Clan Cleansing in Somalia: A Book Review

Lidwien Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 336 pages.

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“We’re going to get it on because we don’t get along.” —Mohamed Ali, Rumble in the Jungle.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”—William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust.

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When the current Somali president, Hassan Sh. Mohamoud, has recently visited Minnesota, he gave what seemed to be an inspiring and upbeat speech to that state’s Somali community. Then, he committed a faux pas when he admonished the audience to forget about the past, what happened in 1991 and afterward, and not to dwell on it. The reaction of those who heard the speech ranged from those who wanted to move forward and build on the positives to those who had hard time swallowing the fact that what happened in 1991 could be readily dismissed after so many lives were lost, properties confiscated, and thousands expelled from their homes. The president was depicted as an insensitive leader bent on concealing the truth rather than seeking a judicious way of redressing the wrong. Such is the legacy of 1991 and its deleterious effect on the minds of many Somalis, even after 22 years.

Professor Lidwien Kapteijns’ book, Clan Cleansing in Somalia, exactly cautions Somali politicians not to engage in empty rhetoric about concealing and brushing off the “ruinous legacy” of 1991. Kapteijns, who teaches history at Wellesley College in the United States, is no stranger to Somali studies. She has extensively written about Somalia and speaks fluent Somali. As long as the memories, wrongdoings, and injustice of that period are not fully acknowledged and publicly addressed, she argues, Somalia will remain in a state of conflict and unable to engage in meaningful reconciliation and nation-building.

Something drastic and major happened in 1991 in Mogadishu and other parts of the south that was tragic: an unprecedented violence. Whereas Somalis had history of killing each other—a clan against clan—what took place in 1991 after the collapse of Siad Barre’s brutal regime, writes Kapteijns, was “analytically, politically, and discursively something new, a transformative turning point and key shift that has remained largely unaddressed (and has been purposefully denied and concealed) both in the scholarship about the Somali civil war and in the political efforts at social and moral repair.” Various mechanisms were used to conceal, deny or downplay the 1991 tragedies. The Western media, for instance, failed to uncover the killings and raping of innocent people in Mogadishu, and when foreign reporters visited Mogadishu at the apex of the civil war, they were chaperoned by the operatives of the United Somali Congress (USC). Kapteijns adroitly cites a case of several Western reporters reporting from Mogadishu on one fateful day whose narratives almost resembled each other. It was obvious that these journalists were in the same convoy when they were reporting the carnage in Mogadishu. The problem was compounded by poor academic and political memoir writings that failed to grasp the gravity of the situation in Mogadishu. Moreover, moderate leaders of the USC engaged in covering up the killings. It was only a decade and half later when warlord Ali Mahdi publicly admitted the atrocities committed in 1991.

This was a campaign based on collective punishment of one clan, and, hence, it was “namely that of clan cleansing, in a new political context and with a new dominant discourse.” In fact, argues Kapteijns, it was a communal violence in a way because it involved ordinary people such as friends, acquaintances, and neighbors targeting others based on being members of the wrong clan. The violence was not done randomly but instead it was carried out in a well-thought-out manner that pitted, not a government force against an organized armed group but, a common people against common people. Kapteijns, though, makes it clear that it was not clans that did the killings in Somalia but rather people who used the name of clans to kill, maim and rape.

The 1991 violence was not created out of vacuum. It was Barre who started using political violence to punish entire clans. The government’s policy was “using clan sentiment to exacerbate competition, conflict and grudge among Somalis.” Two incidents stand out. First, it happened in 1978-1982 in the Mudug, northeast, and Nugaal regions.  Barre’s forces killed innocent people in those regions, poisoned wells, and starved thousands of people. There is also the incident that involved the killings of 82 high- ranking military officers in Jigjiga during the Ethiopian War, an act overseen by Barre’s minions; General Mohamed Ali Samantar and General Mohamed Nur Galaal. This happened after a failed military coup, aptly called “the Majertein coup,” which led to the execution of 17 officers. Oddly, 16 of the 17 killed were Majertein. The other non-Majertein conspirators, interestingly, had their sentences commuted to prison terms.  

Second, it was the well-written and widely-covered violence of 1988-1989 in the northwest and Togdheer regions when the regime bombed cities, killing and dislocating thousands of Isaac people.

When Barre was overthrown, the USC, according to Kapteijns, adopted a policy that “defined as mortal enemy of all Somalis encompassed by the genealogical construct of Daarood, which also included the president.” Many of those targeted by the USC and its allies (the SNM and the Rahanwein-based SDM), argues Kapteijns, had nothing to do with the Barre regime, but their crime was they shared the president the same clan. On the other side of the coin, the 1991 violence also had another dimension: some high-ranking officials in Barre’s regime were spared after the defeat of the dictator. Kapteijns mentions individuals such as Hussein Kulmiye Afrah (vice president), Abdiqassim Salad Hassan (interior minister), General Jilicow (head of security in the Benadir region) Mohamed Shaikh (finance minister), Abdullahi Adow (minister of presidency and former Somali Ambassador to the United States) who had largely benefited from their long association with Barre, found themselves unharmed and, in fact, were embraced by the leaders of the USC, whereas persons who belonged to Barre’s clan but never benefited from his regime got killed, robbed, or expelled because they were from the wrong clan.

Kapteijns chronicles the atrocities committed against minority groups such as, for instance, the Bravanese, that had suffered tremendously in the hands of both the USC and the Daarood-based SNF. A resident of Brava, a coastal town in the south, complained about how the rule in his hometown had changed hands on numerous occasions. “One group leaves then the next group comes,” he lamented. “They loot and take away your possessions. I can’t tell one from the other; they are like ants of the same color.”  

Lidwien Kapteijns’ book is an important addition to Somali studies. She uses popular poems, radio broadcasts, and extensive oral interviews to analyze the genesis, fomenting, and perpetuation of hate speech, and the employment of code words. The book is at its strongest when Kapteijns delves into the use of poetry and oral recordings to explain the violence that had engulfed Somalia in early 1990s. This is a-must-read book for every Somali who wants to know what happened in 1991. It is especially important for Somali leaders who want to bring a lasting change to Somalia because the process of uncovering the truth and dealing with it is only the beginning of the healing process.

 

Shaikh Abdulkadir Nur Farah: An Obituary

Several years ago, the prominent Somali scholar Shaikh Abdulkadir Nur Farah gave a speech at a conference in Puntland. He derided what he called “Ghuluwi” (extremism) as a new phenomenon that was gripping that country. Teens between ages fourteen and seventeen, he lamented, were being brainwashed and had become killer-machines targeting religious scholars when the latter entered or left mosques.  

Last Friday, February 15, 2013, Shaikh Abdulkadir, who was in his seventies himself, was killed in broad daylight while he was praying in a mosque in Garowe. The killer was sadly a teenager. The young assassin was immediately apprehended by unarmed citizens who risked their lives to capture him.

Shaikh Abdulkadir went to Saudi Arabia in 1970 to study at the Islamic University in Madinah. He graduated in 1974 and was sent by Dar-ul-Iftaa, a Saudi religious organization, to Niger in West Africa as a religious teacher. He and his longtime friend, Shaikh Yusuf Adan, were unable to work there because they arrived after the academic year had started. The two were stuck in Niger unemployed until Siad Barre, who was the Chairman of the Organization of African Union (OAU) that year, came to Niger on an official visit. Barre encouraged the two to return to their country where they were badly needed and, in fact, took them in his plane to Mogadishu. Abdulkadir was appointed as a judge in the Hodon District. A year later, Barre would put Abdulkadir and Shaikh Yusuf in jail without any charges ever being brought against them. The two languished in prison until 1978.

Shaikh Abdulkadir went through four stages in his life after his return to Mogadishu: Ostracism, rehabilitation, cautionary tale and acceptance.
Ostracism

Shaikh Abdulkadir was one of only a few Somali scholars who graduated from Saudi universities prior to 1974. Somalia, at that time, was primarily a Sufi-oriented society. The nascient Islamic resurgence in Mogadishu was spearheaded by Shaikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan, a graduate of the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Egypt, and an admirer of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Many of the young Islamists of that period were influenced by MB thinkers like Hassan El-Banna, Sayid Qutb, Mohamed Qutb, Fathi Yakan, Sa’eed Hawwaa and Pakistan’s own Abu A’laa Al-Mawdudi. Shaikh Abdulkadir, in essence, was an oddity and entered a hostile environment that was against Salafism, or as the Somalis derisively called the ideology “Wahhabism.” In many ways, Abdulkadir was treated like a pariah.

In 1975, I was a 15-year-old student when I first saw Abdulkadir. He was a rail thin man with impeccable manners. He was polite, courteous, and shy. He was given, like any Somali with a distinctive physical attribute, a nickname. His was Abdulkadir “Gacameey” (the one-handed). The nickname exposed his physical condition, and he hated it. Many years later, he implored his friends and acquaintances not to call him such a name.  

Student activists were told, in so many words, to steer clear of Abdulkadir because he carried an alien ideology that was ‘radical’. I remember one evening in 1975 when Abdulkadir was talking to two young activists and suddenly the student leader at the time, Abdulkadir Shaikh Mohamoud, came upon them and reprimanded the scholar. “What are you telling these youngsters?’ the student leader screamed. Then, in a clear indictment of the Saudi-trained scholar, the leader recited the Quranic verses; “And when it is said to them, “Do not cause corruption on the earth,” they say, “We are but reformers. Unquestionably, it is they who are the corruptors, but they perceive [it] not.”  Abdulkadir was stunned by the leader’s uncouth behavior but he simply ignored him. It was indeed ironic that this same student leader fled Somalia in 1976 and found home in Saudi Arabia where he spent for almost two decades and even graduated from one of that country’s finest universities.

There was also the case of a young man called Abdirahman who was influenced by Shaikh Abdulkadir. Initially, student leaders tried to reason with the young man but to no avail. Then, the leaders did something odd: Abdirahman was perceived as a mentally-ill person because it was unfathomable, in the eyes of student leaders that a “good person” would fall under the spell of Salafism. A group of twenty to thirty student activists went to the young man’s house in Pilaggio Arab to read Quranic verses to him, like someone who was possessed. When that attempt failed, the young man was ostracized like his mentor, Abdulkadir. Such was the ignorance prevalent at the time among young activists and the environment where there was zero tolerance for Salafism.  Today, the Salafi movement, in spite of its imperfects, has a strong presence in the country

Rehabilitation

In 1978, something dramatic happened. The student movement split into two groups. The first group, labeled “At-Takfir”, declared that Somalis, who are 100% Muslims, as “Kuffar” (infidels) because Islamic rule was not being implemented in the country. Members of this group stopped praying in mosques. The second group, however, had opposed to the first group and maintained that Somalis were Muslims but needed to be taught their religion. The strength of Salafism is its strong focus on issues about faith. Shaikh Abdulkadir, who was just released from prison in that tumultuous period, found a home in the second group and became active in eradicating the new alien and radical thought. In a short period, Shaikh Abdulkadir’s group adopted Salafism as its ideology. The group later became known as Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI), and the largest Islamic movement in Somalia.  Abdulkadir suddenly became someone whose counsel and guidance was actively sought.  

Cautionary Tale

When the Barre government collapsed in 1991, Somalia was beset with a civil war. Many armed groups emerged including militias run by the AIAI. Shaikh Abdulkadir was against the idea of establishing these militias. He believed that Islamists had no business carrying arms because such a tactic frightened ordinary people, distracted them from worshipping God, destabilized the country, and actively invited more enemies to go against the Islamists. Unfortunately, he was not listened to then. He settled in his hometown, Garowe, and continued teaching people their religion. The AIAI briefly took control of Puntland and Shaikh Abdulkadir was not pleased with the actions of his colleagues. He told whoever would listen to him that the group’s action would soon backfire. The solution was for the Islamists, according to Abdulkadir, to work with the local people, tribal elders, and politicians without brandishing AK-47 and delivering violence. No one heeded to his admonition.

The people of Puntland, who initially welcomed the Islamists, became disenchanted with their new rulers and their style of governing. A militia led by Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf expelled the religious group from Puntland. Many innocent people died in those military clashes. Afterwards, the AIAI did the unthinkable when it decided to completely disarm. Some of its members though were not happy with the group laying down its arms and founded their own group, Al-Shabab. This is the same militant group now believed to be behind Abdulkadir’s assassination and, in December 5, 2011, that of his long-time friend and a colleague, Dr. Ahmed Haji Abdirahman.

Acceptance

For the last decade and half, Shaikh Abdulkadir has been a highly respected scholar in Somalia and a leader of Al-Ictisaam, a Salafi nonviolent movement.  He was a voice of moderation in a sea of radicalism. He believed in education rather than engaging in an armed struggle. He criticized the Islamic movement in the country for not having a strategic plan to save the country. He called for a well-thought out plan to deal with the ordinary people, tribal chieftains, and politicians instead of Islamists simply reacting to events. He wanted a peaceful transformation of Somalia where people’s lives, properties, and institutions were protected. The young misguided radicals, he would say, should be educated. “They only know the benefits of jihad and not ‘fiqhul- jihad’ (jurisprudence of jihad).”  The youths do not know when to fight, who authorizes jihad, and who can fight, he stated.  He condemned suicide bombers as a bunch of fools who do not care about the irrational loss they inflict on themselves and innocent people. “These ignorant young men do not know that when they blow up themselves in a bomb that they will end up in hellfire,” he would quip.

Shaikh Abdulkadir refused to have security protection even when numerous threats were issued against him by the Al-Shabab. “I am in my seventies and I have nothing left in me,” he used to say. “Whoever kills an old man like me is a loser.”

 Indeed, his assassins are the real losers. May God bless him.

 

 

Omar Arteh: A Dissenting View

In 1977, I saw something odd in the Hamarweyne District of Mogadishu. I saw a tall man riding a horse. For one thing, the rider was not a policeman. Then, after I looked at him closely, I realized it was none other than Omar Arteh Ghalib, the deposed foreign minister of Somalia. One pedestrian made a casual comment that Omar Arteh must have been depressed to be riding a horse in the center of the capital. Later, I found out that the horse was a gift from the people of the Nugaal region. Incidentally, Omar was the headmaster of an elementary school there in the 1950s.

From 1969 to 1976, Omar Arteh was the foreign minister. It was not strange when President Siad Barre decided to remove him from that position. The dictatorial system of Somalia did not make room for a foreign minister, or any other capable official for that matter, to be effective or powerful. Omar knew that he was merely a performer, perhaps, a facilitator, an implementer of Barre’s policies. All the hoopla that Omar Arteh was the man behind Somalia’s opening to the Arab world and to the country becoming a member of the Arab League is preposterous. Omar may have flattered and cajoled some Arab kings here and there, but he knew perfectly well that he was Siad Barre’s messenger. Moreover, the Arab governments were eager to have Somalia as a member of the league.

A case in point, when King Faisal of Saudi Arabia sent a special envoy, Shaikh Mohamed Mohamoud Al-Sawaf, to Barre in the early 1970s to lure the latter away from the Soviet orbit, Omar Arteh, according to a BBC interview with Mohamed Nur “Garyare” (then the director of religion in the ministry of religion and justice), was too timid to articulate the Arab king’s message before Siad Barre, and he instead pleaded with “Garyare” to deliver the bold message. Omar Arteh did not want to rock the boat or appear to be an official favoring special relations with Saudi Arabia. Barre, in that meeting with the Saudi Arabian envoy, was blunt and rejected King Faisal’s overtures. Only a few years later, Barre would grovel under the feet of Arab sheikhs, but that was not the time.

Many Somalis have questioned why Omar Arteh lost his job as foreign minister. There is no doubt that Omar spoke several languages, was charming and articulate. Omar, during the civilian government, had a cordial relationship with Siad Barre. In fact, Omar was mentioned as a natural replacement for Ibrahim Egal as prime minister. Prime Minister Egal and Siad Barre had a rocky relationship and there was even talk of removing Barre as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Until 1976, Omar was probably the longest serving cabinet minister in one ministry. By 1977, Siad Barre had a grand design to invade Ethiopia and even capture Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, as was later unveiled by Somali military commanders during the 1977-1978 Somali-Ethiopian War. Barre’s goal was not only to capture and liberate “Western Somalia,” but also to carve up Ethiopia. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf was ordered to attack Ethiopia from the south and proceed all the way to Addis Ababa. Barre wanted to make sure that he had someone whom he trusted at the foreign ministry during that critical juncture and hence appointed his brother, Abdurahman Jama Barre, to the post. Jama Barre was the director general (DG) of that ministry. Somalis will always debate whether Jama Barre was the best qualified person to be Somalia’s longest serving foreign minister—about 14 years in total. (Full disclosure: Jama Barre and I are related through marriage.)

Even though Jama Barre was the foreign minister, Siad Barre used to send Hussein Abdulkadir Kassim, minister of mineral and water resources, to international conferences to represent Somalia. Barre also used Kassim for certain important meetings like the one on 10/8/1976 with Dr. Henry Kissinger, at the time secretary of state of the United States in the Ford administration, and the other on 12/8/1977 with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American national security advisor under President Carter. Kassim was well-educated, confident, articulate, well-versed with the history of the region, and adept at diplomacy.

Interestingly, Omar Arteh, the foreign minister in the early 1970s, now a glorified figure to the point of veneration, proposed in a meeting of the council of ministers, that Jama Barre be appointed as the DG. Omar Arteh, of course, was currying favor with Siad Barre. The president, the ever-consummate politician, considered the proposal a bad idea. But, oddly, Jama Barre did become the DG. This story is mentioned by Hussein Abdillahi Bulhan, a die-hard Somalilander, in his book, Politics of Cain: One Hundred Years of Crises in Somali Politics and Society (2008). In fact, Siad Barre was grooming his brother for the top job in the ministry. When, in 1976, Omar Arteh became involved in a petty bureaucratic fight with one of his subordinates, Dahir Yusuf Mareexaan, Siad Barre used that as a pretext to remove Omar Arteh from the foreign ministry and instead appointed him as the minister of higher education and culture. Dahir Yusuf, on the other hand, was appointed some time later as an ambassador to India and later to Libya.

Why did Omar Arteh propose Jama Barre to be the DG of the foreign ministry? For one thing, Jama Barre was either the second or the third employee ever hired by the new foreign ministry in 1960. Jama Barre was sent to Italy where he studied political economy and returned to Somalia. He was one of only a member of a small pool of university graduates in the entire country. Unlike Omar who had served abroad as a diplomat—he was an ambassador to Ethiopia from 1965 to 1968—Jama Barre toiled in the administrative aspect of diplomacy.

Some would argue that Omar Arteh proposed the appointment of Jama Barre as DG because it was an inevitable appointment waiting to happen. In fairness, Omar Arteh was loyal to Siad Barre, but he tended to flatter the dictator, a habit Omar had perfected and used profusely whenever it suited him.

When I came to the U.S, I saw three young Somali ladies in my university who told me that they all had scholarships from the United Arab Emirates. I had no scholarship and went into a painful financial crisis; once I even missed an entire semester because I was broke. I asked the young ladies, who were sisters, how they had gotten their scholarships. “Omar Arteh got them for us,” they told me. They also told me that they belonged to the same sub-clan as Omar. I was happy for them and thought it revolutionary to see Somali women getting a good education. However, I tried desperately to secure a scholarship for myself. Although I finally got one two years later, it was a long process that involved arduous work—too many applications and numerous letters of pleas. Many people were instrumental in helping me; including Somalis and others friends from the Gulf who attended the same university as I did, so I did not know which application of plea did the final work. I would say that Omar Arteh was the one who started securing scholarships for Somali students from foreign countries long before it was known to other Somali officials. I commend Omar for performing such a valuable service. Many of these scholarships unfortunately did not go through proper channels, such as the ministry of higher education. They were doled out at the backdoor, and, on some occasions, the beneficiaries were Omar’s relatives.

After all is said and done, I would still rather have someone like Omar Arteh as my leader than the crop of leaders we have today in Somalia. Among today’s leaders, Omar would be a man among boys. I know Omar Arteh was a nationalist and not someone known for selling the country to the highest bidder. Omar was a man with talent, but he was not perfect. He was neither a teetotaler, as one writer said in this website, nor a heart-throbbing Casanova whom ladies drooled over. Given his cozy relationship with Saudi potentates and princes, Omar was a secular man. He had a personal charisma, but lacked the type of political charisma someone like Mohamed Ibrahim Egal had to produce change. Omar was ambitious to a fault and, at times, lacked any guiding principles. Omar was the prime minister in the so-called government of warlord Ali Mahdi (from 1991 to 1993) and during the apex of the civil war. That was undoubtedly a black mark in his record. But, alas, at least Omar was ours and the son of Somalia.



Mr. Ambassador, Meet Nuruddin Farah

“No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.”− W.H. Auden.
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In the spring of 1980, I arrived in New York City seeking an education. I was fresh from Cairo, Egypt, where I had spent one and a half years. In my four months in the city, I was fortunate to stay in Astoria, Queens, with two diplomats at Somalia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations: Abdi Artan, First Secretary, and Adan Farah Shirdon, Consular. Shirdon is the older brother of Somalia’s current prime minister, Abdi Farah Shirdon. Both Shirdon and Artan later became ambassadors to Djibouti and Canada, respectively.

After that summer, I headed to Ohio, where I knew no one, to commence my university studies.

The Somali ambassador at the time was Ahmed Mohamed Adan “Qaybe.” Ambassador Qaybe was a career foreign service officer who had served as an envoy to Washington and Moscow. He was tall, strong, intimidating, and brusque. He seemed blunt where others prevaricated. He had worked in senior posts in both the civilian and military governments and, not long ago, was the speaker of the House of Elders in Somaliland.

Qaybe, who hails from the Sol and Sanaag region, has become a fervent defender of the self-declared state of Somaliland. He has attacked some of his fellow countrymen for forming the Khatumo State. For example, Dr. Ali Khalif Galeyr, Somalia’s former prime minister− a hero to some and a polarizing figure to others− has become Qaybe’s favorite piñata. Several months ago, Qaybe lashed out at Galeyr for the latter’s unbridled ambition and shameless pursuit of political position.

Moreover, Qaybe, who holds no doctorate, questioned Galeyr’s PhD and characterized it as an achievement from a third-rate American university. However, Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs from which Galeyr graduated is ranked by U.S News and World Report as one of the top graduate schools in public affairs. Syracuse University, after all, is the institution from which Joe Biden, the U.S vice-president, graduated.

A young Somali diplomat in our apartment complex told me about an incident in the Somali mission to the UN. The story was confirmed by two other diplomats.

One day, the Somali writer Nuruddin Farah came to the mission. By 1980, Farah had achieved middling success and had three novels, all in English, under his belt. I have no idea why Farah appeared in the diplomatic compound. Was he renewing his passport? Was he in Manhattan, in the neighborhood, and decided to stop at the mission? I do not know. At any rate, the said young Somali diplomat was gracious enough to have welcomed Farah. He was talking to the writer when Ambassador Qaybe walked into the office. The young man introduced Farah with the kind of reverence typically reserved for dignitaries.

“This is the Somali writer Mr. Nuruddin Farah, Mr. Ambassador,” announced the young diplomat.

Qaybe, the career bureaucrat, was caught off guard. He knew who Nuruddin Farah was. No one though had expected Nuruddin Farah, who had imposed on himself self-exile in the mid-1970s, to appear in a Somali government office.

After a few seconds of embarrassing silence, Qaybe exploded, “Are you the one who writes about cockroaches and lizards?”

The statement was like being smacked with a tsunami.

Nuruddin Farah was stunned and dumb-founded by the ambassador’s undignified and vituperative language. The remarks indeed rendered him speechless. Farah believed, albeit erroneously, that he would be bathed in celestial glow. But here was this uncouth and abrasive envoy treating him like a giant fly that kept orbiting in the diplomatic compound.

The young diplomat, who like Qaybe hailed from Sol and Sanaag, was utterly embarrassed. In fact, the ambassador’s words sent shudders up the spine of those present. There was a genuine feeling that Ambassador Qaybe had trampled on a national treasure: Somalia’s renowned writer. Yes, Farah was an avowed critic of the Siad Barre regime, but he nonetheless deserved respect and common courtesy.

The incident offered a telling tableau of two different personalities: one, a government official upholding its policies that stifled dissent and the other, a novelist who had built a reputation of challenging the legitimacy of such government. It was obvious that Qaybe did not want to be perceived as a high-ranking official cavorting with a dissident.

One thing became clear in that brief confrontation: There is no uglier scene than one involving a bruised ego.

True to his reputation, Farah came across as intelligent, detached, pretentious, and a bit haughty. He was the same man who was once interviewed by the BBC Somali Service and treated the audience dismissively. When asked which writers had influenced him, Farah told the interviewer to skip that question as the answer would not make sense to the audience. The audience, in Farah’s eyes, represented a monolithic group that knew nothing about literature. The novelist did not want to waste his time discussing an issue that he unilaterally deemed too sophisticated for his audience to comprehend. Why bother!

After Qaybe’s unfortunate remarks, the novelist tried valiantly to preserve a modicum of civility. He wanted to stay above the fray but there was no denying that he had a vacuous expression on his face. Of course, he was hurt. Farah must have felt unappreciated at best, and slighted, at the least.

Farah left the office without receiving a groveling apology.

One of these coming years, Nuruddin Farah might win the Nobel Prize for literature. He has been nominated for the award numerous times. He has published 11 novels, some with critical acclaim. Some of his recent novels though have been depicted as “less poetic and polished than his earlier novels,” (The Economist) because they rely heavily on “research and recent political events.” In his latest novel, Crossbones, Pico Iyer detected what other critics have been saying about Farah’s penchant for “textbook commentary.” In the November 8, 2012, issue of the New York Review of Books, Iyer pointed out that Nuruddin Farah’s “characters sound as heavy-handed as people declaiming from an Associated Press report.”

If Farah wins the Nobel Prize, I wonder what Qaybe would say about the Swedish Foundation. An astute Canadian writer named Margaret Atwood once said, “If you are not annoying somebody, you are not alive.”



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.

 

 

Somalia's Salafi Groups and Fatwa Wars

In July of this year, a group of 22 Somali Salafi scholars met in Nairobi, Kenya, and issued a fatwa (a religious edict) that condemned a young Somali cleric based in Kenya named Shaikh Hassaan Hussein Adam. He is widely known as a spiritual supporter of Al-Shabab. The signatories and attendees of this meeting included a who’s who of the Somali Salafi community: Shaikh Mohamed Abdi Umal, Shaikh Mohamoud Shibli, Shaikh Abdirizak Mohamoud Takar, Shaikh Abdulkhadir Nur Farah, Shaikh Mohamed Idris, Shaikh Abdirahman Shaikh Umar and two former leaders of al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI), Shaikh Ali Warsame and Shaikh Mohamoud Issa. The scholars condemned Shaikh Hassaan as a heretic and asked the Somali public not to buy his work or listen to his lectures.

Hassaan Hussein “Abu Salman” Adam, or “Shaikh Hassaan”, as he is popularly known, is on the United Nations’ (UN) sanctions list of persons accused of providing material support to the militant Al-Shabab.  A UN Security Council report in 2011 accused Hassaan of engaging in acts that threatened the “peace, security or stability of Somalia.” He was also accused of recruiting new members for Al-Shabab and raising funds for the group, not to mention issuing fatwas calling for attacks against the Somali government. Last year, Hassaan was arrested by Kenyan authorities and then released for reasons not bereft of domestic and ethnic politics. Hassaan indeed belongs to a major Somali clan that has a powerful presence in Kenya’s political corridor.  He is 33 years old, soft-spoken, supremely talented, and singularly driven. In spite of his scholarly bent, Hassaan appears to be a preacher with a concealed agenda because there is a subtle call for activism in his prolific lectures. He is blunt with his views and does have a habit of being accusatory.

What is known currently is that Hassaan is popular among young Somali Islamists worldwide because he espouses radical views about jihad. He is more or less Somalia’s version of Anwar al-Awlaki in terms of his youth, vigor, knowledge, and articulateness. Many Salafis from the old school, however, consider him to be extremely dangerous because, by all accounts, Hassaan provides Al Shabab radicals with the religious justification they need for their militant war in Somalia. He is, they say, an apologist for Al-Shabab because even though he does not carry arms, he is still able to articulate the ideology of Al- Shabab from the comfort of his home in Nairobi. Shaikh Hassaan’s lectures are very popular among the militant youth and are widely disseminated in Al-Shabab media outlets which also provide a glowing picture of him. Moreover, his lectures are instantly available as far away as Seattle in the U.S and as close as Mogadishu.

The Salafi movement, according to Quintan Wiktorowicz’s scholarly article, “The Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (2006), is an array of trends that all share a “puritanical approach to religion.” Yet this “community is broad enough to include such diverse figures as Osama bin Laden and the Mufti of Saudi Arabia.” Within the Salafis, there are differences in politics and jihad. One jihadi figure aptly summarized the concept as “The split is not in thought; it is in strategy.” Recently, the Salafi presence in many parts of the world has become palpable. In 2010, a report by Germany’s intelligence service concluded that Salafism was becoming the fastest growing Islamic movement in the world.

Traditional Somali Salafis generally are in congruence with the ideology of al-Ictisaam movement. For starters, the al-Ictisaam is the product of the old al-Ittihad al-Islami group, which was the largest Islamic movement in Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997, the group laid aside its arms and dissolved itself, but it does not refrain from politics and activism. Al-Ictisaam is the new version of the al-Ittihad sans arms. It is headed by Shaikh Bashir Ahmed-Salad Warsame, who is also the head of the Council of Ulama in Mogadishu. Prominent scholars like Shaikh Mohamed Abdi Umal, the late Dr. Ahmed Haji Abdirahman (who was assassinated by the Al-Shabab last year), Shaikh Mohamoud Shibli, and Shaikh Abdulkhadir Nur Farah are considered the top figures of al-Ictisaam.

There are three types of Salafis: the traditional−some say the ‘politico’−group as represented by al-Ictisaam, the armed Salafist group – or what French scholar Gilles Kepel would call Salafism Jihadism− manifested by al-Shabab, and the neo-Salafis, better known as Salafiyyah Jadidah (the New Salafis). Shaikh Ali Mohamoud “Ali Wajiis”, Dr. Ahmed Dahir Aweys, Shaikh Mohamed Abdi Dahir, and Shaikh Abdulkhadir Cukaasha, a scholar based in Nairobi, are major symbols of the neo-Salafis. Shaikh Cukaasha is one of the disciples of the late Shaikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan, the father of Somalia’s Islamic resurgence. In the 1980s, he became one of the Salafi scholars of al-Ittihad. His break with AIAI came during the peak of the group’s armed incursions inside Somalia. Cukaasha was opposed to AIAI carrying arms and condemned the jihadist policy of the group’s leaders. He was then upbraided and ostracized by the AIAI leaders including Hassan Dahir Aweys and Abdullahi Ali Hashi who ironically became top figures in Al-Shabab a decade later.

The rift between the al-Ictisaam scholars and the young Shaikh Hassaan, while ideological in nature, can also be explained as an interplay of power and ideology. Until recently, Al-Shabab has been in power in many areas of the south whereas the defunct AIAI, now al-Ictisaam, lost its power base after it demilitarized. Many of the Al-Shabab leaders including Ahmed Abdi Godane, Ibrahim Afghani, and Mukhtar Robow, were once AIAI members, but became disenchanted after that group disbanded its armed militias. The constant in the Al-Shabab leadership is its demonization of al-Ictisaam as a spineless group that has shamelessly abandoned its jihadi mission and ideology. Al-Shabab, on the other hand, appears to those who listen to Hassaan’s lectures, to be the ones who are offering a far more muscular stance on dealing with the Somali government.

It was in the midst of this political backdrop that Shaikh Hassaan issued a fatwa last year where he enunciated the “devious” nature of al-Ictisaam as an Islamic movement. This young cleric then rendered a verdict, accusing the group of being apostates, “Dhaa’ifa Murta’dah.” Furthermore, Shaikh Hassaan declared that it is religiously permissible to kill the scholars of al-Ictisaam as long as the goal is stopping their “fasaad” (transgression). The fatwa generated stinking rebukes from al-Ictisaam members and sympathizers. The crime of al-Ictissam, according to Shaikh Hassaan, is that it issued a fatwa that allowed participation in the country’s political process spearheaded by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The Somali government, Somaliland, and Puntland are seen by A-Shabab radicals as infidels that should be fought and eliminated.

Shaikh’s Hassaan’s fatwa on al-Ictisaam has, for the last few weeks, generated new interest after the Puntland security forces apprehended some of Dr. Ahmed Haji Abdirahman’s killers. The young defendants, who allegedly carried out this heinous crime, spilled the beans and had a tangle of a story to tell. They accused Shaikh Hassaan of being a secret member of Al-Shabab and of issuing the fatwa to kill Dr. Ahmed Haji. In essence, the young defendants are saying that they were inspired by Hassaan’s edict to carry out their targeted assassination. The public confessions of these perpetrators has become, to al-Ictisaam members and sympathizers, a clear rallying point to expose what they perceive as Hassaan’s deleterious influence on the minds of many young Somalis.

The Salafis and the U.S

Immediately following the 9-11 tragedy, the American government went through a period of panic and confusion about dealing with Muslims, in general, and Islamic groups, in particular. In the last few years, however, there has been a clear policy to differentiate, for instance, between the Salafi jihadists and the neo-Salafis. In 2010, the U.S Department of State issued a visa to Shaikh Abdulkhadir Mohamed “Cukaasha” in Nairobi to visit America and attend an Islamic conference in Atlanta. The state department even offered protection for the cleric, according to a person close to Cukaasha, during his tour in the U.S. but the cleric politely declined. The goal of the American government was to have Cukaasha, who is opposed to Al-Shabab’s violence, speak to young Somali Islamists in Atlanta and Minneapolis about the danger of joining Al-Shabab’s armed struggle. What was not known to Cukaasha and his American sponsors, however, was the cool way that the cleric would be received in the Somali communities that he visited and by the Salafi establishment.

Many Salafi imams and leaders in the U.S, who are also inimical to Al-Shabab tactics, simply saw Cukaasha’s trip as an attempt to strengthen the small number of Somali neo-Salafis in North America. Cukaasha, according to people he talked to, was flummoxed and felt frozen out by his former colleagues in the Salafi community. Thus the visit, in essence, aggravated the already frayed relationship between the Salafis and the neo-Salafis. To Washington, which has become weary of the radicalization of Somali youth, the neo-Salafis are a counter force to ward off jihadi elements in America.  

On the other hand, in early October of this year, the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took an unprecedented move by terminating the American citizenship of a prominent Somali Salafi scholar based on errors in his original citizenship application already filed and approved more than a decade earlier. This technicality, while seemingly small, might portend something larger, such as perhaps curtailing the influence of certain Salafi scholars in the U.S. Because the case is still under appeal, this scholar’s name will not be divulged here.   

Another incident involved the renowned Shaikh Mohamed Abdi Umal.  Several months ago, he generated a media sensation when he said that it was “halaal” (permissible) to eat the meat of hyena. Umal was also denied an entry visa to the U.S to attend an Islamic conference in Minneapolis on July 27, 2012, that was organized by the Abubakar Islamic Center, the same institution widely investigated by the FBI—but later cleared of any wrongdoing−regarding the missing Somali youths. Umal’s visa was also denied on a technicality, namely, there was not sufficient time to process his visa application. However, it was clear to the Somali religious establishment in Minneapolis that the cleric, a prominent figure of al-Ictissam, was not welcome in the U.S. It was also not the first time that Shaikh Umal has been denied entry to America.

In July 2009, the U.S government barred the famous Somali preacher from Norway, Shaikh Mustafe Haji Ismail Harun, from entering the country. Shaikh Mustafe, a Salafi, is an Islamic scholar who hails from Somaliland and is well-liked by Somalis from all walks of life. He was supposed to be the keynote speaker at an Islamic convention in Minneapolis and had checked with the U.S Embassy in Oslo. At that time, he was told there were no problems preventing him from attending the conference.  Norway, incidentally, has a visa waiver with the United States. After arriving at Newark International Airport after a nine-hour flight from Norway, Shaikh Mustafe was questioned by U.S federal agents for three hours and informed that his name had been cleared, but he was still sent back to Oslo.

In a nutshell, the conflict between al-Ictisaam scholars and Shaikh Hassaan’s al-Shabab is at least partly dictated by the nature of political Islam. Each Islamic group has a phalanx of scholars who readily offer religious justification for their own actions and policies. Both groups wrangle and tangle as the spiraling saga of fatwa issuing intensifies. The views of Shaikh Hassaan, although radical and dangerous and not in the mainstream even among the Salafis, still offer a spiritual and ideological grounding for those Somali militants who are waging what they consider a “legitimate jihad” against the Somali government.

Somalia's New Cabinet: A Mixed Blessing

Finally, after a tortuous 17-day wait, Somali Prime Minister has unveiled his cabinet. The features of the new cabinet are the following:

1. Size: This is the smallest Somali cabinet in history at only 10 members. This is a lean cabinet, perhaps even a malnourished body. President Hassan Sh. Mohamoud was right when he said that many clans may not see themselves represented in it. The previous bloated cabinet ministries were, however, manifestations of tribal representation with no actual power. They gave false hope to many that they were indeed actual wielders of power when in fact many were names on paper. The government ministries at times did not even have buildings and staff. This new cabinet represents a change in terms of both numeric composition and a consolidation of various portfolios into a single grouping. For instance, combining finance and planning is a smart move. Yet such consolidation also creates problems, for example, blurring certain responsibilities. For instance, education and health both fall under the Ministry of Social Services. Somalia needs two separate cabinets for education and health at this juncture of rebuilding.

2. Women Representation: Two women have been appointed to the new cabinet, and both have two major portfolios in foreign affairs and social services. The latter ministry is more important than the former due to the major tasks of reconstruction that still lie ahead. Prime Minister Shirdon has made history by appointing Fowsiya Yusuf Haji Adan as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs. This is the first time that a woman has been selected either as Deputy Prime Minister or Foreign Minister. Having 20% female representation in the cabinet is also a step forward because women now occupy two crucial ministries and hence are not merely token representatives to the political process.

3. Dearth of Experience: One glaring flaw in this new cabinet is the absence of government experience for the appointed ministries. Three cabinet ministers have but a six-month experience under the short-lived government of Prime Minister Mohamed Farmajo (Abyan, Maryan, and Fiqi). The rest are newcomers. Having such inexperienced government officials at the helm has been the mainstay of President Mohamoud’s administration. The president and the prime minister are novice at running the country, and this new cabinet is no different. Somehow, President Mohamoud seems to favor newcomers, perhaps they are more likely not to pose any threat to him.

4. One Brand of Islamists: Unlike former President, Shaikh Sharif Ahmed, who always made sure to appoint various Islamists to his administration, Mohamoud gave cabinet posts only to his group, Damul Jadid (New Blood). Abdikarim Hussein Guled (Interior and National Security) and Abdullahi Abyan Nur (Justice and Religion) are members of the president’s Islamist group. Maryan Qassim (Social Services) is an Islamist from al-Islah, Somalia’s branch of International Muslim Brotherhood. Oddly, there is no cabinet minister from either al-Ictissam (Salafi) or Tajamuc (Ala Shaikh), two major Islamic movements. Muhyidin Mohamed Kaalmooy (Public Works and Reconstruction) is said to be an Islamist close to the New Blood. In essence, if the new cabinet is approved, President Mohamoud’s Islamist ministers will be in charge of the country’s education, higher education, culture, health, police force, national security, public works, reconstruction, justice, family and religious affairs.

5. An Olive Branch for Farmajo: The former PM did not gain the premiership job under President Mohamoud, but three members of his former cabinet and his Tayo Party are now well represented in the new cabinet. Maryan Qassim, the Chair of the Tayo Party, is now an appointed minister. None of Abdiweli’s cabinet made it to the new cabinet, however.

6. North Marginalized: Sure, the new appointed Foreign Minister does hail from the north, but she is anything but a unionist. Fowsiya Yusuf H. Adan in the past ran for the Presidency of Somaliland and lost. She formed the Peace, Democracy and Prosperity Party, which was later disqualified. Fowsiya has no history of clearly championing the unity of Somalia. To the contrary, she has favored the secession of Somaliland. Why would President Mohamoud agree on the appointment of someone, like Fowsiya, as Somalia’s Foreign Minister who once campaigned for becoming the president of Somaliland in his own government? What went wrong? Fowsiya is a friend of President Mohamoud and worked with him when he was establishing his educational institute in Hargeisa. In fairness, she also worked in the Somali embassies in Washington and Eastern Europe, but not as an ambassador. Professor Ahmed Ismail Samatar and Dr. Ali Essa, two northerners, may have been suitable for the post than Fowsiya, and both do have a record of championing Somali unity.

7. The President as the PM: The new cabinet is the work of President Mohamoud, not Prime Minister Shirdon. The president wanted a 9-member cabinet, and Shirdon wanted 14 or more. The president insisted on lean cabinet, and he got what he wanted. He is micromanaging the running of the country and overstepping his functions. Why this president encroaching on functions and grabbing the powers of the prime minister is not difficult to decipher. Mohamoud simply wants to run the government from Villa Somalia. Even after Shirdon’s approval by parliament, it the president who meets foreign dignitaries and the PM is neither seen nor heard.

The new cabinet, of course, will be approved by parliament. The Somali legislators are going to give the president and his prime minister the chance to rule. The likelihood of Mohamoud’s government being successful hinges on his future willingness to work with people who are neither his friends nor his ideological allies. If President Mohamoud keeps on conducting business as he does now, his administration will be the continuation of another sad chapter of the recent Somali governments.