, from the mundane (what colors each liked) to the serious (how many children they wanted). Their relationship was harmonious and romantic sparks flew right and left. After the first year, the couple had a daughter. A year later, another daughter was born. The children brought joy to her, she said, with a broad and beaming smile stamped on her face.

Two years later, the couple’s once romantic and cozy relationship had turned adversarial. The relationship became riddled with nasty arguments.  “We couldn’t stand each other,” she retorted. “For the first two years, my husband was number one in my own constellation,” she said, “but then, my children became my top priority.” Jasmine became busy with the children and their care, and her husband became resentful because he was not getting enough attention.

Then, one day, events took an alarming and dangerous turn. Jasmine was putting gas in her car when suddenly her husband parked behind her in the gas station. She was incredulous seeing her husband. She thought that he was following her. An hour before their encounter, her husband had grilled her about where she was going and why she was leaving. He had a possessive streak that annoyed her. He was, for all practical purposes, a control freak. What happened next was not in the playbook. Jasmine told me that she hurled a big cup of Coke she was drinking at her husband. Then, she approached him and started punching him and yelling, “Are you following me?” Her husband acted like a gentleman in front of the people at the gas station. He could have won an Academy Award for his superb performance. Jasmine was the one who was out of control. The police were called and came. Jasmine was arrested for assault and battery.

Normally, it is the husband who is charged with domestic violence in the U.S. and Jasmine’s case was an anomaly.   Her husband got an unusual opportunity to eviscerate her. He accused his wife of neglecting their children, child abuse, and even beating him up occasionally. His testimony, Jasmine argued, did not contain a grain of truth. Jasmine was found guilty of a misdemeanor for domestic violence and sentenced to three years’ probation. 

After the court case, Jasmine and her husband separated. She was, after all, under a restraining order not to come close to her husband. The couple, meanwhile, had joint custody of the children.

After Jasmine fulfilled her court requirements and three years had elapsed, she and her husband began to reassess their relationship. It was a highly combustible situation. She was twenty-eight years old, separated, and in an alien land with no relatives to support her. She felt lonely and fearful she might lose her children. After three years of separation, she went back to her husband. Her family back in Africa and her friends in Chicago were mystified. To them, it was like watching a scary movie:  a combination of horror and amazement. They started their opposition with a full-court press.  “Do everyone a favor,” her friends admonished her, “and end this child-like fantasy.” Why she returned to her husband, though a puzzling question, was not beyond all conjecture. Jasmine admitted that, while she professed so much abhorrence toward her husband, she still had feelings for him. Lowering her voice to nearly a whisper, she said, “I missed him and became nostalgic for the good times we had.”  The depth of betrayal and humiliation he had caused her became a thing of the past. However, a relationship built on tenuous pillars, like a house of cards, is destined to tumble.

Two years after the couple came back together; the marriage slowly became a life of grinding hardship. The good times faded and bad news came in batches. She thought she was caught in a volatile mix of manipulation, lies, and deception and felt she was in the belly of the beast. Jasmine herself confessed that she was verbally abusive and distant. She started avoiding her husband. In a way, the two were roommates more than a couple, more like fellow boarders than partners. “I made him unwanted, and he became more hostile,” she said. A husband deprived of loving would become frustrated.

 Then, there was the horrifying discovery. Her husband, it appeared, was leading a secret life under her nose. He was cheating on her and she caught him chatting with women online. Obviously, he was into internet dating, but she was amazed at how he had gone to increasingly elaborate lengths to hide his dark secret. His laptop, furthermore, was a den of pornography.  “How could a family man and an icon in the community engage in such morally repugnant practices,” she wondered. But the biggest lie—the granddaddy of all lies—was his concealing an infidelity. One day, her husband made an astounding confession: He had fathered a child. Jasmine was livid. She knew her marriage was hanging in the balance and had to listen and heed her own inner voices. She filed for divorce.

Her survival instinct kicked in.  Jasmine, accompanied by her children, got up, dusted herself off, and embarked on a life of singlehood. The news of her filing for divorce spread like wildfire. Before the divorce even became final, men were calling her and trying their luck. Americans, Asians, Arabs, her fellow countrymen and “even Somalis,” she said, laughing. The wheels were in motion for a change. Contrary to what her former husband had told her (that no man would marry her with two young children) Jasmine was hotly pursued, and she enjoyed the attention. Less than six months after her divorce became final, she fell in love with a man from her native country. Unlike her former husband, he was not uptight but funny, expressive, and he enjoyed listening to her. He also had a fashionable disdain for materialism. The new man did not spurn her children and, in fact, doted on them. This was, though, a risky enterprise for the couple; at least one of them was on the rebound. It was, of course, Jasmine. However, she categorically denied that she was. In fact, she would tell anyone who listened to her that she had grown to despise her ex and couldn’t wait to start a new life with someone about whom she cared.

Jasmine and her new man decided to get married. She said that she could not be happy without a partner in her life. What happened in the four months after the wedding is anyone’s guess. Boredom, she affirmed, seeped into the couple’s relationship. Jasmine had thought that she would ride into the sunset and live happily ever after. Her enthusiasm and wishful thinking were obviously misplaced. The couple’s serene world started spinning out of control. If history were any guide, Jasmine’s new marriage had some shades of her first marriage. Her husband witnessed a completely sinister side of her. He constantly complained of being marginalized, she said. She was dismissive and indifferent. “Occasionally, I growled at him,” she admitted. “I am known for my quick-draw temper.” She avoided him as much as she could and treated him like a roommate.  “I was, in a sense, reliving my first marriage,” she said.  

A three-month separation ensued and then the inevitable happened.  After six months of marriage, her new husband filed for divorce. The word “divorce,” she said, pierced her like a blade. She was expecting a long, drawn-out conflict and reconciliation and not the dissolution of her marriage. Her family and friends, this time, were not surprised and, in fact, did not even whimper. They all knew that she was easy to love and admire but difficult to live with.

 Instead of the two actively seeking to rescue their tattered union, they went on the offensive to discredit each other. “I guess we were emotionally immature, too sensitive, and not level-headed,” she said, smiling. “I disrespected him and talked to him in a way I would not address my friends,” she said. “Honestly, I regret that.” Then she added a zinger, “But someone had to be the adult in that marriage,” a not-too-subtle shot at her second husband.

“I a m now single,” she told this writer. “My two former husbands are ‘happily’ married, I assume.” Her children are adults and preparing to move out of her house and start their own families.

Jasmine asked rhetorically, “Am I that bad of a person not to be happy?”

This is the end of Jasmine’s absorbing account of her marriages.

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Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book, The Myths of Happiness, interestingly answers some of the questions about happiness. The writer teaches psychology at the University of California, Riverside.  A new marriage, argues Lyubomirsky, brings a great deal of joy and intense happiness, but only for a short period. In a survey of 1761  European and American couples who have been married for longer than 15 years, respondents said that newlyweds enjoyed a period of heightened joy and happiness in the first two years but that joy started wearing off afterwards. Married couples, after that initial period, can recover that marital happiness 10 to 20 years later when the children leave home. The empty nest provides new opportunities for couples to rediscover each other and rekindle their love.

Why does the joy and intense happiness vaporize after a short period? Lyubomirsky introduces a concept that she calls “hedonic adaptation”; could it be the culprit? Hedonic adaptation means “human beings have the remarkable capacity to grow habituated or inured to most of life’s changes.” When things are familiar and constant, Lyubomirsky points out, humans, psychologically and physiologically, are notorious for taking positive experiences for granted. Every marriage is susceptible to hedonic adaptation. A new marriage that started with intense joy suddenly may turn into a life of routine existence and predictability. In fact, the author writes, that “we are prone to take for granted pretty much everything positive that happens to us.” The author writes that the thrill mostly goes away as quickly as it does when buying a new car or house because we begin to take the “new improved circumstance” for granted. Familiarity, Lyubomirsky says, may or may not breed contempt but research has proved that it breeds indifference. People’s expectations of the marriage might evolve, change, or expand. Indeed, Woody Allen once said that a relationship is like a shark; “If it does not move forward, it dies.”

When people fall in love, they experience an array of euphoric, amorous and passionate feelings. But over the years, the passionate love turns into compassionate love. Interestingly, what normally kills passionate love is predictability. On the other hand, the hallmarks of compassionate love are “deep affection, connection, and liking.” Lyubomirsky does not dismiss the viability of passionate love and argues that humans need both passionate love and compassionate love because the two complement each other: The first galvanizes us and lays the foundation for the new relationship, and the second is crucial for the nourishment of “a committed, stable partnership.”

 Lyubomirsky’s book shatters basic assumptions of happiness. Some of the myths of happiness are divided into two categories. The first is the notion that says, “I will be happy when— (fill in the blank).” I will be happy when I get married, or have children, or get the long-awaited promotion, or become wealthy. When we get what we want though and these things do not make us happy, we become frustrated and depressed. Then, the blame game kicks in. We question ourselves about whether something is wrong with us.

 

The second category of happiness myths is the following: “I can’t be happy when— (fill in the blank).” For instance, I can’t be happy when I am single, poor, or ill. Negative experiences, such as divorce, loss of employment, and death, freak us out and invite self-doubt and downturns. We contemplate that we will never be happy again.  Paradoxically, what we call “crisis” can be veiled opportunities for “renewal, growth, or meaningful change.” Many times, adversity “toughens us up” and people who have weathered negative experiences tend to be happier than the ones who have not. In essence, positive and negative events are intricately linked. As the English poet William Blake said in Auguries of Innocence, “Joe and woe are woven fine.” Lyubomirsky raises the question that if we were asked the best thing and the worst thing that happened to us last year, the answer might surprise us because “it is often one and the same.” We may have lost a loved one last year but, in that same year, we also may have met a soul mate. Or, we may have lost a job and then regrouped and found a more interesting field of employment. 

To Lyubomirsky, popular culture has been feeding us myths that happiness means marriage, wealth, and fame. In fact, the author argues that happiness is “neither a destination nor an acquisition.” People are happier when:

a)      They invest in their relationships and pay attention to each other.

b)      They redirect things that matter instead of what does not.

c)      They are not desirous compared to others.

d)      They are thrifty.

e)      They express gratitude regularly about their relationships, life and health.

f)       They bring variety and surprise to their marriage and do not settle on a routine and dull existence.

g)      They have reliable friends to talk to and lean on.

h)      Couples have an open line of communication,

i)       They have the right attitude in dealing with life’s challenges, and know what they can’t control.

j)       They focus on the positives.

On the issue of attention, another author, Gretchen Rubin, who wrote Happier at Home (2012), adds an interesting caveat about what makes a couple’s relationship thrive: warm greetings and farewells. If a spouse gives a heartfelt greeting when his or her significant other comes home instead of a perfunctory greeting and the same when the spouse is leaving home, the act shows engagement and attentiveness.

 Happiness, if only Jasmine knew, is something that “resides inside us, not outside.” It is never achieving a mythical goal. Certainly, as Lyubomirsky remarks, “nothing in life is as joy-producing or as misery-inducing as we think.” When all is said and done, nothing makes us happy all the time.

For example, researchers at the University of British Columbia found that people who spend money “pro-socially,” which means spending it on gifts for others and charitable donations, are happier.

Finally, the American actress Goldie Hawn once wrote a memoir, The Lotus Grows in the Mud (2005), about her years in Hollywood where fame and wealth are intertwined. She said that she believed she would be happy once she made it in the film industry. On the contrary, she discovered that it was not the case. But she had learned a valuable lesson. “I think I had to become successful to understand that success enhances who you are,” she wrote. “People who are nasty become nastier. People who are happy become happier. People who are mean hoard their money and live in fear for the rest of their lives that they will lose it. People who are generous use their gifts to help people and try to make the world a better place.”