Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda’s Most Powerful Ally

309 Pages·2018·2.94 MB·English

by  Harun Maruf

INSIDE AL-SHABAAB
HARUN MARUF and DAN JOSEPH
INSIDE AL-SHABAAB
The Secret History of Al-Qaeda’s Most
Powerful Ally
Foreword by Christopher Anzalone
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Dan Joseph and Harun Maruf All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
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Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Maruf, Harun, author. | Joseph, Dan (Journalist), author.
Title: Inside al-Shabaab : the secret history of al-Qaeda’s most powerful ally / Harun Maruf and Dan Joseph
; Foreword by Christopher Anzalone.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not
viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018019388 (print) | LCCN 2018032045 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253037510 (e-book) |
ISBN 9780253037480 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253037497 (pb : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH:
Shabaab (Organization)| Terrorism—Somalia. | Insurgency—Somalia. | Islam and politics—Somalia. |
Somalia—Politics and government—1991-Classification: LCC HV6433.S582 (ebook) | LCC
HV6433.S582 S53 2018 (print) | DDC 303.625096773—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019388
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CONTENTS
Foreword by Christopher Anzalone Sources and Acknowledgments
Prologue: Birth of A Militant
PART ONE: ORIGINS AND RISE
1 Jihad Arrives in Somalia
2 The CIA, the Warlords, and Ethiopia
3 “The Real Jihad Has Just Started”
4 Godane
5 Al-Shabaab Americans
6 Radical Organization
PART TWO: THE BATTLE FOR MOGADISHU
7 “TFG IN GRAVE JEOPARDY”
8 “Send Troops … Within 24 Hours”
9 Zenith and Stalemate
10 The Ramadan Offensive
11 Withdrawal
PART THREE: ON THE RUN
12 Divisions and Purge
13 The Road to Westgate
14 No Place to Hide
PART FOUR: RESURGENCE
15 Arresting the Decline
16 The ISIS Incursion
17 Al-Shabaab’s Future
Notes
Index
FOREWORD
Christopher Anzalone
BEFORE THE RISE OF THE Islamic State and its pretensions as the new “caliphate,”
Al-Shabaab ran a multitiered governing administration over vast swaths of
central and southern Somalia, threatening the very existence of Somalia’s
internationally recognized government. The militant organization recruited
hundreds of foreign fighters from North America, Europe, the Middle East, and
sub-Saharan Africa and established itself as a key regional ally and, later,
affiliate of Al-Qaeda. Through its civil and political administrations, Al-Shabaab
collected taxes and extorted “protection” money from locals, made alliances
with businessmen engaged in the illegal charcoal trade, ran Sharia courts, and
imposed a harsh form of law and order through its Hisbah police force. The
United States, European Union, and Somalia’s African neighbors had good
reason to be alarmed.
Indeed, Al-Shabaab was a pioneer in jihadi-insurgent governance, building
itself from the ashes of the Islamic Courts Union following the December 2006
Ethiopian invasion and ensuring its primacy over Somalia’s insurgency through
the ruthless use of coercion and outright violence. From its setup of a robust
machinery for territorial control to its use of public events like communal
prayers and outdoor executions, Al-Shabaab blazed a path for Sunni militants
that would later be built on and scaled up massively by the Islamic State. The
Somali jihadi group was also a trailblazer in the use of media, establishing a
strong presence on Twitter and other social media platforms, and running a
multilingual foreign propaganda campaign along with a domestic messaging
operation aimed at Somalis. Most recently, Al-Shabaab deployed its media tools
in the run-up to the 2017 Kenyan elections, releasing a string of propaganda
videos in English, Swahili, Somali, Cushtic, and other regional languages.
Al-Shabaab represents a hybrid form of militant political Islam that is
transnational in its ambitions while remaining, thus far, primarily local and
regional in its core strategic operations. Although many analysts have predicted
that the group’s internal divisions and clashing personalities would result in an
organizational split, Al-Shabaab has weathered leadership decapitation by US
drone strikes and bouts of severe internal discord and infighting that claimed the
lives or forced the flight of several of its founding leaders, as well as a sustained
challenge from Islamic State. Despite suffering significant territorial, personnel,
material, and financial losses since 2011, the group today remains a capable and
resilient insurgent force. The presence of more than twenty thousand African
Union troops in Somalia has not impeded the militants’ ability to attack targets
in that country or in Kenya, where Al-Shabaab has set up a network of cells and
regularly conducts hit-and-run attacks on police and military targets.
Harun Maruf and Dan Joseph bring their years of experience in reporting on
African politics and affairs for Voice of America to tell the story of the
founding, rise, decline, and rebound of Al-Shabaab. Utilizing an array of
sources, including interviews with Somali politicians and government officials,
current and former insurgents, and Somali Islamists from Al-Shabaab, its
predecessor Al-Itihad, and its onetime partner Hizbul Islam, Maruf and Joseph
document in fascinating and extensive detail how the founding cadre of Al-
Shabaab met and formed what would become one of the most formidable jihadi
organizations in modern history, which would include the former ice cream
server and US-educated university student Ibrahim al-Afghani, the rigid and
slightly built Afghanistan-trained commander Aden Hashi Farah Ayrow, and the
utterly ruthless emir of the group, Ahmed Godane.
Written with the flair and engaging prose of an action novel but with keen
attention to sourcing and detail, the book documents Al-Shabaab’s evolution
from its days as the most radical faction within the military wing of the Islamic
Courts Union to the bitter street fighting that wracked Mogadishu in 2009 and
2010, when it threatened the survival of Somalia’s fledgling federal government.
It also covers the transition back to asymmetric warfare following the group’s
loss of major urban centers such as Mogadishu, Baidoa, and Kismayo. Maruf
and Joseph uncover new information about the organization’s inner workings
and divisions and take readers through key events in its history, such as the
meeting in September 2014 to replace Godane after he was killed in a US drone
missile strike and the group’s heavy crackdown on Islamic State sympathizers
and defectors.
The result is a gripping narrative account of the history and evolution of one
of the deadliest and most successful jihadi organizations not only in Africa but in
the world. The book, which is accessible to general readers while also containing
new insights for scholars and other specialists, is a must-read for those interested
in global affairs, contemporary conflicts, African politics, and political Islam.
CHRISTOPHER ANZALONE is a research fellow with the International Security
Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard
University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a PhD candidate
(ABD) at McGill University. He has written extensively on political Islam,
jihadist movements and organizations including Al-Shabaab, Shi’ite Islam, and
Islamic visual cultures and new media.