By MUHYADIN AHMED ROBLE | Wednesday, October 23
2013 at
09:20
For years the Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab was
seen as the most cohesive, united and powerful force in the failed state
of Somalia.
But it is now disintegrating like a house of cards
because of internal divisions and power struggles within its
leadership, according to Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, a history and
political science professor at Kenya’s Kenyatta University.
“They (the militants) are transforming into
warring mini-groups, hunting each other due to their deteriorating
ideological differences, and of course [the group is] on the brink of
civil war within itself,” Abdisamad told IPS in Nairobi.
Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for September’s
four-day terror siege on Kenya’s Westgate Shopping Mall that resulted in
the death of more than 70 people, and for the October 13 bombing in
Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Abba, which killed two Somali nationals who
were believed to be suspects.
But the militant group, which formally linked with
Al-Qaeda in 2012, has been in a leadership and strategy dispute that
has divided it into two factions – global jihadists and local
nationalists.
Prof Abdisamad sees the militants’ internal
divisions as a golden opportunity for the Somali government to bring
less extremist and nationalist-minded elements on board.
“Initially, Al-Shabaab came together by default,
not by design,” he said, adding that if the Somali government did not
capitalise on the rift and reach out to the nationalist faction, the
global jihadists would win and become stronger.
“And then, the future of Somalia will be
uncertain, the stability of the region will be in question and no doubt
the stability of the whole world will be in question too,” Prof
Abdisamad said.
He explained that the moment that turned the
group’s internal war into an open and public battle was when
Al-Shabaab’s two co-founders and top leaders, Ibrahim Haji and Moalim
Burhan, were killed by members of the group in June.
Jama, who was better known by his moniker
“Al-Afghani” due to his Al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan, had a five
million dollar US bounty on his head.
But Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Musab
denied a split within the group and had said that Jama and Burhan were
intentionally killed in a shoot-out when they rejected an arrest warrant
from a Sharia court.
Jihadists
Two foreign jihadists, the American-born Omar
Hammami known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, who was on the FBI’s most wanted
list with a five million dollar reward for his capture, and Osama
al-Britani, a British citizen of Pakistani descent, were also killed by
Al-Shabaab last month.
Al-Amriki was perhaps the most well-known
Al-Shabaab propagandist because of his English jihadi rap videos. In
2012 he was the first member of the group to reveal its split through a
short online video clip in which he said his life was in danger.
He was on the run and survived several
assassination attempts by the Amniyat unit, an intelligence division of
Al-Shabaab led by Ahmed Abdi Godane, who is also known as Sheikh Mukhtar
Abu Zubeyr, and is the group’s supreme leader. Al-Amriki was eventually
killed in September.
Abdisamad explained that Godane is a supporter of
global jihad who believes that Somalia belongs to all Muslims across the
world. “(Godane’s) global jihadist faction has an agenda beyond Somalia
and wants to spread Islam from China to Chile, from Cape Town to
Canada,” Prof Abdisamad said.
Another member of the group who was aligned to the
nationalist-minded faction to which Jama belonged, Sheikh Hassan Dahir
Aweys, escaped from Al-Shabaab’s largest remaining base in Barawe, which
is located some 180 km south of Mogadishu.
He surrendered to the Somali government following
the murder of Jama and Burhan. According to Prof Abdisamad, Aweys and
his faction are considered to be less extremist as their intention is to
establish an Islamic state within Somalia borders and not bother
neighbouring countries.
“The religious nationalism faction is against
globalising the conflict in Somalia, indiscriminate assassinations and
the killing of clerics, scholars and everyone who seem to have not
favoured the militants. For years they campaigned to replace Godane,
which they failed (to do),” Prof Abdisamad said.
The group’s internal division is believed to have
contributed to their loss of strategic towns in southern and central
Somalia, including part of the capital, Mogadishu.
The Bakara market in the capital city was their
main source of funding as the group used to generate millions of dollars
from there through taxation and by extortions from telecommunication
companies and the business community at large. Al-Shabaab was ousted
from Mogadishu in 2011 by Somali forces and African Union Mission in
Somalia (Amisom) troops.
Amisom
Exactly a year later, the group lost its last
remaining and greatest revenue source – the stronghold of Kismayo, a
port city in southern Somalia.
According to a United Nations report, Al-Shabaab
used to generate between 35 to 50 million dollars annually from the
southern seaports of Kismayo and Marko. Both ports are now under the
control of Somali forces and Amisom troops.
“Such a loss of economic sources and internal
divisions have led hundreds of Al-Shabaab fighters to defect to the
government,” Somali journalist, Mohamed Abdi, told IPS. The group, he
said, failed to keep paying their fighters regularly “as they used to
do” before the financial constraints emerged.
Abdi said that the financial constraints and the
open rift within the group’s leadership have largely demolished the
morale, loyalty and capability of the group’s foot soldiers. It has lead
to hundreds of them deserting to the government or fleeing the
organisation and going into hiding in Somalia or in neighbouring
countries.
But Abdisamad Moalim Mohamud, Somalia’s former
minister for the interior and national security and a current member of
parliament, told IPS that the group remains a threat not only to
Somalia, but also to regional and global security.
“They have lost more of their foot soldiers and
can’t counter Somali and Amisom forces directly any more. But they are
more capable of conducting effective guerrilla-style warfare such as
suicide attacks and storming places like Westgate Mall in Nairobi and
the UN compound in Mogadishu,” Mohamud said by phone from Mogadishu.
He said that regional intelligence sharing and
developing joint monitoring platforms and common anti-terror strategies
within regional governments could be used to prevent such a threat. But
he disagreed that their internal division had something to do with
nationalism.
“Their rift has a lot to do with the leadership
change of Al-Qaeda than local politics and it is more about pursuing
hegemony over the command and control of the group,” Mohamud said.
SOURCE: IPS VIA AFRICA REVIEW
SOURCE: IPS VIA AFRICA REVIEW
