A woman walks through trash in Mogadishu. When Somalia collapsed with the fall of President Siad Barre’s government in the early 1990s, people described U.S. troops that led a United Nations peacekeeping mission as nonbelievers.
By Sudarsan Raghavan
The Washington Post
A woman walks through trash in Mogadishu. When Somalia collapsed with the fall of President Siad Barre’s government in the early 1990s, people described U.S. troops that led a United Nations peacekeeping mission as nonbelievers.
MOGADISHU, Somalia —
Abdul Qadir Mohammed remembers the imam’s powerful voice bouncing off the mosque’s white walls. It was 2001, a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, a decade into Somalia’s anarchy. "Our religion must dominate until we die," the preacher declared.
On that day in the mosque, his heart pounded as he joined the worshippers in thunderous chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great).
"It was the day I was born," Mohammed recalled.
Mohammed was 13. He had never picked up a gun. But boys like him would soon be asked to sacrifice their lives for Islam. Mohammed felt no fear, only a sense of divine calling.
"Everything in my life was about jihad," said Mohammed, now 22, who has a boyish face, faint mustache and walks with a slight limp. "Everything still is."
Mohammed is part of a generation of young Somalis who, seeking solutions to their chaos, have embraced a messianic brand of Islam that today drives a brutal struggle for power and identity in the Horn of Africa.
His path opens a window on the forces that have altered Somalia, a failed state and one of the world’s most lethal post-Sept. 11 battlegrounds outside the theaters of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
His journey would take him from the mosques to an Islamist revolt against Somalia’s secular warlords to al-Shabab, a militia linked to al-Qaida. He would fight in battle after battle, driven less by clan loyalties or politics than a conviction that his religion, and his nation’s soul, was under siege.
Ultimately, he would question al-Qaida’s role in his country, a progression experienced by many militant Muslims since Sept. 11.
When Mohammed was 3, the socialist government of President Mohamed Siad Barre collapsed. Clans and warlords began fighting for control of territory.
As their country fractured, many Somalis sought comfort in a fundamentalist Islam that called for society to repent and rededicate itself to Allah’s divine principles. Money from Saudi Arabia flowed in to build ultraconservative Wahhabist mosques, weakening the influence of the nation’s moderate brand of Sufi Islam.
Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a militant group loosely linked to Osama bin Laden, emerged in the early 1990s.
Against this backdrop, Mohammed’s perceptions were colored by religion from an early age. He remembers his neighbors describing the U.S. troops that led a 1993 United Nations peacekeeping mission as "nonbelievers." He did, too.
Mohammed’s mother died when he was 6. He and his siblings moved to Mogadishu, Somalia’s whitewashed, war-scarred capital, to live with their uncle.
Most of the city’s public schools had been destroyed or shuttered, so Mohammed attended a free Quranic school run by religious leaders and al-Itihaad members.
He grew distant from his family and spent more time at the mosque. He listened to conversations about the plight of the Palestinians and shared the anger over the support of Israel by the U.S. and its allies.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Mohammed said he felt empowered as he stared at the television screen. He was proud Muslims had learned to pilot planes to target America and defend Islam.
"I was like any other young Somali who was happy with striking the nonbelievers," he said. "Osama bin Laden was my hero. He had my heart."
In the aftermath, the Bush administration declared al-Itihaad a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaida. U.S. officials had implicated the group in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Money-transfer networks that Somalis depended on were shut down as concerns grew that they were being used to move money for al-Qaida. At Mohammed’s mosque, anger punctuated the sermons and people grew more resentful of the United States.
For the first time, Mohammed said he believed the United States and its allies were directly targeting him and his countrymen.
"America’s response after September 11 was too aggressive," he said. "That created anger and only added fuel to the fire."
As U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan then Iraq, Mohammed was tormented by the deaths of fellow Muslims in airstrikes and bombings. "I was convinced they were victims of an oppressive invasion," he said. "I felt America wanted to occupy the whole Middle East."
Mohammed began to view Somalia’s own history through the prism of Sept. 11. He was happy American soldiers had been killed here in 1993, some brutally, their bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
One day in summer 2005, when Mohammed was 16, a group of men approached him at the mosque. They wanted him to join a new militia called the Islamic Courts Union. "They were interested in children like me," Mohammed said. "I didn’t have much knowledge. I had no idea where to find a job."
By then, the Islamic Courts was fighting a coalition of warlords that many Somalis believed was being covertly financed by the United States. The warlords presented themselves as a counterterrorism alliance determined to root out radical Islam and al-Qaida in Somalia. But to the Islamists, the warlords were U.S. puppets.
"They told me I was joining a jihad to liberate my country and my religion," he said. "Eventually, I decided this was the right path."
Mohammed’s mentor, Aden Hashi Ayro, was a veteran of al-Itihaad who had trained in Afghanistan and had ties to al-Qaida. He allegedly orchestrated the assassinations of 16 people, including four Western aid workers, according to the International Crisis Group, a respected think tank.
Into battle
Six weeks after learning how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle and rocket-propelled grenades, Mohammed was dispatched to the front line. In mid-2006 he helped to wrest his hometown of Jowhar from the control of a powerful warlord widely thought to be on the U.S. payroll.
In December 2006, Ethiopian troops, with covert backing from the Bush administration, invaded Somalia to oust the Islamists. Somalis viewed Ethiopia as "the Israel of Africa" because it received support from the U.S., said Sheik Mohammed Asad Abdullahi, an al-Shabab commander who defected.
Many Islamists believed they were engaged not only in a nationalist struggle but also in a larger clash between Islam and the West.
"It was very clear that we were not only fighting the Ethiopians but also the Western world," Mohammed said.
The Ethiopian forces pushed the Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu. A few months later, a rift broke apart the Islamists; two militias, al-Shabab and Hezb-i-Islam, emerged as independent forces, more radical than ever.
Some of Somalia’s powerful clans backed al-Shabab to counter the Ethiopians and an African Union peacekeeping force that replaced the Ethiopians last year.
Ayro became a top leader, and Mohammed was among the first to be recruited as a commander in charge of 60 fighters. Most were younger than he was. Within months, al-Shabab had taken over much of south and central Somalia, nearly a third of the country. The militia imposed a harsh interpretation of Islam, carrying out public amputations and banning movies, soccer, even bras.
Then May 1, 2008, an American airstrike killed Ayro inside his home. "They killed our hero," Mohammed said. "I knew the Americans were interfering in Somalia all the time after that."
Another date also haunts Mohammed: Dec. 3, 2009.
On that day, an al-Shabab suicide bomber dressed as a woman detonated explosives during a medical-school graduation ceremony at the Shamo Hotel. The attack killed 22 civilians and three government ministers.
"Many students and their parents died. Many young doctors died," Mohammed said. "That was the turning point."
In the weeks before the bombing, he had begun to notice that more foreign al-Shabab fighters were attending meetings for the militia’s senior leaders. "Decisions are being taken by foreigners, not Somalis," he said.
Mohammed said he was startled by the militia’s severe tactics. He was fighting to get rid of American and Western influence in Somalia, to enshrine a pure brand of Islam, not to indiscriminately kill innocent Somali civilians.
In February, al-Shabab publicly declared allegiance to al-Qaida. While he still considered bin Laden a hero, Mohammed was conflicted by the development.
Bin Laden doubters
Nearly a decade after Sept. 11, many in the Muslim world were questioning bin Laden’s philosophies and tactics. In Somalia, al-Shabab’s harsh measures and al-Qaida-like attacks were increasingly alienating the population.
"I thought we would lose the support of the normal people of Somalia," Mohammed said.
Some of his former comrades, who now worked for the government, encouraged him to leave the militia. Four months ago, he hopped into a taxi, crossed into government-controlled territory and defected.
Since his defection, his former comrades have delivered death threats.
His ideology, though, has not changed.
Mohammed said, "You can’t be Muslim without accepting sharia." He said he no longer considers America "a legitimate target."
But when asked by this journalist, an American, what he would have done if he had met him a few months ago, Mohammed replied without hesitation: "I would have slaughtered you. And they would have promoted me."
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