Europe could be next on al-Shabaab's hit list

THE INDEPENDENT, UK

Some of the chaos and bloodshed of everyday life on the streets of Mogadishu was visited on the Ugandan capital on Sunday night. As the bodies of innocents ripped apart while they watched the World Cup final are buried and the burnt remains are sifted there is a keener sense of the cost of ignoring the world's most failed state.

That Kampala should be forced to pay the first instalment of that cost is bitterly unfair. The real responsibility for the emergence of al-Shabaab and the seemingly endless war in Somalia is more widely held and more complex. Should the twin bombings in the Ugandan capital be confirmed as the work of Somalia's largest Islamic militant group, then the logic and timing behind the attack is clear.

The World Cup offered a point of maximum publicity and poignancy for al-Shabaab to hit out at the country that is doing more than any other to maintain Somalia's weak transitional government. Uganda provides the bulk of a small African Union force – augmented by troops from Burundi – that is the last line of defence against al-Shabaab's stated aim of taking over the capital, Mogadishu.

The atrocity would also open a new phase in which al-Shabaab, which claims allegiance to al-Qa'ida, begins operations in foreign countries. This would have profound implications for cities from Cape Town and Nairobi to London and Minnesota where a large Somali diaspora would find itself viewed as a potential source of terrorism. The timing of Sunday's attack would also seem designed to intimidate would-be contributors to the AU force that was set to grow from 2,000 to 5,000 soldiers. The leadership of al-Shabaab has repeatedly threatened to strike Uganda and Burundi at home, and threatened other neighbours such as Kenya with retribution on its own soil.

Another aspect of the militants' anger at Uganda is the country's hosting of a European Union-supported military base at Bihanga in the west of the country where 400 Somali government soldiers are being trained by a mix of Finnish, Irish, Portuguese and French army instructors. This is the first phase of a long-delayed programme to build-up the forces of the government of Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed in Somalia.

The most ominous aspect of the huge loss of life in Kampala is the possibility of a shifting balance within an Islamic movement which has until now been parochial in its aims.

The group was originally the youth wing of the Islamic Courts Union, a bold local experiment in unseating rival warlords and a corrupt transitional government in 2006 that was ended by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion. That foreign intervention helped to turn the movement into a radical Islamic army, swollen by the tens of thousands of young and disaffected Somalis with few other options in the shattered state.

Al-Shabaab was fighting a holy war against a government which it viewed as insufficiently Islamic and a proxy for outsiders. Until now, its operations had largely been confined to central and southern Somalia where it has succeeded in asserting dominance and imposing its own extremist form of Islamic law.

However, there have long been tensions between the nationalist elements of al-Shabaab and the internationalists who have joined their ranks – many of them foreign fighters. The al-Qa'ida wing of the movement has placed its struggle in the context of a global Jihad and made repeated threats to foreign targets.

"A conference of those two strands within Shabaab happens when you attack Kampala," said Roger Middleton, a Somalia analyst with think-tank Chatham House. "It's really worrying because the thing about this for a long time is that people have been saying Shabaab is primarily concerned with what is going on inside Somalia and they're fighting inside Somalia."

For the last 18 months Western intelligence agencies have been warning of a mounting threat from al-Shabaab which can take cover among the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who make up the global disapora.

The reverberations of the war in the Horn of Africa reached Melbourne in Australia this time last year after a huge security operation led to the arrest of four Somali men allegedly linked to an al-Shabaab plot.

As investigators sift the wreckage of the two bomb sites in Kampala, governments around the world will be scrambling to prevent the potential threat of similar scenes in their own cities. They will also be confronted with the dilemma of disengaging further from the anarchy many of them are complicit in creating in Somalia or charting a fresh and more constructive engagement with a country some had decided they could afford to ignore.

al-Shabab: Playing football is a satanic act

"If we keep the young generation for football, al-Shabab can't recruit them to fight"


WASHINGTON POST

On a police base in this war-scarred capital, the players in the Somalian under-17 national football team practise in mismatched attire for a match against Egypt.

Their field is a forlorn, uneven patch of earth covered with mud, rocks and rusty cans. There are no goal posts. ''The fighting is crippling our ability to train,'' said Yusuf Ali, the coach, as his players manoeuvred the ball around puddles.

If you thought the biggest woes a national football team could face were injured players, bad calls by referees or boisterous fans blowing vuvuzelas, think again.

In Somalia, playing football is an exercise in evading death. For football-crazed Somalis, merely watching this year's World Cup, the first in Africa, has required bottomless reserves of courage.

Al-Shabab, a hard-line Islamic militia waging a campaign of terrorism across Somalia, has banned playing football in many areas it controls. The militia - linked to al-Qaeda - and Hezb-i-Islami, a rival extremist group, prohibited World Cup broadcasts, describing the sport as ''a satanic act'' that corrupts Muslims.

The militants have brutally targeted politicians, clerics and peacekeepers - anyone who has challenged their extreme views.

In the past month, they have killed at least five people and arrested scores more for watching the Cup.

They have detained and tortured local football club owners on charges of misguiding youth. Yet the players on the national team have pressed forward, doing their best to train and play matches.

Thousands of Somalis living in areas controlled by al-Shabab have slipped into the sliver of territory ruled by the US-backed transitional government to watch the televised matches.

Somali football federation officials declare their defiance of al-Shabab's dictates is nothing less than a struggle for the nation's youth. ''If we keep the young generation for football, al-Shabab can't recruit them to fight,'' said the head of the football federation, Abdulghani Sayeed, who stays at a heavily guarded hotel in Mogadishu. ''This is really why al-Shabab fights with us.''

Ali's team has no choice but to play on the police base. Al-Shabab has taken over both of Mogadishu's stadiums to train recruits, most of whom are younger than 17. Since the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, a civil war has suffocated the development of Somalia's football players. The national team has never qualified for the World Cup or the Africa Cup of Nations.

With the rise of al-Shabab, their world has, more than ever, closed in - geographically and psychologically.

Militants have plucked children from football fields and forced them to join their militia. Many players and their families have fled areas controlled by al-Shabab. They have carried along their fear and a lack of confidence in the weak government's ability to protect them.

''I don't go any place. I just stay in my apartment,'' said Mahad Mohammed, 16, a team member who lives with his parents. ''It's possible al-Shabab will arrest me or make me join them.''

Most players keep a low profile, careful even about their choice of words.

''No one talks about al-Shabab,'' Ali said. ''If we criticise them, we will be attacked.''

Swedes recruited by Somali terror group

An al-Qaeda-linked extremist group in Somalia has recruited more than 20 young people from Sweden to fight in the war-torn African country, the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) fears.

Somali Islamic insurgency group Harakat al-Shabab Mujahideen ("Movement of Warrior Youth"), better known as Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, is thought to have recruited dozens of Swedish youth to engage in terrorist acts, according to Göteborgs-Tidningen.

Gothenburg was identified by several sources as the largest recruitment base in the country, the report said. Sweden is also a fundraising hub for the group, according to Svenska Dagbladet editorial writer Per Gudmundson, who has written extensively about the issue.

"I think it's a very serious threat because it's not only a threat to Somalis in Somalia, it's also a threat to Swedish security," Gudmundson told The Local.

"People who go through wars and conflicts in war zones come back as trained operatives. We've had in Sweden people who've been trained in Afghanistan and come back as seasoned veterans. They are regarded with high esteem in jihadist terms and can motivate young people to fight. Also, when it comes to Swedish security, we are not immune to this. The Mohammed caricatures have shown places in northern Europe can be targets."

At a mosque - a converted food hall - in Gothenburg's Gamlestan quarter, a Danish-Somali man who tried to assassinate Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who drew the controversial Mohammed cartoon published in Jyllands-Posten, tried to recruit followers, according to a Danish newspaper.

"There are no supporters of al-Shabab here," mosque spokesman Abdi Fatah Shidane told Göteborgs-Tidningen.

Young men in Sweden are brainwashed, trained and recruited by terrorists on Somali terrorist movement al-Shabab, according to an informant who spoke to the paper. One recruit was arrested in connection with death threats against Danish People's Party leader Pia Kjærsgaard.

According to Säpo, al-Shabab sympathisers across the country are concentrated in big cities and recruit young people here for war and terrorist acts, as well as raising money for the movement.

Inspector Per-Olof Hellqvist of Säpo in Gothenburg confirmed to Göteborgs-Tidningen that young men from the Gothenburg area have traveled to Somalia.

"However, we do not know what they are doing there," he told the paper.

According to Gudmundson, the UN's special group on the Horn of Africa made a report on recruitment and financing that singled out Sweden as a hub for both recruitment and financing.

"The jihadist problem is worse in Denmark, I don't know why, but the Somali hub is bigger in Sweden," he told The Local.

Swedish Integration and Gender Equality Minister Nyamko Sabuni of the Liberal Party recently ordered Säpo to conduct a report on the scale of violence-prone religious radicalism in the country because the numbers are unclear. Gudmundson estimates about 1500 people in Sweden would be labelled Islamists with hardcore tendencies, while about 100 to 200 would possibly engage in violence.

"These are not big figures, not many, but as we sadly know, just a handful is enough," he told The Local. "To many, it's a nationalistic thing. Young males are always prone. They have a different view of life."

About 400,000 to 500,000 people in Sweden have roots in Muslim countries, he said.

"Mainly, Al-Shabab is a Somali phenomenon, but they attract young guys who are sympathetic to the global jihadist movement," Gudmundson told The Local. "However, few want to travel to Somalia. It's the armpit of the world."

As for why Gothenburg is the hub for Al-Shabab in Sweden, Gudmundson believes it is related to Somali clan immigration patterns, which are also evident in other Somali communities across the country.

In addition, Gothenburg is home to Al-Shabab's largest online community, alqimmah.net, which was established by a former Nazi who converted to Islam, with information mostly in Somali as well as Arabic and one sub-forum in English that picks up the newest translations, Gudmundson told The Local.

"Sweden isn't good at integrating Somalis compared to the UK and US," he said.

"We make a better living and it's expensive to hire people in Sweden. Somalis are often not well educated and are not easy to hire. It's very hard for the Somali community to get into the workforce."

Gudmundson added he believes the situation is worsening in Somalia. "I know it sounds silly to say about a country that's gone 18 years without a functional government, but now it's even worse because now, not only does the small weak transitional government fight against one Islamic militia, it has to fight another and they also fight against each other. It's everyone against everyone."

What's down, Somalia?

The anti-piracy patrol has adopted another new tactic. Warships patrol close to towns and villages the pirates operate from. When pirates are spotted heading for sea, they are intercepted, disarmed and their boat seized. But because of the "catch and release" policy of most nations participating in the anti-piracy patrol, the captured pirates are quickly returned to the beach, where they can rearm and reequip themselves, and set out for sea more carefully, avoiding nearby warships. The anti-piracy patrol has reduced the number of pirate attacks (61 in the first three months of last year, versus 35 this year), but not halted them. The pirates now have to go farther out to sea to find vulnerable targets, and this they are doing. Warships are being more decisive in determining which boats are run by pirates, and making arrests. This has slowed the pirates down, but not stopped them.

A convoy of several hundred al Shabaab gunmen drove to the northern coast (Puntland) to shut down pirate operations. Pirates fled one village, but the hundred or so al Shabaab gunmen has not done much besides defeat one group of local militia defending an inland village.

Al Shabaab has been unable to oust the Transitional Government militias and foreign peacekeepers from Mogadishu. This they want to do before thousands of government security troops, being trained by foreign instructors, are ready for action (in a few months.)

April 26, 2010: In the south, al Shabaab held a public execution of a murderer, and cut off the hand of a man caught stealing mattresses from a truck.
April 25, 2010: In Mogadishu, shelling between government and al Shabaab left nine dead and over 40 wounded.

April 23, 2010: Al Shabaab seized three more towns in central Somalia (all on a road leading to Mogadishu). The towns were nominally controlled by the Sufi militia, Ahlu Sunna wal Jamea, which is allied with the government. But al Shabaab put more fighters into this action, and the al Shabaab gunmen have a reputation for being fearless and deadly.

In the United States, eleven Somali pirates were charged with attacking U.S. warships in the last few weeks. It's unclear exactly how these men will be prosecuted, as most anti-piracy laws were discarded in the last century.
April 21, 2010:  Pirates seized a bulk carrier, 300 kilometers from the Gulf of Aden. Nearly 2000 kilometers off the coast, pirates seized three Thai fishing boats. While these high seas fishing ships have larger crews (2-3 dozen men), they are slower and lower in the water than merchant ships. The anti-piracy patrols are concentrated in the Gulf of Aden and along the Somali coast, so the pirates are going where the warships aren't, even though they have to search harder for targets. Some believe that the pirates are buying location data for ships in the area, obtained by bribing shipping or insurance company officials. There's never been any proof of this.

April 20, 2010: Twice in the last week, the Transitional Government has cancelled announced meetings of their parliament. In both cases, this was because of al Shabaab threats to attack. Meanwhile, many of the 550 members of parliament are fleeing the increasingly violent Mogadishu. Anti-corruption controls by foreign donors has kept the legislators from foreign money. In fact, many have not been paid. So there's not much reason to stick around.

In Mogadishu, five headless bodies were found in a part of the city controlled by al Shabaab (which has been known to kill those they suspect of working for the government.)

The government withdrew its order for radio stations to keep playing music, or risk closure. Al Shabaab had earlier ordered radio stations to stop broadcasting music, which the Islamic group considers un-Islamic.