The misfiring offensive against al Shabab and the bitter truth about the enemy Somalis are fighting

By Abdibarre Yusuf Jibril
Jibril is a Mogadishu-based politician and former member of parliament

The ongoing offensive against al Shabab must be a clarifying moment for us, Somalis, and the international community as well as an opportunity to finally blow the lid off the real story behind al Shabab’s creation, its objectives and its foreign backers.

It’s no longer business as usual.

It is trifling to spend our energy on either putting positive spin on the war against the militants or criticizing the government’s anti-al Shabab strategy, while avoiding the real issue at hand.

The Somali public should know better.

For nearly 17 years, the country has been fighting an enemy, whose identity and foreign supporters were shrouded in secrecy.

This new offensive should end that.

Yes, Somalis are united in their rejection of al Shabab, the criminal group that deprived them of any sense of peace, but unfortunately they skirt the elephant in the room: The international backers and protectors of al Shabab, mainly some Western nations and their allies in the Middle East.

Before I delve into that issue further, let me ask pertinent questions that would make you appreciate the insanity going on in Somalia: Why is our country’s well-trained army finding it hard to defeat locally trained militiamen? Who gives al Shabab such a superior training? Why are our foreign-trained soldiers and commanders easy prey for al Shabab? Why our president, a Ph.D holder, is unable to outfox a poorly educated al Shabab leader? Why are Somalia’s so-called international friends unwilling to help the country defeat some 20,000 al Shabab fighters to save around 20 million Somalis?

The answers for those questions lie in first defining al Shabab. Any anti-al Shabab offensive that doesn’t clearly define who the Shabab militants are is doomed to fail.

In the eyes of the government, al Shabab is simply a powerful Islamic militia with ties to al Qaida, and that’s why it seeks international support that is — so far — hard to come by.

But the bitter truth is, al Shabab is neither Islamic nor powerful. Al Shabab is a foreign mafia planted in the country. Some of their captured fighters have confessed that they didn’t even know how to pray. The group is being led by ill-informed semi-illiterates and depends on coercion tactics and brute force to maintain support in areas under its control.

Unfortunately, our successive governments have lacked policy clarity, solid military strategy and communication skills to defeat al Shabab.

Like other terrorists from the Sunni countries, al Shabab’s existence serves the West’s geopolitical strategies in Somalia. Itself a creation of Western spy agencies, al Shabab is a useful pretext for the West’s crimes in Somalia. Its first leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, who hailed from the country’s northwestern region, was both a tool for the secessionists in Hargeisa and stooge of the West. His whole agenda was to destabilize southern Somalia regions for the foreign countries to continue looting its marine and land resources and to create a cover for Hargeisa’s quest for international recognition.

Al Shabab’s Islamic and nationalistic rhetoric is a bunch of malarkey aimed at misleading the masses. Al Shabab’s puppet leaders, who use Somali kids as cannon fodder, can’t make war or peace without the express permission of their puppeteers. It’s a foreign-backed organization that perpetuates lawlessness in Somalia at its masters’ behest.

That is not a conspiracy theory. It is the bitter truth that Somalis and their leaders must internalize and publicize. (Western governments and their disinformation farms would scream “that is conspiracy theory,” but that’s what they do when they’re caught red-handed.)

Recent military coups in West Africa have exposed how terrorists work hand in hand with some Western countries to impoverish Africans, a scheme that has been in existence for decades. History is replete with examples of Western intelligence agencies’ use of criminals to further their economic, security and political objectives.

In Somalia, the example is glaring, painful and tragic.

In the early 2000s, the United States used warlords to fight Islamic clerics in Mogadishu until the predators were kicked out in 2006. A year later, al Shabab, which has for years been working in secret, publicly came into being, a curious development that didn’t happen by chance.

For decades, Somalia has been under a concerted attack — both covert and overt — by some foreign countries that hate its homogeneity, one religion and one language.

In 2000, the country’s foreign enemies introduced through Djibouti — whose leader hates a united and functioning Somalia — an un-Islamic and un-Somali clan system called 4.5 to divide citizens along clan lines.

In 2004, a federal system was imposed on Somalia during a reconciliation conference in Kenya, so as the country is divided into vassal mini-clan states that wouldn’t be able to defend themselves from any external aggression.

Since then, foreign countries have torpedoed every Somali attempt to come together to restore the nation’s lost glory, most notably the West’s war against the Islamic Courts Union, a moderate group that was then led by the now-former President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

In 2006, America prodded Ethiopia into invading Somalia on the pretext of fighting terrorists when the real aim was to abort the popular uprising and return the country to square one.

After the Ethiopian forces were forced out of the country, the EU, the US and the UN funded the African troops, who were brought into the country in 2007 to do their bidding under the guise of peacekeeping.

This faux African Union force, which has the power to use lethal force, is not now an active part of the offensive against al Shabab, a reality that explains the true objective behind its stay in Somalia: It’s not in the country to help reestablish order, nor is it interested in Somalia’s peace because its Western masters want the chaos to continue.

Somali commanders know this scheme more than anyone else. During the Tigrayan rule in Ethiopia, these commanders saw Ethiopian forces in Somalia arm al Shabab fighters and do everything to avoid direct confrontations with them.

There were many instances in which Somali commanders located the exact location of the late criminal, Godane, and asked their Ethiopian counterparts to raid him, but Ethiopians told them that they needed to consult with a Western country before they could act.

During President Sheikh Sharif’s presidency, the United States has discouraged the Somali government from opening talks with al Shabab. Attempts by Somali soldiers to drive al Shabab from its headquarters in Jilib were threatened with drone strikes by a foreign country. These information and more are in the public domain. Foreign countries that think they can keep Somalia in lawlessness forever or fragment it into mini-countries are delusional. They know nothing about Somalis’ valor, unpredictability, their love for the country and hatred of foreign bullying and interference.

President Hassan should summon the courage to tell the public that al Shabab is a mafia that’s backed and protected by foreign countries.

That message alone will have a devastating impact on the criminals’ existence and could lead to an uprising across the country and bring about its sudden collapse.

The president should tell the public that al Shabab receives funds, weapons and training from certain countries, some of which have embassies in Halane complex. If President Hassan doesn’t believe that or is unaware of it, he has no business being the country’s president. He can’t claim that he’s not aware of the three airstrips in the country through which foreign countries supply weapons to al Shabab.

Somalia is a project for some evil countries, including a couple of nations in the Middle East, and President Hassan has to come out clearly to clarify his position. He should either side with the foreign countries behind al Shabab or side with Somalia and defend it whatever the cost.

President Hassan needs to fire on all cylinders in his fight against al Shabab. Balking is not an option. He should call a spade a spade and stop singing lullabies to an angry public that is sick of ineffective governments that can’t protect their people from foreign-backed criminals.

Focusing on misguided al Shabab foot soldiers in Galgaduud, Mudug and Hiiraan regions, while keeping off the hideout of the militants’ top leaders and decision makers in Jilib is ludicrous.

Calls for holding fundraisers for the national army are as hollow as the nationalistic songs and fanciful slogans such as “death or glory” that have been broadcast frequently on the national TV and radio Mogadishu. In fact, they’re an exercise in futility as long as President Hassan lacks transparency and allows clan and selfish interests to dictate his politics and policies.

If President Hassan was really serious about his fight against al Shabab, he would have long time ago fired the country’s spy chief, Mahad Salad, who was accused of being a member of the group by none other than his immediate predecessor, Fahad Yasin.

President Hassan must change tack in a big way and learn from the back-to-back setbacks that impeded his efforts in central regions and ask why.

He should reach out to chief administrators in Garowe, Kismayo and Baidoa and prove — in words and deeds — that he has the nation’s interests at heart.

The campaign against al Shabab, which is now mainly focused on the Hawiye land, lacks buy-in from other communities because they have little trust in President Hassan, who himself has done little to earn their trust.

The president’s stay in Dhusamareeb for nearly two months to encourage soldiers fighting the criminals is unlikely to produce good results, let alone victory, if he continues doing the same things that have led to abject failure.

The president needs to disabuse himself of the old thinking that al Shabab is a local militia group or that there are Western and Middle Eastern countries interested in ending the scourge. (In case you didn’t know, the UN Security Council doesn’t designate al Shabab as a terrorist organization.)

The West’s and the UN Security Council members’ resistance to approve Somalia’s repeated requests for the lifting of the decades-old arms embargo is the clearest example of what’s wrong with the anti-al Shabab efforts.

President Hassan and the Somali public must join hands and tell the West, the EU and the UN as well as some Middle Eastern countries “enough is enough. Somalia, too, needs peace and prosperity.”

Al Shabab can be eradicated in a month if our commanders coupled the ongoing military operation with an effective communication strategy. The group has no solid social, political, economic and Islamic foundation to stand on.

It’s pitiful that the best battle cry the government can come up with is to call al Shabab Khawaarij, a cryptic term that many ordinary Somalis don’t fully understand. Al Shabab doesn’t even deserve to be called Khawaarij. It’s more murderous, thuggish and roguish than the Khawaarij of yesteryear.

Since its inception, the group has been doing devil’s job: It killed the crème de la crème of the society, impoverished farmers in the country’s breadbaskets, destroyed Quranic schools in the countryside and made sure Mogadishu burned, while sparing Hargeisa, the secessionists’ main city, and Addis Ababa, where it had the support of the Tigrayan rule.

Al Shabab did everything to try to obliterate Somalia’s statehood, identity and religion, all egregious criminal acts that broke Somalis’ hearts, but warmed the hearts of its masters.

Al Shabab is a part of the new colonization machination that some Western countries and their allies in the Midddle East want to utilize to try to destabilize the country to achieve their despicable objectives.

President Hassan must speak out and stand up to these new colonialists who already have Somalis’ blood on their hands.

The president has a choice to make: Keep the bleeding of the armed forces for an ill-fated mission or confront and call out the masters of al Shabab.

The president has recently equated the anti-al Shabab offensive with the liberation struggle against Italian and British colonizers. He must now go further and say it out loud.

Here is a line for the president to start his conversation with those in Halane who may call on him: “Guys, you always dabble in Islamic terrorism and the need to stamp it out, but it has come to my attention that you are indeed the ones actually creating, training, funding and protecting the terrorists. Can you please for the sake of humanity stop it, at least in Somalia. I know you’re addicted to the dark art of destroying nations, but could you please spare us your diabolical scheme.”

Mr. President, you have no option but to beat the shit out of these countries because Somalia and Somalis have to be saved urgently, whether foreign countries liked it or not. The status quo can’t continue.

Anything less is unacceptable.

May the will of Somalis prevail.