Several years ago, Somalia’s Al-Qaeda affiliate, Al-Shabab, was the first jihadi group to use Twitter to transmit its messages. These days, it is on that same social networking medium that the group’s dirty laundry is being aired.
In a span of three weeks in April, Ibrahim Al-Afghani, one of the top leaders of Al-Shabab and a veteran of the jihad in Afghanistan, wrote a scathing open letter to Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of Al-Qaeda, in which he assailed Ahmed Abdi Godane (also known as Mokhtar Abu Zubeir) — the emir of Al-Shabab—for his imperious style of leadership. The letter unwittingly set off a dizzying chain of events. On April 25, there was an assassination attempt on the American jihadist Omar Hammami. Four days later, an influential foreign jihadist of Al-Shabab wrote an open letter upbraiding the emir of Al-Shabab for committing a long list of egregious acts against foreign fighters in Somalia. That same day, a special court of Al-Shabab presided over by Mukhtar Robow, Ibrahim Al-Afghani, and Hassan Dahir Aweys issued a fatwa, a religious edict, ruling that the killing of Omar Hammami and his colleagues is impermissible.
Omar Hammami, born and raised in Alabama, went to Somalia in 2006 when the Union of Islamic Courts was in control of Mogadishu. After the courts were expelled by Ethiopian troops, he joined Al-Shabab and became one of its leaders. Until a year ago, he was a member of the group’s Shura Council, the highest decision-making body. For several years, Hammami was running on all cylinders: He was the face of Al-Shabab on the internet calling for foreign jihadists to come to Somalia and join the fight, issuing Twitter messages, aiming threats and bluster against the U.S. and Somali governments, composing and singing jihadi rap songs and publicly appearing with local jihadist leaders. In one of his videos, he pleaded, “If you can encourage more of your children, and more of your neighbors, and anyone around you to send people….to this jihad, it would be a great asset for us.” It was apparent that Hammami, the hip-hop jihadist, was naturally inclined to seek the spotlight and constantly angling to get even more attention. According to Hammami’s Twitter messages, he had a falling out with Godane and the duo’s once friendly relationship went from frosty to hostile. Godane and Hammami are two militants who have the same worldview when it comes to global jihad. However, where they differ most, according to Hammami, are the application of sharia, strategy and the treatment of foreign jihadists in Somalia. Hammami has also been critical of the lavish lifestyle some Al-Shabab leaders lead with the taxes that the group imposes on people under its control.
Last year, Hammami went into hiding and started making appearances on the internet appealing for help. He said Al-Shabab leaders were trying to kill him because he had complained about the group’s singular focus on local jihad rather than global jihad. He declared that the threat of his extermination was real and imminent. He has since been emitting a series of fiery denunciations of Al-Shabab and its mercurial leader, Godane. In a way, Hammami has become fixated with the emir of Al-Shabab and is dedicated to smearing him at every opportunity. He accused Godane of all kinds of crimes, from ruling the terrorist outfit with an iron hand to being behind the killing of Fazul Abdullah Mohamed. Fazul, Bin Laden’s representative in East Africa and the man responsible for the bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, was killed when he made a wrong turn to a check point manned by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces in Mogadishu. According to Hammami, Godane was the one who “misdirected” Fazul to that fateful checkpoint.
Initially, Al-Shabab leaders issued no response as they read and watched Hammami’s rants with a mixture of irritation and embarrassment. It is not an everyday event that an American jihadist, who had ascended to the corridors of power in an African group, publicly rebukes his hosts. However, after nine months of silence, Al-Shabab reprimanded Hammami and accused him of obstinacy and the shameless pursuit of fame. Furthermore, the terrorist group apologized to the Muslim community in general and all the jihadists in the world in particular for having “to witness such childish petulance in one of the theaters of jihad….frivolous ramblings and whimsical desires of those who wish to enhance their image at the price of jihad and the mujahidin, spreading discord and disunity in the process.”
Then, on January 4, 2013, Al Shabab asked Hammami to turn himself in no later than January 19. For many, it would have been a walk-away point, but Hammami did not immediately heed the group’s request and continued his criticism of Godane and Al-Shabab. He had developed a special relationship with some American and Canadian counterterrorism experts who were eager to hear from him, and in some cases even interview him. As a man on whose head the U.S. placed a $5 million bounty, Hammami at times revealed crucial information about the leadership dynamics of Al-Shabab, his background, and even that he was in the Bay and Bakool region. These bloggers became his lifeline to transmit his views, and some even showed no qualms about rooting for the safety of the wanted jihadist.
Hammami felt that his life was in danger. His instincts were not far off. On Thursday, April 25, he, an Egyptian and a British jihadist were sipping tea in a café in a small village in the Bay and Bakool region when an Al Shabab assassin shot Hammami in the neck. Hammami tweeted saying, “just been shot in [the] neck by Shabab assassin. [But the injury is] not critical yet.” He went on to acknowledge that Al-Shabab fighters were coming from “multiple directions” and that his friends were few and they were waiting for back up forces. Hammami accused Godane of being behind the attempted assassination, declaring that, “Abu Zubeir (Godane) has gone mad,” because “he is starting a civil war.” It was an interesting choice of words —“civil war”— in a jihadi group. Without missing a beat, he continued: “Their goal is to kill us regardless of reason.” Then, he acted as a tough guy determined not to wilt under attack when he posted images of his wounds.
The Al-Shabab fighters, Hammami wrote, raided the houses of his supporters and apparently uncovered condoms, alcohol and documents. He accused the militant group of planting these materials. To add more insult to this injury, Hammami accused Al-Shabab fighters of moral turpitude. “They have started harassing our wives,” he lamented.
On April 30, a foreign jihadist who did not reveal his name but is a member of Al Shabab’s Shura Council and who once chaired a special court that mediated between Al-Shabab leaders (Godane, Robow, Al-Afghani, and Shangole) wrote a carefully crafted open letter to Godane which made its way to jihadi websites. The letter, according to its author, was posted online because he had tried to meet with Godane to personally address the chronic problems the radical group is facing. Unfortunately, he said, he was rebuffed. Then, he went to a mosque where Al-Shabab leaders were present and gave an impromptu speech preaching to the leaders but was silenced and even banned from the mosque. “You [Godane] did not leave me any other choice except to keep silent while seeing the miserable situation of the mujahidin and Muslims. That is not acceptable in sharia,” he wrote. The writer stated that he wanted all jihadists in the world to know about the crises of jihad in Somalia. The writer personally addressed grievances to Godane as follows:
1. You have inculcated an environment that any foreign jihadist who leaves Somalia without permission is deemed an infidel.
2. You have failed to meet foreign jihadists for several years and you never inquire about their conditions.
3. You have arrested some foreign fighters without any charge and not allowed their families to visit them or know their whereabouts. You have prevented some fighters from waging jihad, the very reason they had traveled to Somalia. In essence, “You have banished some to the lands of infidels while you are hunting down the others.”
4. You have done nothing when Al-Shabab security officials raped the wives of some foreign jihadists while the latter were on the front lines.
5. Some foreign jihadists died in your secret detention centers and you failed to punish those behind these crimes.
The case of foreign jihadists in Somalia like Hammami is veering from tragedy to farce. The prevalent narrative is filled with accusations of power grabs, conspiracy, assassination attempts, jealousy, betrayal, dashed hopes, sexual innuendo, and—last and most damning—rape. The foreign jihadists, moreover, are fighting on two fronts. The first is against the Somali government and AMISOM forces. The second is against their fellow jihadists spearheaded by Godane. Hammami, who once provided the template for Al-Shabab’s recruitment to bloom in the West, is now a case study in effective counterterrorism. He has become a good example of a misguided and dangerous young man who left home in Alabama to become a jihadist in a faraway land only to be hunted down by the very people who were once his comrades in arms. It is a lesson of the bloody fate that awaits would-be foreign jihadists if they come to Somalia. The message is clear to these young jihadists in the West seeking martyrdom: You are more likely to be killed by your fellow jihadists than a hovering American drone in the skies of Africa. Hammami, whose fairy tale of martyrdom has come crashing down, is aware that he did not sign up for the mess he is currently in.
Rumblings of trouble have been brewing in Al-Shabab for some time. Paradoxically, the jihadi situation in Somalia does not draw a dichotomy between foreign fighters and local jihadists. Interestingly, the latter group has become a pawn to the power struggle among Al-Shabab leadership. For instance, Hammami has the backing of two local jihadist leaders (Robow and Hassan Dahir Aweys) and global jihadists like Ibrahim Al-Afghani. The biggest source of conflict among Al-Shabab leaders seems to stem from Godane, whose leadership style is a noxious cocktail of incompetence, manipulation, and repression. Among hard-core criminal jihadist leaders, Godane has been described as an inflexible leader with an extra proclivity for violence. What compounds Al-Shabab’s staggering problems is its loss of sources of revenue due to its loss of territory, the military progress of AMISOM and Somali government troops, the constant bickering over the smallest things, and the lack of vast territory in which to maneuver. In essence, Al-Shabab fighters are geographically surrounded in all directions. Nevertheless, many observers’ premise was wrong regarding Al-Shabab’s imminent demise. Despite the chronic discord among its leaders, not a single high-ranking figure of the terrorist group has defected from its ranks. Like an animal cornered, these leaders are all intractably interwoven. They have risen as a group and will go down as a group.
On April 5, 2009, Hammami issued a video in which he articulated his reasons for going to Somalia: “The only reason we are staying here, away from our families, away from the cities, away from candy bars [and] all these other things is because we are waiting to meet with the enemy.” While jihadism is a career that creates enemies, it is now creating in Somalia the wrong enemy: the one within. As the classic Walt Kelly Pogo cartoon read, “We have found the enemy and he is us.”
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