You know, I think this is pretty significant. There have been some new and startling developments in the war in Somalia, and I think it is important to highlight what is really going on. The other reason I want to post this, is to set the record as to who is really responsible for all of this chaos over there.
First off, my message to these extremists groups in Somalia is that Blackwater did not bomb your mosques. Nor did Blackwater dig up Sufi graves and hide the bodies. Nope. Nor did Blackwater allow piracy to continue under their watch in Somalia, or cut off food supplies to the people of Somalia via banning the World Food Program food shipments, or proclaim that a 13 year old girl who was gang raped by thugs to be a whore and then have her stoned to death in public. Nope, Blackwater didn’t do any of that.
But I will tell you who did. It was al Shabab and company, and now that Somalia’s true Islamic scholars have spoken and rejected their war, from here on out they will have that hanging over them. How can you wage holy war, when you don’t have a case for such a thing?
Further more, I will go as far as to say that al Shabab and company care more about power and making money, than living some kind of purist lifestyle under Sharia Law. In other words, I call them hypocrites. You administer your form of sick justice on helpless little girls, yet look the other way when it comes to piracy, desecrating graves, bombing of mosques, chewing khat, recklessly launching mortars into population centers and otherwise making a hard life for the people of Somalia, even worse. And now you have lost the support of the guys who are more knowledgeable of Islam than you. And last I checked, these scholars said nothing about Blackwater at the Garowe Islamic conference. Nope, they were referring to your now ‘un-holy war’ and you have no one to blame but yourselves.
On a side note, I do think it is funny that islamic extremists fear contractors as much as they do. It used to be that the Marines or Special Forces where the ones that everyone feared or put the blame on for everything. But hey, if you guys want to make us into the new bogeyman, so be it……. Boo! lol –Matt
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Aweys rejects clerics’ verdict on Somalia war
11 May 11, 2010
The Islamist leader of Somalia’s Hizbul- Islam rebel group Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys dismissed the declarations of the country’s most respected Islamic scholars, who were in attendance at the recently concluded Garowe Islamic conference, Radio Garowe reports.
The Islamic conference was held last month in Garowe, capital of Puntland in northern Somalia, where more than 50 respected Somali clerics declared that the ongoing war in Somalia as un-Islamic.Aweys defended the war his waging against the foreign troops and UN-backed government as “in accordance with Islamic law.’“The war we are waging is in accordance with Islamic law, because we are not after power. We want to implement Sharia Law in the country,” said the 65-year old cleric.
“We are equally fighting AMISOM and the TFG, because they all oppose the efforts by Islamist groups to impose Islamic rule in the country,” he said.He accused the scholars of verbal support for the government of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, and diverting from the true path of Islam.Last month, the clerics met in Puntland administrative capital Garowe and jointly issued a 12 point communiqué where they agreed that the war that is going on in Somalia is an “incitement” rather than a holy war (jihad), as claimed by the Islamist insurgent factions like Hizbul Islam and Al Shabaab.Islamist groups, who are determined to overthrow the current interim government in Mogadishu, claim they want to impose Shari’ah law throughout Somalia, while accusing the current government of being a Western “puppet”.
Story here.
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Grave sites destroyed in Somalia
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Al Jazeera has obtained footage of Al-Shabab fighters in Somalia destroying grave sites and exhuming bodies before hiding them.
The graves belong to foreign soldiers and a Sufi scholar. Al Shabab says it wants to rid Somalia of anything that does not fit with its strict version of Islam, but that has put it on a collision course with Sufi fighters.
Video here.
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Dozens killed as blast hits mosque
May 2, 2010
There have been two explosions at a packed mosque in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Reports say as many as 30 people may have been killed.
Eyewitnesses say two bombs exploded within minutes of each other during midday prayers.
“Many people were inside the mosque when the huge explosions went off,” witness Shukri Yahye said.
“I was not far away and I saw people being brought out of the mosque. Everyone was bleeding and some were already dead.”Abdulahi Mohamed Hersi, a grocer, claimed around 30 people died from the blasts in the market area of Bakara.
“These were the heaviest explosions ever inside Bakara,” he said.
“It was near the mosque and it was hard to distinguish between the dead and the wounded.”
In the mosque at the time of the explosions was Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, a well known cleric who is a senior member of the Islamic insurgent group al-Shabab.
There is speculation he could have been the target of the attack.
Al-Shabab official Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told AFP Sheikh Khalaf was wounded on his right arm but would recover.
Along with other Islamic militants, the cleric recently had his assets frozen by the US government, which accuses him of involvement in terrorism.
It is possible the attack was the result of rivalry between al-Shabab and another insurgent group, Hizbul Islam.
Sheikh Rage blamed “mercenaries hired by the so-called government of Somalia” and vowed to retailate.
Explosions are common in Mogadishu but Saturday’s incident was the worst since a suicide bombing in a hotel in December killed 57 people, including several government ministers.
Story here.
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Somalia mosque bomb targets Al Shabab leaders
A bomb attack in a Mogadishu mosque this weekend failed to kill Fuad Shongole, a top leader of Somalia’s Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabab militia. But the Somalia mosque bomb is taking fighting there to a new level of intensity.
By Scott BaldaufMay 3, 2010
The bomb attack on a mosque in Mogadishu’s thriving Bakara market on Saturday marks a radical departure in the rules of war in Somalia.
While there have been targeted killings in Somali mosques before, this marks the first time a bomb has been used, killing at least 32, including both members of the radical Al Shabab militia group as well as ordinary worshipers.
The target of the attack appears to have been Fuad Shongole, one of the top three Somali leaders of Al Shabab, but Mr. Shongole appears to have survived with injuries. In a radio interview after the blast, Shongole blamed unnamed foreign security firms working for the African Union for the bomb attack, and encouraged Islamist fighters to take revenge.
“The Muslim people of Somalia must fight the African Union troops of the occupying force using the means at their disposal, including suicide attacks,” said Shongole. “Go to their compounds and make all the necessary sacrifices to fight these invaders.”
Another level
In a war where even the army of the Somali government frequently shells busy marketplaces full of civilians, the bombing of a mosque at prayer time seems to be the last remaining taboo of war.
Details of how the bomb blast was carried out – with a planted bomb set off by remote control, or by suicide bombers wearing bomb vests – are still unknown, and if investigated may never be divulged.
Experts say that the bomb blast could be a signal of an internal power struggle within Al Shabab, although no group has taken credit for the attack.
“We don’t know who is responsible for the attack, but the most likely answer would be factions within Al Shabab itself,” says E.J. Hogendoorn, director of the Horn of Africa program for the International Crisis Group’s office in Nairobi. Whoever carried out the attack, Mr. Hogendoorn adds, it is certain that “this does really take the tit-for-tat attacks up another level. Mosques were considered out of bounds for bomb attacks.”
A ‘staggering blow’ to Al Shabab
No organization has claimed credit for the blast, but Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa, a moderate Islamist militia group that recently added its forces to the Somali transitional government, called the attack “a staggering blow to Al Shabab.”
“Our sources did not know who is behind this blast,” writes Abdul Kareem Hussein Abdi, an Ahlu Sunna spokesman based in Nairobi in an email to the Monitor. “Similar operations targeting extremist officers occurred recently at Dinsor district in Bay region.”
Mr. Abdi says his sources inform him that Shongole was wounded in the arm and in the chest, and that he was taken to Mogadishu’s Daynile Hospital for treatment.
Other senior Shabab commanders, including Mohamed Aden, were among 80 wounded in the blast, and top Shabab officers Abdikafi Ahmed Abu Maryan and Abdulbaasid were killed, he writes.
The bomb attack comes at a time when the United-Nations’-supported transitional government has been receiving substantial military support and training from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti in advance of an expected major offensive.
The UN’s special representative to the Somali government, Ahmedullah Ould-Abdallah said last month, that in terms of increased security measures around Mogadishu and reinforcement of the Somali forces, the offensive has “already begun.”
Islamists take pirate port
But the threat of a government offensive doesn’t seem to have stopped Islamist militias from expanding their own territory.
On Sunday, 200 fighters from the Al Shabab ally, Hizbul Islam, reportedly took control of the city of Haradhere, Somalia’s largest port for piracy.
Dozens of captured ships and hundreds of merchant marines are being held in Haradhere, awaiting ransom payments, and it remains unclear what effect the Islamists will have on piracy in the city or on the lives of the sailors, some of whom are Westerners.
“The one thing we know is that the ICU (the Islamist Court Union) ended piracy in South Central Somalia,” says Mr. Hogendoorn. Al Shabab and Hizbul Islam are offshoots of that Islamist government that took control of Somalia for six months, before being ousted by an Ethiopian military occupation force in December 2006. “If Al Shabab wanted to stop piracy, it could. Now the question is what they want to do. It depends on how desperate they are for money.”
Increased scrutiny of financial transfers from the Somali expatriate community living in Europe and the United States has sharply diminished Al Shabab’s outside support.
Local news reports say that pirate leaders on land were seen fleeing Haradhere a few hours before the Hizbul Islam troops arrived.
Experts say that pirates out at sea may simply set up their operations somewhere else such as the port of Eyl in the semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland, where the government seems to have been unable or unwilling to shut down pirate operations.
Story here.
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Somalia: Senior Al-Shabab Commander Defects to Govt
2 December 2009
A high-ranking Al-Shabaab commander has joined Somali government after deserting the rebel group.
Sheik Ali Hassan Gheddi, who was the deputy commander in-chief of Al Shabab fighters in Somalia’s Middle Shabele region took the decision to join the government side after realising his group was not working for the interest of the civilians.
“Al-Shabaab’s cruelty against the people is what forced me to defect to the government side. They extort money from the people and deal with them against the teaching of Islam,” he told reporters at the Somali Information Ministry compound in Mogadishu.
He cited the recent Al-Shabaab ban on United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) as the main reason for his defection.
“The recent Al-Shabaab veto on WFP is the biggest contributor to my decision because I felt it affects the civilians,” he said.
Sheikh Gheddi added that he is a well-known figure among Islamist in the country and that Al-Shabaab would not refute his defection as malicious.
Sheikh Abdirahn Isse Adow, who is the former Union of Islamic Courts spokesman and now serving in Information Ministry, welcomed the defector on behalf of the government.
He is the second high level Al-Shabaab official to join the government in less than a month.
Last month, Sheikh Mohamed Sheikh Abdullahi Faruq (Al Pakistani), a senior Al-Shabaab commander absconded the group and joined the government.
Story here.