Hell Hath No Fury Like a Professor Scorned

In a famous true story, a young Italian musician did the unthinkable: He challenged his mentor, the great maestro Arturo Toscanini, with an unexpected fusillade. "With regard to Toscanini, the maestro," said the young man, "I bow my head in respect. However,” he continued, "with regard to Toscanini, the man…" The young man then proceeded to take off his shoe and started assaulting the maestro.
 
Recently, there was a public debate about the case of Somaliland. Professor Ahmed Ismael Samatar, of Macalester College, was one of four speakers participating in the debate. Each invited speaker was allotted 15 minutes to speak. Samatar went over his time, and when the organizer politely told him his time was up, the good professor was furious and mumbled that he had yet to present the gist of his speech. What happened next was beyond comprehension. Samatar sat down in disgust and refused to participate. A gentleman implored the professor to participate in the discussion, but Samatar was indignant about the way he had been treated. "They [the organizers] invited us," the professor protested, "and they do not know how to run the debate." The audience was still reeling from shock when the question-and-answer session commenced. Some of the audience took clear shots at Samatar for his support of Somaliland after many years of lambasting the secessionist region. Not long ago, Samatar, who hails from the north, was a prominent unionist who had worked hard for the unity of Somalia.
 
Samatar’s career has been consistent and strongly nationalistic.  As a young broadcaster for the BBC’s Somali Services in the 1960s, Samatar would conclude the half-hour broadcast with the proclamation, "Soomaaliya ha noolato," (Long live Somalia), thereby breaking the journalistic code of neutrality and objectivity. However, Samatar today is singing a new tune, one of secession and the disintegration of Somalia’s territorial integrity. The professor’s firm belief in the unity of Somalia, a belief that spanned five decades, has gone with the wind. Now, many Somalis are asking themselves how someone who stood so strongly for Somali unity has suddenly converted to secessionism.
 
What many people forget is there are two sides of Samatar: Samatar the intellectual and Samatar the politician. Unfortunately, these two sides have been unable to reconcile, and hence have led to his undoing. Political scientists do not make good politicians, just as medical doctors do not make good patients. Samatar has been teaching politics for more than three decades, yet this extensive teaching experience did not necessarily mean the learned professor possesses effective political skills. He made a faux pas of misreading the intention of Somali legislators who were selecting the president in 2012. Before Samatar’s candidacy for office, he and his colleagues formed a political party, “Hiil Qaran." He then ran for the Somali presidency but failed miserably to even make it to the second round of the election. Samatar once again misread the political situation, which he knew was based on an unfair political power arrangement that favored the two biggest clans in Somalia. Moreover, the eventual winner of the presidency, Hassan S. Mohamoud, had made a secret deal with Samatar: whoever wins the presidency would make the other his prime minister. Mohamoud, it turned out, had made similar promises to other candidates and instead chose an inexperienced premier like him.
 
I was one of the first commentators to ask President Mohamoud to appoint Samatar as his premier or appoint him the foreign minister. Samatar did not get either position. He left Mogadishu sullen and bitter. To him, the political system had betrayed him. His position as an intellectual and an avowed northern nationalist became a liability in a political environment that favored one's clan affiliation, rather than what one could do for the country. Samatar struck a defiant note, condemning informal power sharing, and used his position as a parliamentarian to rail against injustice and corruption.
 
Then, Samatar shocked many Somalis when he resigned from parliament and started endorsing Somaliland’s quest for statehood. The secessionists glowed with pride and welcomed Samatar like a prodigal son, who had finally come home. Other Somalis were incessantly critical of his betrayal and self-serving political position. Some wondered if Samatar, who couldn't get elected as president in Mogadishu, naively thought he would have better luck in Hargeisa. Samatar's lame excuse for changing his stance was what he called “the prevalence of political corruption” and unfair power sharing in Mogadishu. Not surprisingly, Samatar drew exceptional mockery from many unionists. The man whom Somalis always welcomed in political debates and on the lecture circuit, suddenly found himself unwanted and without luster.
 
Against this backdrop, the political debate held in Minneapolis two weeks ago coincided with Samatar’s growing irrelevance and the expression of public indignation at his support for secessionist Somaliland. Samatar's treatment in the debate was a not-so-subtle repudiation of him and his politics. The organizers of the debate and the audience seemed elated when the good professor further embarrassed himself, pouted, and acted like little Oliver Twist asking for more food; in this instance, more time. His petulant actions at the event accelerated his slide from political stature to political ignominy.  Samatar had a hard time understanding why nobody cared what he had to say. The once- exceptional public speaker sat silently at the podium with the other speakers, refusing to answer questions directed at him until finally he couldn't take it anymore and left. It was like watching a train wreck. Surprisingly, his departure was greeted with indifference. A young man from the Awdal region lamented how Samatar "his uncle" had a penchant for leaving debates once he had lost an argument. The young man was wrong: Samatar had lost long before the debate had even started. The audience had already tuned out what he had to say. They had heard his explanations for leaving Somalia’s cause in favor of Somaliland. And they had heard enough.
 
Samatar is an intellectual among Somalis, and no one -- unionist or secessionist -- can take that away from him. But Samatar, the politician, now stands on his own without a pedestal, unseen, unheard, and increasingly irrelevant.

The Lobby: A Fathia Absie Film

Title: The Lobby

Running Time: 56.59 minutes
Status: Limited Release
Country: United States
Directed, written and produced by Fathia Absie
Cast: Doug Sydney and Fathia Absie
***

Several years ago, Fathia Absie made a compelling documentary, Broken Dreams, about the Somali youths missing in Minnesota. It was a bold film project that stirred debate within the Somali community about the reasons why two dozen young Somalis in the Twin Cities left the U.S. and joined Al-Shabaab. In her new film, The Lobby, Fathia departs from the well-documented, hard-hitting issue of terrorism and focuses instead on a close encounter of two people from different cultures, an American man from northern Minnesota and a Somali immigrant woman.

John (Doug Sydney) and Yasmin (Fathia Absie) live as neighbors in the same apartment complex in Minneapolis. They exchange glances occasionally but never talk to each other. John sees Yasmin mostly sitting in the lobby, pondering and taking some notes. He is curious about this strange-looking woman with Islamic attire and wonders why she always hangs out at the lobby. Yasmin, on her part, is curious about John. Then, one day John musters the courage to approach Yasmin and introduces himself. What follows is a minefield of small talk, laced with curiosity, apprehension, nervousness, and cultural sensitivity. John is aware of who he is: a white man who has a simple background and, in his words, “has lived a life of ease and privilege.”  Yasmin, on the other hand, is the product of a tough upbringing, having been raised in Somalia, a country that has witnessed civil war, displacement, and poverty. Most of all, she has lost loved ones back home to undue violence. In spite of her past ordeals, Yasmin comes across as a strong woman who has weathered extraordinary hardships but still possesses amazing self-confidence and a sense of humor. She is as smart as she is pretty and does not hesitate to take the lead in her conversations with John. She seeks neither sympathy nor acceptance from John. She welcomes any personal questions and tells John, “I am not fragile.” As the pair come to know each other better, they develop a certain comfort level and mutual attraction to each other. They start longing for these meetings in the lobby but discover that life is full of twists and turns.

The Lobby is a metaphor for something bigger and deeper than the simple meeting of two people. It is a portrait of how two members of different cultures, who had coexisted and cohabited in the same place without knowing anything about each other, can tear down the barrier between them and start relating to each other. Physical proximity to one another means nothing if there is no communication or understanding of each other. It has always been one of the main themes of Fathia Absie’s work: Communication is the way for people of all cultures to relate to each other. Fathia is a die-hard humanist and an idealist to the marrow. She envisions a world in which all kinds of people can live happily together, regardless of the artificial barriers they have erected between each other.  Fathia believes all people share one noble attribute: their common humanity. Some skeptics see Fathia’s enthusiastic idealism as naïve and impractical, a clear reflection that some sectors of the society can be unkind and unforgiving. Others will shudder at the exchange of banter between a Muslim woman and a man not related to her. 

This film, produced on an extremely low budget, is artfully crafted—a testimony to Fathia’s artistic maturation. The acting is great and the dialogue uniquely enriching and entertaining. Fathia is as good at acting as she is at directing. No other actress can better portray Yasmin than Fathia. She can say a lot without uttering a word. She is polite, sensitive, and has an upbeat personality. Her colleague, Doug, is equally impressive and does a good job playing the role of a privileged man who comes around to be appreciative and understanding of other people’s cultures. Like Fathia’s first documentary, this film will generate lively discussions among many Somalis and Minnesotans, something Fathia thrives on.

Have You Hugged Your 'Ayeeyo' Lately?

Amina Mohamed is 77, the mother of seven, the “Ayeeyo” (grandmother) of 42, and the great grandmother of seven.

“In reality, I had 10 children but three died,” she said. “My youngest daughter was killed in Hargeisa during the civil war,” she said. She was standing in front of the family house when she was struck on the heart by a wayward bullet. “No one knows the perpetrator,” Amina said, a hint of sadness in her voice.

Amina was born in Hargeisa and her mother came from Jigjiga, a city in the Somali region in Ethiopia. Her father came from the Awdal region in northern Somalia. Amina and her husband spent most of their lives in eastern Ethiopia, where all her children were born. However, she speaks only a smattering of Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.

Amina has fond memories of the Somali region in Ethiopia and talks about it nostalgically. “Somalis there are cohesive because they live in a multicultural environment,” she explained. “What defines you there is your ethnicity, not your clan.”

Amina witnessed firsthand what Somali clans did to each other during the civil war, in the north and south. She saw innocent people killed and even elderly woman molested. “I saw a woman in her sixties raped,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “just because she belonged to the wrong clan.”

Amina was fortunate to have escaped harm in Mogadishu because she told the armed militias that she was from Hargeisa.

During the 1977-1978 Somali-Ethiopian War, Amina and her family fled Harar to Somalia. In the ensuing panic and chaos, her children scattered and for a while, their whereabouts were unknown. She, one of her sons, and two grandchildren escaped to the bush and trekked for 18 days toward Somalia to avoid the Ethiopian army.

“It was the most dangerous and emotionally draining trip I have ever taken,” she explained. “I was worried about the well-being of my two grandchildren than my own.” She experienced starvation, constant fear of wild animals, and — after a snake bite — a week-long sickness. The group saw hyenas near Harar eating corpses. After 18 days of walking, Amina came upon an encampment of the Somali army inside Ethiopia. The family was placed in an open truck and taken to Hargeisa. “I was told my husband and children had perished,” she recounted. Fortunately, and to her great joy, she later discovered all her children had resurfaced in Somalia and her husband was safe in Harar.

Starting from scratch, Amina began working to support her big family in Hargeisa. “I traveled throughout Somalia as a businesswoman,” she said. She was relentless in ensuring her children received an education. Four have graduated from university and two have even earned advanced degrees.

Amina appears cheerful and affable. “I sacrificed a lot for my children and some of my grandchildren,” she said. Unfortunately, she rarely sees most of her grandchildren even though many, like her, live on the West Coast of America. “Today, many of the younger people are focused on their daily lives and have no interest in connecting with their elders,” she said. “Who has time for a grandmother?” she added, laughing heartily.

Amina is a walking encyclopedia of Somali culture and experiences. She has personally known several former high-ranking Somali government officials and a handful of famous singers and poets. Her conversation is littered with anecdotes and proverbs. “I do not have an education,” she admitted, “but I have a vast reservoir of personal experience.”

Amina is well versed in the current political situation in Somalia. She listens to the BBC World News Service every day and has little patience with today’s leaders, whom she says are more interested in personal enrichment than serving the nation. Referring to the Barre regime, she lamented, “Once upon a time, we had a functioning government, but we intentionally and deliberately destroyed it.” Amina said she would rather have a bad government than anarchy and what she calls “Dullinimo” (humiliation).

Although Amina cannot speak English, she has many friends, including neighborhood children. One five-year-old Asian girl calls her “my friend.” Another child, whom she met at the Social Security Administration, connected with her instantly and asked her mother if she could go with Amina. “I pay close attention to children,” Amina said, smiling.  

For the younger generation, Amina has a few words of advice: “Invest in family relations today before your loved ones are gone tomorrow.” She added, “After God, your family is the most important thing you have.”

(Reprinted with permission from Sahan Journal, June 7, 2015).

Disgrace as a Commodity: Gabre and Yusuf

At an international conference in Europe three years ago, I met General Gabre Heard, former supreme leader of the Ethiopian military forces in Somalia. A friend, then a cabinet minister, introduced me to the general, and I was caught off guard. We stood in a big halI for a few minutes where dignitaries from many countries had convened to discuss the situation in Somalia.

The first thing that came to my mind was not the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia “to fight terror” but an incident in 2007 that involved Gabre and Abdullahi Yusuf, Somalia’s president at the time. Yusuf had invited Ethiopia to enter Somalia and root out the regime of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Gabre had become angry when Yusuf repeatedly complained about his indiscriminate pounding of civilians in Mogadishu.

Gabre slapped Yusuf four times until the president fell to the ground. Then, Gabre placed his pistol against Yusuf’s head and threatened to kill him. Yusuf’s bodyguards were left disarmed and Yusuf had to seek protection from the African troops in Mogadishu (AMISOM). The next day, Yusuf’s spokesman denied the whole incident.

Gabre told a Somali delegate at the European conference how Somali politicians and intellectuals continued to beg him for government jobs.

“They ask me if I can help them get appointed as ministers or ambassadors,” said Gabre. “I do not have such power.”

When I first heard of that infamous slap, I was neither disgusted nor surprised. I simply saw it as another manifestation of how Somalia had degenerated.

In 1978, Abdullahi Yusuf became the first Somali politician to seek refuge in Ethiopia, when he aligned himself and his opposition group, the Somali Salvation Front, with Addis Ababa. The tradition of seeking support from there has continued for 20 years among the Somali leadership.  

President Abdullahi Yusuf’s road to public and political humiliation began when he was selected head of the transitional government. He was unable to go to Mogadishu, the center of administration and governance, because it was in the hands of Mogadishu warlords. Yusuf was hosted in Jowhar, a town 100 kilometers north of Mogadishu, by a warlord named Mohamed Omar Habeb, better known as “Mohamed Dheere.”  Surprisingly, the warlord held Yusuf hostage in a government house with no windows until the president’s advisors were able to raise tens of thousands of dollars to whisk him out of town.

“When I saw President Yusuf in Jowhar,” a former advisor of the president said, “his body was all bitten by mosquitos.”

Mohamed Dheere was furious when he found out about Yusuf’s departure.

Yusuf remained ambitious and desperately wanted to rule Somalia, but he made a poor move when he invited Ethiopia to invade his country.

Gabre shelled the presidential compound because he wanted Yusuf to defer to him to the point of fawning.   

“It was frightening,” said the advisor. “I thought Gabre [would] kill us all.”   

Gabre was eventually recalled—not because he had humiliated the Somali president but because of his failure to maintain order in Mogadishu and for being involved in a slew of financial scandals.

Yusuf’s humiliation represents a larger trend among Somali politicians, whose paths to political power are often strewn with indignities and a predominance of self-interest over concern for their nation.  

At a social gathering in Nairobi attended by former Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Ghedi, among others, Gabre was reported to have criticized an IGAD meeting in Djibouti. He said only Ethiopia cared about Somalia and wanted to help. A former Somali defense minister immediately seconded that statement.  

“Unfortunately,” Gabre added, “many Somalis do not see it that way.”

How Boredom Kills Marriages

A friend recently told me how a group of about two dozen Somali women, recently gathered over food and drink at a funeral in southern California, began discussing marriage in their local community.

The conversation started when one woman asked why so many Somali men return home to Africa and marry younger women when they already have a wife and family in the United States.

One woman, married to a Somali businessman, explained how she had been a loving and devoted wife. When her husband announced he was traveling to Kenya to visit his older sister, she ignored her instincts and believed him. Even though he had not seen his sister for eight years.

When he returned home, he told his wife he had married an old friend. The new wife would never set foot in the United States, where it is illegal to have more than one spouse, he said.

“What good does his assurance do for me? I still have to share my husband with another woman in Africa,” said the woman, according to my friend.

Divorce was not an option for the woman, who did not speak English, because she relied on her husband for financial support.

“As wives,” another woman asked, “are we doing our jobs?”

Subsequent conversation ranged from condemning Somali men for being disloyal and unreliable — “nin abaal ma leh” or “men are ungrateful” — to defending the men and exploring other causes for their departure. Either way, the diagnosis was not good: Marriages are faltering, spouses are neglecting each other, and boredom is setting in.

Somalis are not alone. Some psychologists say boredom is more corrosive to a relationship than tension and conflict.

In a 2009 study, Irene Tsapelas, a social psychology researcher at the State University of New York at Stony brook, and her colleagues followed more than 120 couples who had applied for a marriage license in Wayne County, Michigan. The couples were interviewed about their relationships after seven years and again after 16 years. According to a university press release, couples were asked, “During the past months, how often did you feel that your marriage was in a rut (or getting into a rut), that you do the same thing all the time and rarely get to do exciting things together as a couple?”

The key finding, researchers reported, was boredom with marriage at Year 7 predicted a greater decrease in satisfaction in Year 16. Lack of boredom at Year 7 led to a small decrease in satisfaction later, but it did not lead to increased boredom over the next nine years.

My friend said several of the Somali women attending the funeral admitted that they do not spend enough quality time with their spouses.

“Frankly, we spend so much time taking care of the children and household chores that we rarely pay attention to our men,” said one woman.

Others agreed.

“I watch the TV at night until midnight, long after my husband has gone to bed,” said one woman. “The poor guy has to get up early to go to work while I sleep until late in the morning.”

But another accused Somali men of being unromantic and selfish.

“Intimacy, according to many of our men, is a one-way street,” she said. “As women, we are mostly observers. It is like watching the same bad movie over and over again.”

What is clear is that it takes two. To curb boredom, noted anthropology expert and author Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, suggests three things: Marry the right person, be intimate on a regular basis, and share an activity or hobby together. And do it sooner rather than later.

According to Time magazine study in 2011, it is actually in the third year that couples begin to complain about their partner’s quirks and annoying habits and the compliments flow less often. If newlyweds complement each other an average of three times a week, that number falls to once a week after three years of marriage, the study showed. Thirty percent of those married for five years or more reported receiving no compliments at all.

Loss of intimacy, too, begins to erode a relationship. Couples married fewer than three years have sex an average of three times a week, according to 52% of the Time survey respondents, and only 16% said the same after being married longer than three years.

Daily routine and boredom kill marriages because relationships need constant nourishment. The important thing to remember, however, is that decline or divorce is not inevitable.  

Stony Brook researchers recommended in their conclusions that married couples have a date night, every week, in which they do something together that they have never (or rarely) done before. It should be enjoyable and exciting, according to their report.

“It is not enough for couples to be free of problems and conflicts,” noted one researcher from the Stony Brook study.

The take-home message of this research is that to maintain high level of marital quality over time, couples also need to make their lives together exciting.

                                                        

The South-West State: Annals of Corruption

Much hope has been pinned on the new South-West regional state (SW) becoming an integral part of the remaking of a strong federal system in Somalia. The SW’s interim government is headed by Sharif Hassan, former speaker of the Somali parliament. He has had a reputation for being cunning, smart, unscrupulous and ambitious. Since his election as president of SW on November 17, 2014, Sharif Hassan has lived up to his reputation. He is bent on making the regional state his fiefdom. In essence, he is presiding over a regional administration that is replete with graft, favoritism, and unhinged ambition.

Nepotism

Sharif Hassan, like a mafia boss, has entrusted key government positions to his close relatives. The most prominent figure is the president’s half-brother, Mohamed Haji Abdinur, better known as “Madeer,” who ostensibly serves as a political advisor. However, Madeer’s responsibilities are much more extensive than his actual title indicates. On July 12, 2013, a report by the United Nations Monitoring Group for Somalia and Eritrea accused Madeer of a being a “spoiler” to peace when he had allegedly threatened to kill members of the Digil/Mirifle clan if they demonstrated against Sharif Hassan. Madeer, a naturalized American citizen from Minnesota, has set new standards for loyalty to his brother.

President Sharif Hassan has also nominated his nephew, Mohamed Abdullahi Mursal, as State Minister for Presidency. Mursal is a graduate of local schools and has neither government experience nor background in business. He has been the gatekeeper for his uncle. Mursal exercises immense power in the state government. He occasionally chairs cabinet meetings when his uncle is traveling (which is most of the time); he has usurped the powers of the minister of planning, has sole responsibility for all contacts and relations with international organizations and countries, and oddly, has the overall responsibility over the ministry of finance. In other words, Mursal technically oversees the ministries of planning, international cooperation, and finance. As one source told this writer, “Mursal, in essence, is in charge of all the ministries.”

Another nephew of President Sharif Hassan, Bashir Fircoon, is in charge of tenders, the rebuilding of all public institutions of the state. These rebuilding projects will be funded mainly through the Somali Stability Fund.

Revenue Collection

Sharif Hassan has been in office for only five months. Many parts of the SW have been liberated from Al-Shabaab. Despite many challenges faced by the state, it is one of the most resourceful regions in Somalia, with a lot of potential for massive economic development. Unfortunately, Sharif Hassan has started his rule by mismanaging resources. For instance, the president, on many occasions, was advised by learned and concerned citizens to modernize the tax collection system, but to no avail. Suggestions that taxes be collected electronically, something prevalent in Somalia, were also rebuffed. Taxes are collected in the old fashioned way and the revenues are misappropriated.

For instance, the Afgooye checkpoint is a major revenue source for the state. On a daily basis, about $15,000 to $20,000 are collected. About 10% goes to the district, 60% to the four armed militias in Lower Shabelle (two Habar Gidir, one Abgaal and one Wacdaan), only $1,500 goes to the ministry of finance, and the remaining balance goes to an account controlled by president Sharif Hassan and his relatives, who are the only ones with access to these funds. Ironically, according to some state ministers, neither government employees nor even state ministers have yet been paid salaries. The monthly proceeds of the Afgooye checkpoint alone could enable the SW government to add 400 and 500 men to the police force to maintain order in the entire region. To add insult to injury, President Sharif Hassan has told the ministers to either ask their respective clans to buy them the vehicles needed for their official use or pay for it themselves.

The SW state taxes khat (a mild stimulant plant) importers and the poor women who sell it in the streets.  However, the actual amount of revenue is known only to a few people close to the president.

A confidential source has said that Sharif Hassan has granted a contract to Ibrahim Hassan Buulle, a businessman, to manage all the airports in the SW and to oversee the collection of taxes. Interestingly, there has been no announcement or public bidding for the said contract. Buulle simply reached an agreement with Sharif Hassan. It is not known if Buulle has the experience or the capacity to undertake such projects.

Relations with the Federal Government

There is a symbiotic relationship between the Somali Federal Government (SFG) and President Sharif Hassan. Mogadishu views SW as a reliable ally, unlike Puntland and Jubbaland. Sharif Hassan, though, has his own agenda which is to become president of all Somalia. The first steps to accomplish that goal were the appointment of a gargantuan cabinet (29 ministers, 6 state ministers and 13 deputy ministers) that included tribes that normally do not reside in the SW, and the disfranchisement of some indigenous clans. One tribal leader from the region aptly put it this way: “It is all about the 2016 elections.” Sharif Hassan needs the support of the Digil/Mirifle and at least one other major clan in order for him to have a chance in the elections. Incidentally, only three women (one minister, one state minister and one deputy minister) were appointed in that bloated cabinet out of 48, roughly 1.44%.

Until the elections next year, the SW president will turn his eyes away from interference by the SFG into his region. For instance, the SFG interior minister has recently appointed a mayor for Afgooye. To the surprise of many in the SW, Sharif Hassan has yet to issue a statement about this blatant encroachment on his sphere of control.

On the other hand, Sharif Hassan has been trying his best to influence the SFG. He has demanded that he be consulted regarding the appointments of federal officials. There are key Somali ambassadors (Turkey being one of them) that he has been instrumental appointing them since the government of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. He has made clear to Villa Somalia, the seat of government, that he is the one who should be consulted about the needs and concerns of the Digil/Mirifle, not speaker Mohamed Jawari.

Sharif Hassan is not yet done flexing his muscles in the SW. He has floated the idea that the proposed state assembly for the SW include 32 extra members that only he can handpick. Moreover, he has been in negotiations with Ahmed Madobe, President of Jubbaland, in selecting the Digil/Mirefle representatives for the Jubbaland assembly.

It is notable that Sharif Hassan was a member of the federal parliament before his election as head of the SW. He succeeded in having his own son replace him as a legislator.

In a nutshell, according to a cabinet minister in the SW, “If there is a specter haunting the South-West, it is Sharif Hassan.”  He added, “The man is demonstratively dangerous.”  

 

Will ISIS Woo Al-Shabaab into the Fold?

Boko Haram’s recent pledge of allegiance to ISIS, the first by a Sub-Saharan jihadi group, has raised questions about another African group — Al-Shabaab. Will the Somali militant group follow suit and join ISIS, too?

According to recent reports, a major debate has been brewing in the radical group regarding as whether to join ISIS or not. Unlike Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab has a sizable representation of foreign jihadists in its rank and file. Moreover, Al-Shabaab is an official affiliate of Al-Qaeda central.

One faction within Al-Shabaab, led by the new emir, Ahmed Diriye “Abu Ubaidah,” wants to stick with Al-Qaeda. This group perhaps is turned off by ISIS’ flamboyant leader, Abubakar al-Baghdadi, and his claims of being the caliph of all Muslims. Moreover, many Salafi scholars have also condemned ISIS followers as heretics.

However, another faction, spearheaded by Mahad Karate, the deputy emir, wants to abandon Al-Qaeda and join ISIS due to Al-Qaeda’s shrinking role — if not absence — from the theater of global jihad. Proponents of this faction argue that Al-Qaeda has done little to help Al-Shabaab and in fact criticized Al-Shabaab leaders for their constant bickering and the mistreatment of foreign jihadists. In essence, Al-Qaeda is seen by some members as meddlesome. To this camp, ISIS is the real deal because it is fully involved in jihad, controls territory, and is the main narrative of global jihad. Most of all, ISIS is loaded with funds. Furthermore, unconfirmed reports suggest that some foreign jihadists in Al-Shabaab, who are sympathetic toward ISIS, have been threatened by the pro Al-Qaeda group through a series of text messages.

Al-Shabaab’s internal debate about ISIS is a products of the following recent developments:

1.      The group has been beset by dissent, loss of key leaders, and a spate of defections. The militant group is essentially suffering from a leadership crisis and, hence, is seeking outside answers. Ahmed Abdi Godane, the late emir of the group, was forceful enough to guide the movement to Al-Qaeda partly because he had been to Afghanistan and experienced jihad as exemplified by Bin Laden and his followers. It was Godane and a few Afghan jihad veterans who steered Al-Shabaab to Al-Qaeda when some of their Somali colleagues were reluctant to do so. Godane has been replaced by Ahmed Diriye “Abu Ubaidah”, who, though committed to Al-Qaeda, lacks charisma and much influence in the movement. The real power lies in his deputy, Mahad Karate, who is said to be committed to reinventing Al-Shabaab by aligning it with the new phenomenon of ISIS. This could also be a desperate attempt by Karate and his minions to make Al-Shabaab, once again, relevant in global jihad.

2.      Al-Shabaab has been in retreat for the last few months. According to the AU Special Representative to Somalia, Ambassador Maman Sidikou, Al-Shabaab has lost 80% of the territory it once controlled. While ISIS is on the rise in the global jihad, Al-Shabaab has been in decline. Al-Shabaab is now cornered in the Lower Juba in the south of Somalia and has shifted to a hit-and-run strategy. The group has been degraded but not completely defeated. In a way, it is like a slowly dying beast—weakened yet still capable of inflicting considerable damage. Accordingly, the possibility of merging with ISIS may be seen by some members as a lifeline.

3.      The recent events in Yemen have brought more bad news to Al-Shabaab as the dynamics of power shifted when the Houthis — a Shiite movement — captured Sana’a, the capital, and Al-Bayda, two Al-Qaeda strongholds in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Shabaab’s ties to Al-Qaeda central have been primarily through the channels of AQAP, which is now in an existential war with the Houthis.

What would it portend if Al-Shabaab were to join ISIS?

Boko Haram’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS is ambiguous. Is it purely a propaganda ploy by the Nigerian group? Does it mean the group will get financial, arms, and technical assistance from ISIS? There are reports that ISIS has trained some members of Boko Haram and has actually lent a helping hand in improving Boko Haram’s Twitter account.

For Al-Shabaab, an ISIS alliance might bring a financial windfall as the militant group has lost its main source of revenue, the coastal city of Baraawe. The group can also benefit from an infusion of fighters diverted from ISIS. Because getting to Syria and Iraq is becoming increasingly difficult for jihadists who want to join ISIS, Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram might be the immediate beneficiaries of that jihadi pipeline. In fact, the ISIS spokesman, Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, when welcoming Boko Haram’s allegiance, called for global jihadists to migrate to Nigeria and join Boko Haram.

Al-Shabaab, once a main attraction for global jihadists, might suddenly become reinvigorated if it joins ISIS. The Somali outfit at least has one colorful ally in ISIS, the notorious executioner Mohammad Emwazi, better known as “Jihadi John”, who sparked global outrage by beheading several Western hostages held by ISIS. It has been reported that he admires Al-Shabaab and allegedly tried to join the group on a safari trip in Tanzania but was foiled by the authorities. More importantly, “Jihadi John” had shown videotapes of Al-Shabaab to some of ISIS’ Western hostages. Given the precarious nature of Al-Shabaab in Somalia, an alliance with ISIS may not be out of the equation.

(Reprinted with permission from Sahan Journal, March 19, 2015).