Somali Diaspora Stories of Marriages Gone Wrong

Editor's Note: This is the first article of a two-part series.

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I have lived and worked in the U.S. for a long time now, but just when I think I have seen enough of the life of Somalis in the diaspora, something new comes up.

I was driving through the large state of Texas on my way to California when a phone call from a friend interrupted my train of thought.

“Hassan, I will never talk to you again,” she said.

“What did I do?”

“Two years ago, you wrote about my brief marriage.”

“No, I did not.”

“In your piece, ‘Spouses in Crisis,’ you called it a ‘blink-and-you –missed-it’ marriage.”

“Did I mention your name and your former husband’s?”

“No.”

“Then it was not you. It was about a woman who was married to a control freak. Your ex was not a control freak.”

“Never mind, just forget about it,” she said and then changed the topic.

The example of my friend is by no means the exception. There are plenty of examples of similar incidents which I recount below. The following are true stories that have happened in the diaspora. The characters in these tales are neither friends nor foes. The stories have been relayed to me by reliable sources. To further protect their privacy, the names and locations are changed.

                          

I Object

 “Abdi” is a cleric based in Oregon. He has conducted a lot of marriages and is frequently called to travel to other states. He has a sense of humor and is quick to remind you that he is a man of religion. “Would you mind if I name-drop and mention God?” he inquired.

I asked him if he had ever conducted a marriage ceremony in which someone objected. He looked at me smiling and paused for a few seconds.

“Well, it happened to me not once, but twice,” he said. “In my line of work, I guess, it is an occasional occupational hazard.”

On those two occasions, Abdi was conducting a marriage ceremony and someone in the audience shouted at him to stop the proceedings. It is not part of Somali culture for an officiating cleric to ask if any of the attendees of a marriage ceremony have an objection, that famous “speak now or forever hold your peace” is unknown.

It turns out the brides were already married and about to make the cleric to commit a sin of betrothing them to someone else.

“In one case, a man said his brother in Kenya was still married to the would-be bride,” stated the cleric. This was an embarrassing moment, of course, he added, and he had no choice but to confer with the marrying couple in private to clarify the matter.

Unfortunately, in that specific instance, no marriage was performed.

Dowry Blues

“Ali,” a young man in his late twenties, lives in Columbus, Ohio. He has attended many weddings, he said. Columbus, after all, has the second largest Somali population in the U.S., after Minneapolis. One marriage ceremony however left a bad taste in his mouth.

“It was the weirdest marriage ceremony that I ever attended,” he said.

Ali explained that it was for a young couple in their twenties, and more than a hundred people were present when the ceremony commenced. The food was ready to be served and he could smell the aroma of the lamb, rice, and samosas. The officiating cleric asked the groom if the agreed-upon dowry of $10,000 was fine.

“$10,000?” the groom screamed.

“Yes, that is how much the bride is asking for,” clarified the cleric.

“No way, I can’t pay $10,000.”

“The dowry can be paid now or at a later date. It is a matter between you and the bride.”

“No, I can’t pay it now or later.”

The audience was shocked. Hadn’t these two young people already discussed how much money the groom would give to the bride?  A dowry is the money or the property the bride is entitled to before a marriage can be properly conducted. It can be a little money (sometimes even something symbolic) or a hefty sum, depending on what the bride wants. The groom has the option to decline the offer of course, but then there won’t be a marriage.

 In this case, the groom refused to budge, and the bride insisted on the $10,000.

“What happened next was disappointing and heartbreaking,” remarked Ali. “There was no marriage that day or later between the couple.”

Needless to say, according to Ali, nobody ate at that failed ceremony. One man was heard muttering, “What a waste.” Oddly, when asked what he meant, he mentioned the huge pile of food that was left untouched. The guests were so disgusted with the outcome that they declined to take any of the food.  

Ali has a piece advice for those who are planning to get married.

“Do everyone a favor and decide what your dowry will be before you drag us to an event where we will end up not enjoying the ceremony or the food.”

                         

Qudbo-Sireed or Secret Marriage

For “Shamso,” a woman in her forties, it was a different experience. She has four children from two previous marriages. A Somali man approached her and asked her to marry him. She had known him before in her town, and she said he was a respected man who handled himself well.

“The chemistry was instant and powerful,” she said smiling. “In fact, I succumbed to his magnetic personality.”

However, there was a stipulation in the man’s proposed union: It would be what the Somalis call “qudbo-sireed” (a secret marriage). He wanted to continue living in his place and Shamso would live in hers until they were ready to officially publicize their marriage and live together. Only five people would know about their matrimony. Shamso agreed.

“I have the benefit of hindsight now, and in hindsight, I realize this was a huge mistake,” she said with irony.

He brought three other men with him, a cleric and two witnesses. The marriage ceremony was short and afterward, Shamso simply drove home. After she reached her house and parked her car, however, she received a call from the officiating cleric. He was in a panic, she said.

“You know, I forgot to ask you about your dowry. How much is it?”

“$10,000,” she replied.

There was an awkward silence.

The cleric asked her if she could lower the amount because the groom was not well-off. She told him she had her reasons for asking for such an exorbitant amount.

“Let me ask the groom,” the cleric replied.

She could hear her new husband mumbling in the background. The cleric kept asking the husband if the sum was fine. The groom finally, and reluctantly, accepted it.

Shamso sensed that both the cleric and her husband were not happy with her.

“The blessed marriage is the one with a reasonable and less cumbersome dowry,” the cleric admonished her.

Well, after a year, Shamso’s new husband told her he wanted to get out of what he wryly called their “chaotic relationship.” It seemed fate had thrown her a real curve ball.

“I did have a premonition, from day one, that our union would be short-lived even though I cared a lot about the man,” she admitted.

She received no spousal support from him in that year.

Oh, and that controversial dowry?

Shamso did not collect a single dollar. She had a good job, and her husband simply wanted her to take care of herself financially while he collected all the fringe benefits that came with the institution of marriage.

“Unfortunately, I allowed him to do that,” said Shamso. “

Ten thousand dollars is not small change. Shamso confessed that it is a tidy sum “that can send any woman on a shopping spree.” However, she had a different reason for requesting that amount.

“I was sending him a message that marriage is a big responsibility and not child’s play,” she remarked.

Shamso is not the type of a woman that lets bygones be bygones. She decided that her husband had to pay a non-monetary price for his frivolous and laissez- faire attitude toward marriage. In what she would call “the most deranged vengeful action” she had ever taken, she told all the people in her town that she was married to him. He was so furious that he moved away to Wisconsin.  It turned out there were two other victims, just like her, and they also dumped him.

Hassan M. Abukar is a writer and political analyst. 

(Reprinted with permission from Sahan Journal, July 30, 2013) 

The Godane Coup and the Unraveling of Al-Shabaab

The week of June 19^th was a bloody milestone for the course of jihad in Somalia. Al-Shabaab leaders clashed in Barawe, a coastal city in the south. That conflict led to the killing of some of the top echelon of the terror group and the escape of others. What this violent encounter portends for the future, however, is far more serious than it appears at first glance.

In a single stroke, Ahmed Abdi Godane, the emir of Al-Shabaab who goes by the nom de guerre of “Abu Zubeir,” managed to re-align the radical group’s leadership dynamics and further consolidated his power by getting rid of his major detractors. His loyalists killed two co-founders of Al-Shabaab, including his former deputy and longtime friend, Ibrahim Al-Afghani, and chased away Hassan Dahir Aweys and Mukhtar Robow, the former spokesman for the terror group. Aweys is now in custody in Mogadishu, as the government decides his fate. Robow, on the other hand, is believed to have fled to the Bay and Bakol region where his Rahanweyn clan is based. Al-Afghani, Aweys, and Robow have complained about Godane’s authoritarian tendencies and the heavy-handed approach in dealing with foreign jihadists. On April 26^th, an Al-Shabaab assassin loyal to Godane attempted to kill the American jihadist and Alabama native, Omar Hammami, after the latter had gone public in criticizing Al-Shabaab.

Godane’s latest attempt to finish off his rivals in the movement has paved the way for his sole leadership of Al-Shabaab which has historically been ruled instead through collective leadership.  The clash offers a blunt assessment of what went wrong in the jihadi group leadership and how conflicts are resolved. Godane has opted for a violent method of conflict resolution which will likely lead to questions about his legitimacy as the supreme leader of jihad in Somalia. However, it is too early to gauge the impact this conflict may have on the young fighters of the militant group. At least currently, Godane has the support of Shaikh Hassan Hussein Adam, an influential young cleric based in Kenya and a sympathetic supporter of Al-Shabaab.  A month ago, “Shaikh Hassan,” as he is popularly known, issued a fatwa (religious edict) that permitted the extermination of Godane’s rivals because they were sowing discord and dissension in the ranks of the mujahidin in Somalia. 

The escape of Mukhtar Robow also poses a serious problem for Godane. Most of Al-Shabaab’s foot soldiers belong to the Rahanweyn clan. In a country where clan loyalty sometimes supersedes religious loyalty, it is not clear what Robow’s influence will be on his fellow Rahanweyn fighters. Hassan Dahir Aweys’ surrender to the Somali government is not likely to cause any ripple effects for the Al-Shabaab fighters because the septuagenarian radical leader and his group, Hizbul Islam, only joined Al-Shabaab in 2009. Robow, however, has been a major leader of Al-Shabaab since its formation a decade ago and, hence, his loyalty remains unquestioned.  

The recent clash is likely to dampen and perhaps even rupture Godane’s ties with Al-Qaeda central and further cements the perception in some Al-Qaeda circles that Al-Shabaab is interested in a local jihad rather than a global one. Two months ago, Ibrahim Al-Afghani wrote an open letter to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda, in which he criticized Godane for targeting foreign jihadists, imprisoning them in secret detention centers in the areas the terror group controls, and even killing them. For the last several weeks, reports that are critical of the course of jihad in Somalia have appeared on websites sympathetic to Al-Qaeda. The American jihadist, Hammami, was most vociferous in his lashing out at Godane and publicly requested that Al-Qaeda intervene. There were even unconfirmed reports that Al-Qaeda had asked Al-Shabaab to appoint Ibrahim Al-Afghani as its emir but Godane maneuvered to block that al-Qaeda instruction. At any rate, the recent upheavals in the Somali branch and the purging of some of its leaders will not endear Godane to Al-Qaeda central. In addition, the marginalization and hunting down of foreign fighters, such as Omar Hammami, will also soil the reputation of Al-Shabaab as the main attraction for global jihad.

For the last few weeks, Al-Shabaab has increased its attacks in Mogadishu delivering the perception that the militant group is still a force that can destabilize the nascent government of President Hassan Mohamoud. To the contrary, the recent spike of violence in the capital is an indicator that the group is far weaker than it was thought to be earlier. The group has been successful in attacking soft targets, such as the UN compound, perhaps to distract its fighters from debilitating fragmentation among its leaders. It is unlikely that this terror group will vanish from the political scene in Somalia in the near future, Godane and his followers will continue to exploit the government’s inability to exert its control outside Mogadishu. Godane’s coup, while in essence, a movement that is eating its own children, may, indeed, pave the way for the fragmentation of the militant group along clan lines. The nagging question then will be to what extent Godane, a northerner operating in the deep south of Somalia, is able to remain head of what is generally a southern jihadi phenomenon? Moreover, the influx of foreign jihadists into Somalia has, for all practical purposes, decreased and further eroded the place of that country in the annals of global jihad.

Hassan M. Abukar is a Somali writer and a political analyst.

(Reprinted with permission from African Arguments, 7/2/2013) 

Shiikhaal

“What I have done in the past is history, what I am going to do in the future is a mystery.”− Mike Tyson.

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The great Somali poet Abdullahi Suldan Timacadde said, “Clannism provides no shelter; it only causes destruction.” That is only partially true. What is left unsaid is that members of one clan can go out of their way to help each other, and their common bond can bring some good things to the table.

Like a nice free meal in a top-rated eatery.

Did you hear that?

OK, let me first indulge in an exercise of name-dropping.

You know Attorney Abdurahman Hosh Jibril, former Somali Minister of Constitution, Federal Affairs, and Reconciliation? He is a longtime friend, but this Hosh guy told me in 2010, after reading my Mogadishu Memoir, that he always thought I was Shiikhaal. Hosh was not the only one who believed that; many of my friends thought so even though I never claimed to be Shiikhaal.

How did it happen that so many people thought I was Shiikhaal when they never heard me say so?

That is simple—not through Facebook or Twitter but through the old fashioned way: word of mouth.

I miss those good old days though because I innocently and unwittingly received certain tangible benefits. I was received well in certain Shiikhaal corners and was even well-fed under the impression I was one of them. Unfortunately, the truth has an unceremonious way of exposing itself.

Get that imposter. He is Digil. He was born in Afgooye. Get him.

Now that many of my friends know who I am, I get no free meals.

Once, a young wife of Warlord Hussein Mohamed Farah Aidid extolled my virtues and gave my colleague (Habar Gidir-Cayr) and me a powerful motivational speech. My colleague and I were running a nonprofit foundation that received government grants to serve Somali refugees.  “Keep on the good job, boys,” she told us. My colleague, who did not correct her, kept on doing what he was doing. He was probably basking in her praise and forgot about me and my Shiikhaal-ness. For me, my jaw dropped. I did not, oddly, correct her. Of course, someone must have told the young woman that I was Shiikhaal.

At any rate, let me go back to my days as a ‘Shiikhaal.’

The first time I realized I was suspected as a Shiikhaal was in 1979 while in Cairo.  I was working for Somali Airlines. A young Shiikhaal man whom I barely knew invited me to lunch. He took me to a fancy restaurant in downtown Cairo that tourists frequented. The meal was elaborate and delicious, and it lasted about an hour and half. Dessert and tea followed.

Then, my host started talking seriously as though he were preparing to make an official announcement.

“OK, Hassan, so what is your sub-clan?”

“Sub-clan of what?”

 “You are a Shiikhaal, aren’t you?”

“Shiikhaal?”

I rolled my eyes in bewilderment searching for words, but unfortunately none was forthcoming. I had no escape! It was not the time to weave and wind around the truth. I immediately figured the source of the problem. It was my turn to become serious and address the issue head-on.

I told the young man that I had good news and bad news.

“Go ahead.”

“The good news is; I really enjoyed and loved the food. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the best meals I ever had,” I said.

The young man nodded in approval.

“But the bad news is—are you ready for this? − I am not Shiikhaal.”

“What?

“No, I am not.”

Then, the young man raised a resonant, logical question.

“OK, but aren’t you the brother-in-law of so and so [he mentioned the name of a government official in the Barre regime]?  “

“Yes, I am,” I replied.

“So, what is the problem? “, he asked.

“What problem?” I retorted.

Then, I had to clarify the matter.

“Again, I have good news and bad news.”

“Now, what is it?”

“Well, yes, I am indeed the in-law of that official all right, but the bad news, to you my friend, is I am the brother of the “Bahda Yar” (“the younger wife”).

The first wife is incidentally Shiikhaal. The couple has since divorced.

Initially, I thought the man took the ‘bad’ news in stride, but I was wrong. He appeared perplexed, and then he mumbled something inaudibly. I thought he was secretly wailing a string of expletives in my direction. Perhaps, what he really wanted to say was, “You miserable creature, you wasted all the money I had spent on this sumptuous lunch, and you are not even freaking Shiikhaal. Just go.”

To alleviate the financial toll I had inflicted on this good-natured man, I offered to give him money to defray the cost of the meal, but he politely declined.

Somehow, I realized the futility of placing too much emphasis on clan affiliation. Look at this tortured soul. Minutes earlier, he had been happy, gregarious, and engaging and now he was huffing and puffing.

I hate clannism and its pernicious ways!

This kind of story could have had a bad ending in which the two people concerned would go to their separate ways when they found they were from different clans. But, the story had a happy ending. Oddly, after that incident, the young man and I became good friends.  Both of us, in a way, felt guilty in using the concept of clan as a convenience to produce an elusive favorable outcome. To him, it was an alluring prospect having a fellow “Shiikhaal” in the branch of Somali Airlines in Egypt. I could help him transmit news and packages from his family in Somalia without going through aviation red tape. At the restaurant, I was unaware of his good intentions and, shall I say, his grand design. But still I willing benefited from his largesse.

Now that I have been fully exposed, can I still get another cup of tea, please? My throat is parched.

On one trip to Mogadishu, the young man asked me to meet his father and retrieve for him all his educational documents. I did. Both the father and the young man were grateful for this small favor.

Afterward, the young man and I realized that our newfound friendship was more important and stronger than our supposedly ‘mutual’ clan membership. It was a small emotional victory that we savored, but a victory nonetheless.

Then, one day, the young man added a twist to our friendship when he introduced me in front of his kith and kin as his brother.

Now, that was touching.

I guess Poet Timacadde rested his case.

 

 

 

An Al-Shabab Leader Says Hammami is Alive

Shaikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, one of the leaders of Al-Shabab, confirmed that the American jihadist, Omar Hammami, is still alive.

In an interview with Somali Channel TV on May 16, Aweys stated that Hammami was wounded and on the run. He lashed out at an unnamed senior Al-Shabab leader for going after the American fighter whom Aweys said had done nothing wrong “but expressed his [critical] views.”

Last March, 2012, Hammami appeared on the internet claiming that Al-Shabab militants were trying to kill him because he disagreed with the group regarding the application of sharia, strategy, and the course of jihad in Somalia.

The Al-Shabab leaders were not pleased with Hammami’s public rants. After several months of tolerating what they called his “childish petulance,” the group lashed out at him and accused him of seeking fame at the expense of his fellow jihadists.

Aweys criticized the unnamed leader of Al-Shabab for following the tactics and teachings of Machiavelli instead of the Prophet Mohamed. He said, “Mistakes have been made in the movement by certain individual leaders who do not want to consult with others.”

Aweys’ statement is the first by a high-ranking Al-Shabab figure since April 25 when an Al-Shabab assassin tried to kill Hammami. Aweys also confirmed that some Al-Shabab leaders have complained to Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda supreme leader, about the wrong course of jihad in Somalia.

In 2001, Aweys was added to the United States government’s list of terrorists.  He was the former leader of the Union of Islamic Courts which controlled Mogadishu in 2006. In 2009, he formed Hizbul Islam to fight against the African Union forces (AMISOM) and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. A year later, Aweys and his group formally joined Al-Shabab.

The Al-Shabab Implosion: Featuring Foreign Jihadists

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.”



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.

                                                             ***
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.

                                                                  ***

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.”