When a Maclean’s reporter reached Somali journalist Abdi Ahmed Abdul on his cellphone as he walked back to his home through the streets of Mogadishu, he quickly ended the call, apologizing later that evening by explaining that it would not be safe for him to be heard speaking English by members of al-Shabab—the Islamist militia that controls much of the country and whose leadership has been linked to al-Qaeda. “I am scared,” Abdul said. “If they see me talking to somebody in English, I’d be in danger. If anybody is speaking in English, they think he is a spy. It means I am passing information to foreigners, what they call Christians or infidels, people they don’t like.”
Abdul lives near one of the main markets in Mogadishu, a place he calls a “stronghold of the Shabab.” He asked that his real name not be printed. “If they read this, they will come and look for me and blow my brain up.” His family has fled twice to other parts of the country. He’s considered leaving himself, but is now afraid to try.
Abdul’s description of Somalia under al-Shabab is similar to that of Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule. Al-Shabab’s rule is guided by a medieval and repressive interpretation of Islam, and it has attracted foreign jihadists—who may have international ambitions—to Somalia.
This spring, Abdul says, two teenage boys and a teenage girl were sentenced to be lashed 100 times for having premarital sex. The sentence has not yet been carried out, but in June, four men accused of stealing cellphones all had a hand or foot hacked off with machetes after they were convicted by an al-Shabab Islamic court. And in October, a 13-year-old rape victim was stoned to death in front of some 1,000 spectators. “It happens—the amputations, the stoning to death, the whippings, forbidding music,” he says. “They tell women to wear the hijab. They banned films. They even control the memory cards of mobile phones to check if there are pornographic films or films that are anti-Islamic. No cinemas. No music. They even force people to pray.”
Al-Shabab, meaning “the Youth” in Arabic, grew out of the Islamic Courts Union, which briefly controlled Somalia in 2006. Ethiopian troops and covert American Special Forces toppled the Islamic Courts Union in 2006 and 2007, and a “transitional” government was installed in its place. The most radical elements from the ICU then formed new Islamist groups, such as al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, meaning “Party of Islam,” to oppose the government, which since January has been led by Sheik Sharif Ahmed. Ahmed was previously leader of the Islamic Courts Union but is a moderate Islamist compared to those in al-Shabab.
Al-Shabab receives money and arms from Somalis in the diaspora, from wealthy Arabs in the Gulf, and from Eritrea. Along with its allies, it controls all but a few pockets of Somalia outside the de facto autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland—the latter of which has become famous of late as an epicentre for piracy. The Transitional Federal Government has not been toppled because of the protection of some 4,000 African Union soldiers. Its writ barely extends over a few square blocks of Mogadishu. In recent weeks, Somalia’s security minister, Omar Hashi Aden, was killed in an al-Shabab suicide car bomb attack, and scores of parliamentarians have left the country. Barely half remain. “Even an AK-47 bullet fired by the opposition groups can hit the presidential palace,” says Abdul.
Abdul says most Somalis don’t support the Shabab, but are “ruled by fear.” Some still fight against it. When militants desecrated graves and mosques sacred to followers of the spiritual Sufi branch of Islam, normally peaceful Sufis took up arms on the side of the government against al-Shabab, defeating them in several battles in central Somalia.
In a country that has not had a functioning government for almost 20 years, and where much of the population is malnourished, the fighting has made an already devastating humanitarian situation even worse. Tens of thousands have fled Mogadishu in recent months, and already there are some 250,000 Somali refugees in Kenya. Daniela Kroslak, deputy director of the Africa Program at the International Crisis Groups, describes their conditions as “dire in all aspects.” And, she told Maclean’s, “The Somalia situation is one of the worst, if not the worst, situation on the continent.”
What most worries the United States and other Western governments, however, is not the humanitarian crisis, but the possibility that Somalia may become a base for international terrorism.
Many of the ingredients are there already. Al-Shabab has sheltered several Islamist terror suspects with links to al-Qaeda, including Aden Hashi Ayro, who was trained by al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and conducted numerous attacks against foreigners in Somalia before he was killed in a U.S. air strike last year, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammad, who is wanted by the United States for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
