About The French Raid

French Special Forces attacked a Shabab-held town in Bulo Marer, just near Marka in Lower Shabelle region, in an attempt to free the French intelligence agent, Denis Allex, held by the Shabab since 2009. He was initially kidnapped by Hizbul Islam together with another agent who would be released weeks later by his captors after payment of millions of dollars in ransom money, according to Shabab, former Hizbul Islam, and government officials.

The kidnap operation was masterminded and led by a nephew of then-Interior minister in the TFG and Islamic Courts Union deputy leader, Sheikh Abdulqadir. Almost all the kidnappers were in the government security forces. Clearly, their loyalties lay elsewhere.

The interesting thing is that when the ICU joined the TFG, they not only took the most powerful positions in the security and intelligence services, but also most of the rank-and-file. This provided the groups that would decide to continue fighting with a vital entry point through which they could infiltrate double agents that would provide intelligence and facilitation of operations in government territory. That entry point is still open today.

The Shabab, being in character, forcibly took Denis from the Hizb soon after his capture. According to a source who had first-hand knowledge if the incident, the Shabab encircled the house in the Nationlink area near Bakara market where the hostages were being held and threatened to storm it if the Hizb did not give them one prisoner. The Hizb members who had kidnapped the Frenchmen were ready to fight to keep their hostages but Hassan Dahir is said to have personally intervened to appease the Shabab. Hizbul Islam was stronger than the Shabab at that time, by the way – it is Hassan Dahir’s indecisiveness and Shabab-appeasement that would eventually lead to the group’s demise in late 2010.

Understandably, the Hizb members who were keeping the prisoner, led by Ise Kamboni of the Ras Kamboni Brigade, decided to take their ransom payment without causing a fuss lest the Shabab threaten their only remaining hostage. That the French spy had escaped was a fictional story that is widely known as such here; it surprises me how gullible western media is by believing in the BS that he had escaped deep from insurgent territory at night and walked by himself to Villa Somalia.

The unexpected ransom-taking caused tensions within the insurgent community, and Ise Kamboni escaped with his loot; his associates were kidnapped by some of the original kidnappers who had not received their share – the story gets longer after that.

From the start, the Shabab were not interested solely in financial gain from their hostage, but had political demands – namely the stoppage of French military and intelligence assistance to the Somali government. The French would not budge and seemed to have increased assistance to the Somali government since 2009. This meant that eventually, the Shabab would either agree to take money – which they clearly haven’t – or kill their hostage as their demands are not met.

Back to Saturday’s disastrous French attempt to rescue Denis. For such an operation, one would need to have spies on the ground to verify the presence of the hostage. The Somali government’s spy agency would be the perfect one to provide agents to assist with such an operation. Given the fact that the Shabab have been infiltrating agents into the government intelligence apparatus for the past 4 years, it is likely that they may have misled the French and led them into a trap. How else does one explain attacking a completely wrong compound that would immediately be descended upon by dozens or perhaps hundreds of Shabab fighters heavily armed and with antiaircraft technicals according to reports from the city?
The French seem to have been caught by surprise and admitted that they had underestimated the firepower the Shabab would have in the little town. True, the town is usually not very protected – the fact that it was unusually heavily-militarised suggests that the Shabab had prior knowledge of the raid or may have led the French there themselves.

The French defence ministry’s claim to have killed 17 Shabab fighters seems to be far-fetched. When your forces are repelled at least twice in a couple of hours according to eyewitness reports – one in the initial raid and the second raid apparently to rescue the soldier they left behind – you are in no position to know the damages you caused. The only confirmed killed are at least 8 civilians reportedly killed in the homes by French firepower. Other stories allege a more disturbing, heavy-handed approach by the French that indiscriminately opened fire at anything that moved.

The only sure result of the operation seems to be the addition of a new DGSE hostage in the hands of the Shabab. The French defence ministry may have prematurely presumed that Denis was killed in the operation, but things don’t look good for him going forward.

Shabab and torture

Somalis say that the fly that keeps flying into cold water is bound to find its way into hot oil. This story is about an individual who had been a member of the Shabab until karma caught up with him. I will call this former Shabab individual “Ali” to help protect his identity.

Ali was perhaps the most extreme Shabab member I have ever met. Before joining the Shabab in early-2009 – when the Shabab ranks swelled with opportunists and extremists from less-extreme groups that decided to either join the government or demobilise – he had been a member of a Jabhatul Islam (the fighting arm of Al-I’tisam) battalion that would demobilise as the Jihadi on Jihadi civil war was about to start. He was the bodyguard of a top official in that battalion whom I advised to demobilise or be prepared to fight the Shabab – only the blind could not see the Shabab sharpening its knives, and that turned out to be almost all the other Jihadi groups who were too naïve to see their comrades-in-arms gear up to slaughter all rivals.

Being a yes-man, Ali quickly gained the trust of the Shabab and was attached to foreign fighters in Mogadishu when I met him again in 2010. He would go shopping for them and was basically their errand boy, but he had a strange sense of pride that he was chosen to cater for the foreign fighters.

He would debate with me about me being “a sitter” – someone who had abandoned an obligatory Jihad. He would then go ahead to misquote the Quran to prove his point as I would mock his little understanding of the book he claimed to be protecting. I swear I know 12-year-old girls that know and understand the Quran more than he does.

He upped the ante and started accusing me of being a spy – a common Shabab practise to silence opposition. But unfortunately for him, I knew the Shabab more than he did and thus knew that only the security department could arrest a potential spy. The fact that the commander of the Somali Shabab in the area knew me also meant I was not in danger. In the end he just decided to stop arguing with me, and that was that; I did not hear from him until late last year.

Ironically, the Shabab security department arrested him for being a spy and held him in safe houses in Mogadishu, Baidoa, and finally in Marka. He claims to have been severely tortured together with other detainees into confessing to espionage crimes they did not commit.

According to Ali, the Shabab interrogators would whip detainees, electrocute them, and also remove their fingernails if they refuse to confess to outrageous charges. Once one accepts to make a confession, a camera crew is called to record his confession and then he is presented to a judge. The Shabab judges apparently only consider live confessions, and almost none of the detainees would make confessions to the judge, prompting new, more vicious torture tactics to be administered by the Shabab security operatives.

Ali claims he was taken to the judge twice and retracted his confession when he was taken to court. In the end, they had it with him and released him to his clan, battered and malnourished.

If you torture people, they will tell you what you want to hear. That would rarely be the truth: they will tell you whatever they think will stop you from continuing to punish them. Torture is a sadistic practice that can not be justified in the pursuit of information or confessions as shown in this and countless other stories.

Ali claims that the foreign fighters “suspected” him and were the ones who reported him. Naturally, he now hates them and the Shabab as a whole. He refers to the Shabab as “dhaalimiin” (tyrants, oppressors). Yeah, who woulda thought that?

Interestingly, he still thinks of the Somali government as an apostate regime. He argues that the Shabab being oppressive does not mean that the government has any Sharia legitimacy, despite having perhaps the most Islamic constitution in Africa (the argument is that because the process that led to the constitution is unislamic, the product can never be Islamic according to Shariah. Furthermore, the democratic system of government is considered apostasy by almost all Salafists – the ones that allow partaking in democratic elections cite the need to block secularisation)

Clearly, you can remove the man out of the Shabab but not the Shabab ideology out of the man. And yet, former Shabab members are still being admitted into government security forces. To achieve long-term security in Somalia, former Shabab members should be discharged from the security forces and reintegrated back into society.

A night with stoned govt security forces on the frontlines against the Shabab

Sometime in the past two weeks, I spent the greater part of a night with a unit of Somalia’s internal spy agency, the National Security Service Agency (NSSA).

The idea was to see them in action, so I went with them on their nightly patrol in the neighbourhood. To onlookers, I would say they were detaining me – in Mogadishu, being cosy with the feared and ill-repute internal spy agency is a liability; the kind that may cost you your life.

The unit’s commander was interested in chatting with me as they were doing the patrol. Apparently, the night patrols are a sham: the idea is to make it look regular and that people are being randomly stopped and checked, all the while going for somebody pinpointed by a local informant.

Just when I was starting to think they were a little smart, they rounded up everybody at the café where the suspect was supposed to be hanging out, produced a paper in which the name of the suspect was written (how hard is it to memorise a name?), and started asking the people their names, as if the suspect would be honest to them. Turns out, no one was arrested that night.

Back at the “safe house” (known by everybody in the district), there were a couple of men who had been arrested. Guess where they were being held at. No, not there. They were hanging out with the operatives. They chewed Khat with them, smoked weed with them, and chatted the night away with them.

And that is not what alarmed me.

The NSSA operatives, who by now were very high, would leave their guns around the prisoners and go to the bathroom or wherever. It was really pathetic. If any of the prisoners was indeed a Shabab member, I doubt I would be typing this now: I imagine he would grab any of the guns that were lying around and spray the whole room with bullets, and easily escape.

One of the prisoners was from a Shabab stronghold. Despite his smoking of weed with them, the operatives still kept threatening to send him on to the main prison where he would not be easily released and may be forced to pay to be released. He broke everybody’s heart by crying. Even the NSSA guys seemed to be touched and seemed to try to console him, telling him that everything would be fine if anybody in the neighbourhood came for him in the morning.

As I left them in the early morning, I had mixed feelings about the local NSSA guys. They did not seem corrupt, were not trigger-happy, and not eager to antagonise the people in the district. However, they came off as very ineffective to me, making me wonder why the Shabab is not more active in the district. But again, no one poops in his bed, if you know what I mean.

Shabab Prepared for Decade of War

On Friday, the Shabab spokesman, Ali Dhere, spoke to the Islamic Radio Al-Furqan about the group’s long-term strategy in dealing with the onslaught from the 5 African militaries bolstering Somalia’s weak military.

As already apparent from the group’s actions – and as I have pointed out earlier in this blog and elsewhere – the Shabab have time as their best friend and do intend to stay alive until the foreign invaders get tired and leave.

However, the Shabab have kind of undermined their position in my opinion by announcing their expected timeframe for the withdrawal of AMISOM.

Ali Dhere started his announcement by claiming that the Shabab destroy up to 30 allied vehicles per month and kill an average of 3 enemy troops daily, therefore “90 soldiers are killed per month… And they are not sand we are digging up [that have no end]… these are human beings [that will eventually be finished].”

“…An enemy who has invaded a foreign land – if the people of that land do not disgrace themselves [by not fighting them] – cannot stay more than 10 years, according to our calculations and as we have seen from the most powerful and richest of invaders. A sufficient example is [the occupation of and eventual withdrawal from of] the Americans in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan, the Americans in Iraq, and America with its western allies in Afghanistan”

So there you have it: the Shabab expect AMISOM not to stay for more than 10 years. It makes sense to assume that the group expects each country in AMISOM not to stay in Somalia for more than 10 years. In that case, what would happen if new countries kept coming in to replace the ones that may choose to withdraw?

The Shabab seem to have calculated that that won’t happen because they expect the western donors of AMISOM to run out of cash or the will to keep funding a mission that the Shabab seem to expect to have been considered a failure by then, much like Afghanistan today.

In Ali Dhere’s words: “The Africans [in AMISOM], who need aid and financial backing to stay here, have been here for 5 years… Their backers are being faced with financial and natural disasters such as the recent hurricane that God sent to the Americans… We can see victory in the horizon [in another 5 years]”.

If only they knew how cheap AMISOM is: it hasn’t cost the world in 5 years what Iraq cost the Americans in three weeks in 2003. I can see more outsourcing of wars by the west in the future. I hope future missions will be less merciless than AMISOM was in 2009-10 when it used to bomb civilian areas that were under Shabab control, as if it considered all people under Shabab rule as enemies. The mission did improve its record in subsequent years in the Mogadishu area (the Kenyans were perhaps the only AMISOM members in 2012 bombing civilians and insisting they were Shabab), but it has never been the perfect peacekeeping mission that one thinks about when one hears “peacekeeping mission”.

While the Shabab expect at least half a decade more of foreign interference according to their spokesman, they still control most of the towns and villages that are not on the main roads; even in government-controlled towns such as Marka, Afgoi, and others all across south and central Somalia, the Shabab still maintain local administrations in the villages just outside said towns. In fact, the allied forces attacking Shabab-held areas seem to be interested only in taking the main roads and whatever towns they happen to be passing through. The main Shabab bastions have always been off-road, and those will most likely be safely theirs in the foreseeable future.

Yes, the Shabab can manage to fight for 5 more years and more if need be. Sadly, given the low-budget nature of AMISOM, no one seems to be particularly eager to find a non-military solution despite the fact that the Shabab do have support in Somalia and have managed to fight for many years with mostly domestic backing.

As Al-Shabab decreases the number of its fighters and the big towns and cities it rules, it reduces its expenditure, increases efficiency of its reduced fighters who will mostly be the core reliable fighters, and be more of a pain in the ass to Somalia’s Federal government and its foreign muscle for many years to come.

Somebody asked me before Kismayo fell whether “that would be it”, that is, the loss that would make the Shabab “go”. My reply: the Shabab are here to stay. They are mostly Somalis; and as they have calculated, it is the non-Shabab foreigners that they expect to eventually leave.

“On the Orders of the top [Shabab] leadership”, the Shabab Withdraw from Kismayo

I wrote last night (EAT) that holding Kismayo was more important to the clan allies of the Shabab than it was to the group itself – which has been favouring withdrawing in the face of an attack by more numerous enemies – and sure enough, it turns out that the Shabab leadership had decided that they had done enough in repaying the favours of their allies by fighting so long for Kismayo, and ordered a withdrawal from the city, according to the pro-Shabab amiirnuur.com.

The Shabab vacated all their stationary defense positions in Kismayo early in the morning on the cover of darkness, leaving without having their asses shot at – that would have been a messy retreat.

I don’t think this will hurt the relations with the pro-Shabab clans, as the surprise naval attack had opened up a new front to the Kismayo defenders, necessitating a withdrawal or risk being totally surrounded. The main allied force attacking Kismayo was still about 30 KM to the NE of Kismayo, making this a safe withdrawal.

With the large numbers of fighters the Shabab had been amassing in Kismayo and whom they managed to save together with their hardware(thanks to the large numbers of mutatawi’in – volunteers – that had responded to the call to defend the biggest Shabab city), the Shabab have indeed avoided another Mogadishu.

As can be recalled, defending Mogadishu was a very divisive issue within the Shabab, with many of their leaders – including the deceased Fadil Al-Komoree, Hassan Dahir, and the intelligence chiefs, to name but a few – opposing amassing troops to fight a numerically superior and better armed force.

The Shabab had made it look (as they did in Mogadishu) like they would stay to the end in Kismayo, but in the end the Shabab have done what I had expected them to do in the beginning and withdrew from Kismayo when it became clear it was going to be a war of attrition that they could not afford to wage.

And to illustrate that the Shabab have not totally left Kismayo, today a man who had rejoiced their leaving of the city was assassinated by “unknown gunmen” – codeword for Shabab security operatives.

The war for Kismayo has entered a new phase; this can hardly be declared a victory.

Kismayo Hasn’t Fallen Yet; Even If It Had, It Wouldn’t Be the End of the Shabab

In the early hours of the morning today, reportedly mostly Somali forces – according to Somali sites – were dropped by Kenyan landing ships on the beaches on the outskirts of Kismayo, the southern Somali port city that is the main target of the Kenyan war against the Shabab.

Some Somali sites report that the amphibious force is in the hundreds, but whatever their number, one thing is clear: they have not taken Kismayo contrary to what most news sites are parroting.

The source of the false news that Kismayo had fallen was a Kenyan army spokesman, Cyrus Oguna who had said that the city had “fallen with minimum resistance”. It is easy to jump the gun when, you know, you are not the one really shooting the gun.

As I have written before, losing Kismayo is not such a big deal to the Shabab: they may actually end up making more from discreet “Jihad donations” that they will collect from businesses in the region once they are forced to fully withdraw than from the port itself.

Kismayo is the second biggest city in southern Somalia, after Mogadishu. Holding it has more of a psychological effect than anything.

The battle for Kismayo is not the decisive battle that would decide the fate of the Shabab in southern Somalia, and it is not their “last stronghold” as some news sites report. The Shabab control another port city, Barawe, and many important towns in south and central Somalia. Simply put: the Shabab can drive from Kismayo all the way to near Galka’yo in central Somalia without going through enemy territory. How is that for a “last stronghold”?

The Shabab themselves don’t seem interested in fighting for Kismayo, but seem to be doing it for their tribal allies from…everyone else except the Ogaden, who are mostly represented by the pro-Kenyan faction of the Ras Kamboni Brigade led by Ahmed Madobe.

Radio Andalus aired a speech by the Shabab military spokesman to the “Ansar” (the pro-Shabab clans), telling them to take positions in the city as had been “agreed upon”, suggesting the group had planned to defend the city in conjunction with the clans.

These clans have more reasons than the Shabab to defend Kismayo: they fear that their rivals from the Ogaden want to rule the city with an iron fist and get back at them for past wrongs. The Ogaden had never really ruled Kismayo alone during the civil war – it was either with the Majerten-Harti Morgan administration or the Marehan-Ayr Jubba Valley Alliance ruling the city, for whom they were sometimes auxiliary forces. Now they have the whole Kenyan army helping them take the city, thanks to their fellow clansman, the Ogadeni Kenyan Defence Minister, Mohamed Yusuf Haji – how convenient for them.

Furthermore, they fought with gusto against the Ahmed Madobe faction of the Ras Kamboni Brigade around 3 years ago, deciding to support the Shabab in an apparent effort to get back at the Ogaden for leading the Islamic Courts Union into Kismayo in 2006 – an event that led to the demise of the Jubba Valley Alliance.

This is the kind of region the Jubba areas is: tit for tat; repeat until the end of time. The Kenyan forces are seen just like any other clan: if they kill someone, his relatives will retaliate.

As for the elusive end of the Shabab: we should have realized by now that that won’t happen without solving the legitimate social and political issues that many of the nationalists and clan-based fighters within the group are fighting for. No clan likes being ruled by clan militias from other clans. The Shabab managed to bring harmony within the clans and solve many of the land disputes in their areas of control.

An administration that is all-inclusive and just is the best weapon against the Shabab.

Conquering Kismayo with the help of an Islamist clan militia flimsily masquerading as a national army will not only strengthen Shabab support, but also sow seeds for the Shabab to regenerate once the foreigners leave, while melting into the friendly countryside to harass the allied military convoys, and slowly taking back more territory in the hinterland from the unpopular RKB.

No, this will not be the end of the Shabab. When will somebody think of a comprehensive plan to end the war?

About the War for Kismayo

Tonight the Shabab spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamud, spoke through the group’s official radio Al-Andalus, saying that Kismayo will not be given up without a “bloody” battle.

The war for Kismayo has been fought mostly on the airwaves for the past month, and increasingly so in the past week.

If the pro-government and Kenyan media’s reports were anywhere near the truth, the Shabab would have lost Kismayo a long time ago.

Here are the facts and fictions in the media war:

1) These rounds of battles have been raging for 3 days in the Bibi area (around 70 KM from Kismayo), which is closer to Afmadow than Kismayo. Some pro-government media was reporting that the allied forces had reached 50 KM near Kismayo 2 days ago. And today, government spokesmen were claiming that “the last defense” of Kismayo had been breached. If that is so, then why are you not in Kismayo now?
2) We were told that Al-Andalus radio had been switched off in Kismayo. This is a critical indicator of an inevitable withdrawal, as the Shabab always evacuate their radio stations before giving up a town or city. But it seems that Radio Andalus in Kismayo was indeed off air, but because of “technical issues”, according to the Shabab media.
3) If we were to believe what Chirchir has to say about Shabab casualties (that hundreds of them die whenever they fight the Kenyans – sometimes it is just a couple of dozen, he tells us), then the Shabab have probably lost more fighters than they have in the whole region. Sure, the Shabab also exaggerate the numbers they kill, but they at least show us material evidence of their exploits. Sorry to say this, but they are clearly more convincing than Chirchir, who sometimes backtracks from his comments (such as the one that the Marehan support the Shabab – a mostly correct observation by the way).
4) For weeks, Shabab leaders have been “leaving Kismayo”, anti-Shabab sites tell us. How many leaders did they have in Kismayo to withdraw them for weeks? And how can you have that many “leaders” that they take weeks to withdraw? Besides, Kismayo has been subjected to a lot of air and sea bombardment that it is barely an attractive hideout for a top Shabab leader. But amiirnuur.com (pro-Shabab) tells us yes, Shabab leaders have been leaving the city to go to the frontlines in recent days. I assume these to be the regional commanders and not the top leadership, who undoubtedly are in a safer place.

The Shabab have put up a bigger fight for Kismayo than expected, and don’t seem ready to give it up easily. According to amiirnuur,com, the group has withdrawn all “vulnerable persons”, “offices that don’t have direct involvement in the war”, and seems to suggest that the Shabab may fight even in the city.

The Ras Kamboni Brigade fighters that have fought for more than three years to get their hands on the Kismayo port and its revenue will be disappointed by this: the Shabab appear to not let the Kismayo port reopen, as amiirnuur.com (and SomaliliMemo.net – the same article was published in both websites) says that the war will also have an “economic” front.

Taking Kismayo may cost the allied forces the territory between Kismayo and the border because the Shabab have – according to the abovementioned article and shown by Shabab activity in the region – up to “10 fronts” (jabha in Arabic) – units that are made up of from 70 to 100 guerilla fighters. One such “front” was featured in the Shabab video “Igharat Hayo” (the raid on Hayo). The fighters in that video seemed well trained and war-hardened, and did indeed badly rout the Ras Kamboni Brigade fighters they raided.

In June, I had lauded the allied forces’ lack of sprinting towards Kismayo, while erroneously expecting the Shabab to put up little fight for Kismayo, and completely move to guerilla warfare as they had been doing elsewhere (in the Kismayo battles, they have used both stationary defenses and ambushes to try to slow down the allied forces). This is because the allies simply can not hold the areas outside Kismayo, as all the Somali groups aiding the Kenyans want a piece of the Kismayo cake. This is on top of the fact that they simply don’t have enough men to protect every village and town between Kismayo and the Kenyan border from the Shabab.

The Shabab will lose Kismayo sooner or later, but I doubt the costs will be worth it at this stage.

Update

Somali sites are reporting that there have been a flood of Shabab fighters reinforcing Kismayo from other regions. Meanwhile, civilians continue to leave the city in anticipation of a protracted battle inside the city.

The Shabab are building defenses in Kismayo and mounting machine guns on top of strategic buildings, indicating that they do plan to fight within the city.

It took more than ten thousand soldiers from AMISOM, the Somali National Army and allied militias to dislodge the Shabab from Mogadishu. And even then it took them the greater part of 2 years to make the Shabab withdraw.

If the Shabab activity of surging their troop numbers in the area and building defenses are not meant to cover a sudden retreat from Kismayo – and they have been known to do that (the Mogadishu withdrawal caught the allied forces by surprise despite all the signs) – and go on to fight in Kismayo like they fought in Mogadishu, the Kenyans and their allies may really be in for a big surprise in Kismayo.

By the way, Radio Andalus is back on the air in Kismayo. Apparently there was a technical problem as the Shabab media said yesterday.

The above is an indicator that the Shabab don’t plan to retreat from Kismayo – at least not in the coming days.