Sunday October 14, 2018
By CARA ANNA
The deadliest terror attack
in Africa’s history began with a loaded truck barreling down a busy
street in Somalia’s capital, seemingly bound for the international
airport and the embassies sheltering there.
The
truck instead detonated in Mogadishu traffic, killing well over 500
people. Somalis who had witnessed decades of chaos were horrified. In a
rare protest, they marched by the thousands to defy the Islamic
extremist group that is now the deadliest in sub-Saharan Africa, the
al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab.
On
Oct. 14, Somalia marks the anniversary of the bombing. Many around the
world barely took note of the attack, though it was easily one of the
worst since 9/11.
Anyone
with interest in the spread of extremism, however, should read the new
book “Inside al-Shabaab: The Secret History of al-Qaeda’s Most Powerful
Ally.”
Imagine, it
says, a Washington where the U.S. government controls the White House, a
few adjacent buildings and the highway to the airport while insurgents
hold the rest. “Every so often, the insurgents fire mortar shells toward
the White House.” This has been Mogadishu over the years as the
extremists, some of them raised in the United States, surge and retreat.
The
authors, Voice of America journalists Harun Maruf and Dan Joseph,
interviewed al-Shabab members, defectors and others to tell a fluid tale
of how an Islamic nation once known for its moderation, not unlike the
Afghanistan of a certain age, slid into the hands of young men trained
in Osama bin Laden’s camps abroad.
“This
was the start of the battle between al-Qaeda and America,” one
al-Shabab leader later said of the battle for Mogadishu in the early
1990s as bin Laden-backed local fighters attacked U.S. troops who tried
to restore order after the fall of dictator Siad Barre. The “Black Hawk
Down” attack in 1993 that saw U.S. soldiers dragged through the streets
led the U.S. military to leave Somalia alone for two decades.
Inspired,
a new generation of hard-line Islamic fighters — al-Shabab is Arabic
for “the youth” — took shape. The book describes the surprising internal
debates over the years as some members of a group known for harsh
dictates and brazen bombings argued that only a more accepting approach
would win over Somalia’s people as it pursued an Islamic state.
In one of the book’s more extraordinary sentences, Maruf and Joseph write that “al-Qaeda encouraged al-Shabaab to be flexible.”
The world’s first extremist
group to use Twitter to claim a major attack, al-Shabab has been
relatively organized, with financing from taxes on captive communities,
piracy off the long Indian Ocean coast and, in at least one town, the
yanking out of civilians’ gold teeth.
For
military enthusiasts, “Inside al-Shabaab” has vivid descriptions of
street-by-street fighting in Mogadishu as the extremists pushed the
fragile Somali government to the edge of the sea. For those wondering
how Somalia has never been able to shake off the threat, the book has
piercing details of what still goes wrong both among Somalis and in the
international community.
“My
soldiers have to offer to share their lunch,” one commander of the
African Union peacekeeping force said of Somali partner forces, long
unpaid, who looked on hungrily.
Widespread
corruption, deeply held clan rivalries, exasperation from both Western
and African allies, all have affected the fight against al-Shabab. Now
the country, with a Somali-American president who spent years as a
bureaucrat in Buffalo, N.Y., faces the nervous prospect of taking over
its own security from the A.U. force in the few years ahead.
Officials
with the U.S. military, which under President Donald Trump has
increased drone strikes in Somalia and put about 500 personnel on the
ground, have warned that Somali forces are not ready. And now a new
threat has emerged: “Inside al-Shabaab” devotes a chapter to the rise of
fighters who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organization.
ISIS
these days might be fading or fleeing. But “by almost any tangible
measure ... al-Shabaab grew stronger throughout 2017,” the new book
says.
The U.S. has
made gestures of confidence in Somalia, appointing its first ambassador
in a quarter-century and even presenting President Mohamed Abdullahi
Mohamed with a trucker cap bearing the phrase “Make Somalia great
again.”
Meanwhile,
al-Shabab’s grip on the countryside ebbs and flows. The extremists have
taunted Trump as a “brainless billionaire.” And every few weeks or so,
they sneak into Mogadishu with bombs and, at the gates of a hotel or
government compound, explode.
“They
are part of the society, a cancerous part, they reappear in wherever
you clean them from,” one Somali army colonel says in “Inside
al-Shabaab.” “If we don’t get a trained, strong Somali army it will be
difficult to defeat them.”