How Al-Shabaab captures hearts of Somali youths

On a breezy night in June 2007, in the outskirts of Baidoa, central Somalia, a lanky Somali teenager called Osman Ahmed was travelling alongside 50 other youngsters when gunfire erupted, targeting them.

The young lads, recruits of the Al-Shabaab, had camped around a fire for the night. They were headed to a training camp. In the face of gunfire, their fate, it seemed, was sealed.

Mukhtar Robow, popularly known as Abu Mansuur, who would later be appointed the spokesman of Al-Shabaab, had led the group from Baidoa.

Ahmed was Mansuur’s guard that night. The rest of the recruits were from the coastal town of Merca.

As the first bullets whizzed past their ears, panic set in. The unarmed greenhorns had no clue where they were in Somalia.

As a barrage of shots blasted through the thick vegetation, the youngsters ran for dear lives into the darkness.

“I dropped my gun and ran away,” Ahmed, who grew up in bullet-scarred Mogadishu, recollected a few weeks ago in an interview.

It turned out that the group shooting at the young recruits comprised Abu Mansuur’s allies, who had mistaken them for robbers who had fought each other in the same location a night earlier.

By the time the associates identified each other and stopped firing, three of the youngsters were dead, six were severely injured, and 25 were lost for good in the wild.

“It is all God’s destiny,” Ahmed remembers Abu Mansuur saying. “We will treat whoever is injured and transfer them to Mogadishu.”

Even before their first training session, the young men got a taste of what it meant to be ambushed and killed.

Away from home, hungry and distraught, Ahmed said that looking into the faces of the dead boys angered and saddened him. “Those kids didn’t even know how to carry a gun, let alone shoot.”

The shootout marked the beginning of a three-month training that saw Ahmed rise from a mere Mogadishu teenager to a hardened combatant.

Ahmed was born in the north-western city of Borama, in an IDP camp in the 1990’s.

His story serves as a key insight into how Al-Shabaab, with a blend of scare tactics and convincing incentives, has caught Somalia’s young minds.

Ahmed was barely 12 years old when he first joined Al-Shabaab. He was a schoolboy in Mogadishu, and when the three-month long holidays approached in 2007, he was nudged by friends to join the insurgents.

“When you join, they give you a mobile phone and every month you are given $30,” he said. “This is what pushes a lot of young people to join.”

Ahmed says he enlisted with the group at a local dugsi – religious school. After two weeks of fitness training in Mogadishu, Ahmed, alongside 60 other children, were put on a lorry and driven to Baidoa, 250 kilometres from Mogadishu.

After spending a night in Baidoa, they moved to a training ground 50 kilometres away, where they were joined by recruits from the rest of Somalia.

The camp was a cleared ground with a mosque and a few tents. By this time, Ahmed’s parents were looking for him all over Mogadishu.

Missing for almost a month, little did they know that their son was now in the ranks of the Al-Shabaab, the most dangerous terrorist group to have ever sprung up in eastern Africa having ties with al-Qaeda.

Catching them young

Harakaat Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahideen (the Movement of Holy Warrior Youth) became a force to reckon with in Somalia following the defeat of the Islamic Courts Union in late 2006.

Soldiers from Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, backed by Ethiopian troops, battled the ICU, dismantling its operations in major cities in southern Somalia including Mogadishu.

The Al-Shabaab, until then the militant division of the ICU, retreated to form a hardline splinter organisation to counter the Ethiopian-led invasion.

By mid-2007, Al-Shabaab was engaging the TFG forces and its allies in ferocious battles in Mogadishu and south-central Somalia.

Dozens of Somali youngsters, including one Shirwa Ahmed, who became the first US citizen to carry out suicide bombing in Somalia, left their homes in the West to join the Al-Shabaab.

With widespread support from the local communities, the group recruited easily from madrassahs, mosques, through radio broadcasts and public rallies. The Al-Shabaab also vastly enrolled children.

When Ahmed arrived at the training camp outside Baidoa, there were tens of young children, some barely nine years old.

For the two and-a-half months he was ensconced with the group deep in the desolate tracts of Somalia, Ahmed saw bewildered young boys who were starved, sleep-deprived, and put under rigorous training sessions.

The painstaking routine he describes is meant to create diehard terrorists well-versed in making bombs and who are brainwashed to believe in bizarre ideologies that aim to harm the “enemies of Islam.”

With the sound of gunfire at dawn, Ahmed says, they would run to an open field a few kilometres away. At 5.30am, they would move to the mosque to pray and then go for training up to 8.30am.

They would then recite the holy Quran, after which they are served breakfast at 11.30am.

A plate of rice was shared out between six recruits before everyone headed back to the mosque for lectures up to the noon prayer.

A plate of beans came in for dinner at 8pm preceded by long evening lectures on jihad.

For every 11 combatants, there was one emir – a “prince” or “leader” – who headed the group.

At night, the youngsters provided their own protection from lions and hyenas. The team members took up shifts guarding the area.

At times they would be told to move from one location to another for no specific reason. He says planes kept hovering above the

The camp’s leaders instructed them not to wear white clothes. A combination of fear and misplaced passion kept them moving forward.

Preachers delivered sermons for hours about destiny and “the sweetness of the holy war.” They distributed leaflets on Islam and tried “to make the children understand and appreciate suicide bombing.”

In one of these sessions, Ahmed, as a trusted foot soldier now, asked one of the scholars: “Give us a solid proof from the teachings of the Prophet (Muhammad) or the activities of his companions that actually allow suicide bombings.”

The answer, he says, was not forthcoming. Later, he was called aside and was told “that Islam’s biggest scholars had approved of suicide bombings, and that as an ignorant young man, I should keep quiet about it and not defile the mind of the youngsters.

Those who did not obey the prescribed rules would be forced to stand guard the whole night, sit under the scorching sun the whole day, and clean the leaders’ compartments.

In early morning training sessions, the lads were also expected to run faster than a full-grown man who would chase them with a whip, besides crawling under barbed wires, with one trainer firing live bullets above their heads.

If any one of them broke their limbs, there was no treatment. “It will heal by the will of Allah,” they were told.

Lethal Combatants

Secrecy and strict – if not crude – organisation are two of the most important stratagems that Al-Shabaab has used over the years to easily enlist young children and teenagers into their command.

They were able to successfully penetrate a society that had been fractured by disorganisation, clan politics and a never-ending civil war.

They also set religion as the main point of reference and unity among the recruits. In June 2010, Somalia’s Interior minister Abdi Shakur Sheikh Hassan was killed in a suicide attack.

The attacker was the minister’s teenage niece. Security guards did not carry out a check on her, allowing her to walk in and detonate the bomb that killed her and Mr Abdi Shakur.

Mohamed describes Al-Shabaab units trained to become lethal, sly and carry their duties with no protestation.

For the first few months, the training sessions are dubbed as madax jabis, or “breaking the head”.

Then they move on to specialised units where some are trained to act deaf to eavesdrop on conversations in social gatherings and markets.

Some are trained as shoe polishers and street beggars, all with the intention of gathering intelligence.

Once fully-trained, they are sent to undertake assignments in towns where residents won’t be able to recognise them.

“They are always younger than 17, they show no sign of religiosity, and they don’t wear any Islamic garments,” Ahmed said.

There is also a list of hundreds of people ready to die as martyrs. Young men plead to be the next in line for suicide bombings.

“I saw a list of 300 people who are all ready to die. People compete and cry to be put in the list.

Then there are the Umniyat, who constitute the top brass of the young recruits. Umniyat is an Arabic word, meaning “wishes.”

They constitute youngsters who go to school, live with their parents, but who, nonetheless, are skilful in penetrating important circles, and effect all the orders they are given.

They are the ones who finish off senior government officials or well guarded elders – a case in point for the niece who killed the minister.

This seemingly strong adherence to the Al-Shabaab comes from the universal appeal of the terrorist message on two levels:

With its call for foreign jihadists to join the holy war, Al-Shabaab was able to sensitise young Somalis that they were falling short of fulfilling a duty to their country.

The foreigners Ahmed trained with included Kenyans, Ugandans, Americans, Pakistanis and Somalis of different nationalities.

Secondly, as incongruous as it may seem, Al-Shabaab is credited for eliminating the boundaries created by the clan systems in Somalia.

Hundreds of young men belonging to the Somali Bantu and minority clans have freely joined the militant group.

Ahmed described to us how the youngsters thought they were “living their best life”; that they were “following in the footsteps of the prophet” and that “Osama bin Laden was the central figure whom to emulate.”

“They behaved like they were numb. After training, when they were sent to fight in Mogadishu, they would get lost in the city neighbourhoods and run into enemy camps where they would be shot down mercilessly. It was just all wrong.”

When pressed to answer whether they were given any drugs, Ahmed says: “No. Nothing is given to them.”

The dexterity and ability to make bombs is also an extra plus. The young trainees were taught how to use common household items and ingredients to make instant bombs.

“Do you want me to do one now?” he asks his eyes lighting up. “I can do one now. I swear I am not joking.”

Changing times

Since 2007, a lot has changed in Somalia: Al-Shabaab is now weaker, and has been outgunned from Mogadishu, thanks to the African Union Mission (Amisom) forces.

With Kenyan army battling the insurgency along the Kenya-Somalia border since October, and with the incursion of Ethiopian troops on New Year’s Eve, the group faces a backlash that could lead to the end of its insurgency in south-central Somalia.

For Ahmed, Al-Shabaab represents more than the daily dose of bad news many read in newspapers and websites around the world.

He offers a rare glimpse of the breadth and width of Al-Shabaab, and the dangers posed by young Somalis like him, who are trained to kill and maim and who are now spread all over East Africa.

It also illustrates how small children are forced to take up arms, brainwashed to fight to death, with no reward or recognition except for the fact that they will soar to heaven.

Ahmed was lucky to escape Al-Shabaab’s grip and cross into Kenya. “Luckily, I was just a foot soldier,” he said.

“I left easily. If I had started going up the ranks, it would have been harder.” So far, he says, he has “not received any threat.”

On New Year’s Eve, Ahmed sat on the bed watching television in an apartment in Eastleigh, Nairobi. He listened intently to a news report of a possible retaliatory attack by Al-Shabaab during the celebrations.

After the report ended, he went quiet. Then, after what seemed like a half an hour pause, he started talking.

“His name was Abdullahi Halane,” he said in a sad voice looking down. Halane, he added, was a cocky young boy full of life.

“We used to be in the same school. He joined the group after we came back from the bush.

Halane became very excited. In less than a month, he drove a pick-up truck loaded with explosives into an Amisom base, killing dozens of peacekeepers.”

Ahmed says he was saved from the madness by his relatives, who sent him out of Somalia to Kenya. He is now a class seven pupil, and will sit the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination next year.

‘‘Flipping a copy of Kenya’s Constitution, given to him by a teacher in his school, he says he wants to study law. He is an ardent supporter of Arsenal.

“I don’t like people to mention that I was one of them,” he said. “I am very lucky to be here. I want a better future.”

* All the names in the story have been changed to hide the identity of the interviewees because of the sensitivity of the topic.