U.S. charges 14 with giving support to Somali insurgent group

Image by roberthuffstutter via Flickr

By Greg Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 6, 2010; A05

Federal authorities unsealed terrorism-related charges Thursday against 14 people accused of providing funding and recruits to a militant group in Somalia with ties to al-Qaeda, part of an expanding U.S. effort to disrupt what Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. called a "deadly pipeline" of money and fighters to al-Shabab.

It is the first time that the Justice Department has publicly revealed criminal charges against two U.S. citizens, Omar Hammami and Jehad Mostafa, who have risen through al-Shabab's ranks to become important field commanders for the organization.

The indictments were unsealed in Alabama, California and Minnesota, the latter being home to the largest Somali population in the United States.

In Minnesota, officials said, FBI agents arrested two women on Thursday on charges that included soliciting donations door-to-door for al-Shabab, which the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2008. The other 12 suspects were in Somalia or were otherwise at large.

The indictments "shed further light on a deadly pipeline that has routed funding and fighters to al-Shabab from cities across the United States," Holder said. "We are seeing an increasing number of individuals -- including U.S. citizens -- who have become captivated by extremist ideology and have taken steps to carry out terrorist objectives, either at home or abroad."

For years, al-Shabab was seen primarily as an insurgent group struggling to topple Somalia's weak government and to impose strict Islamic law. But the group's focus "has morphed over time," a senior FBI official said. Al-Shabab has attracted a growing number of foreign fighters to its camps and has demonstrated a new ability to export violence, and it has been praised by Osama bin Laden.

Last month, the group claimed responsibility for bombings in Uganda that killed at least 76 people. A State Department terrorism report released Thursday said al-Shabab and al-Qaeda "present a serious terrorist threat to American and allied interests throughout the Horn of Africa."

Holder said none of those charged is accused of plotting attacks against U.S. targets. Most are accused of sending money or signing up for a war aimed at ousting the U.S.-backed government in Mogadishu. Even so, al-Shabab's ties to al-Qaeda and its ability to tap support inside the United States have caused concern that the group could be used to carry out a domestic attack.

"What it reaffirms is that we do have a problem with domestic radicalization," said Frank J. Cilluffo, an official in the George W. Bush administration who heads the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.

The indictments follow the arrest last month of Zachary Adam Chesser, 20, of Fairfax County, who was detained in New York while attempting to depart for Africa. Authorities said he planned to join al-Shabab.

As part of a multiyear FBI investigation, 19 people have been charged in Minnesota with supporting al-Shabab. Nine have been arrested, including five who have pleaded guilty; the others are not in custody.

But the most significant figures indicted are the two Americans who have emerged as battle-tested leaders of al-Shabab.

Hammami, 26, is a native of Alabama and a key player in al-Shabab's efforts to recruit supporters in the United States and other Western nations, officials said. Hammami, who goes by Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, or "the American," appeared in a rap-themed video this spring that attracted widespread attention online.

"He has assumed an operational role in that organization," Holder said.

Like Anwar al-Aulaqi, the Muslim cleric in Yemen tied to recent terrorist plots, Hammami is seen as a "bridge figure" who uses his familiarity with U.S. culture to appeal to Western audiences. But Aulaqi is known primarily for his radical online sermons, whereas Hammami has earned credibility as a fighter in Somalia's civil war, counterterrorism experts said.

"This guy actually has operational experience," Cilluffo said. "He is one of the top jihadi pop stars."

Mostafa, 28, is also an increasingly important figure, officials said. A U.S. citizen and former resident of San Diego, Mostafa served as a top lieutenant to Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaeda and al-Shabab operative killed in a U.S. military strike last year. Since then, Mostafa "is believed to have ascended to the inner circle of al-Shabab leadership," a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

Mostafa is believed to have met Aulaqi about a decade ago in San Diego, the official said, although it is unclear whether they have remained in contact.

The only suspects taken into custody were Amina Farah Ali, 33, and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, 63, both naturalized U.S. citizens from Somalia who resided in Rochester, Minn. The two women are accused of working with counterparts in Somalia to hold conference calls with Somali natives in Minnesota, urging them to "forget about" other charities and focus on "the Jihad," according to charges filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.

The records indicate that the women collected more than $8,000 in donations since 2008. They routed the money to al-Shabab recipients in Somalia through "hawala" transfers widely used in Third World countries to move money and bypass traditional banks. Hassan is also accused of making false statements to the FBI; she had denied that she was involved in raising funds for al-Shabab.

Staff writer Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.

“Welcome to Kenya” | Human Rights Watch

“Welcome to Kenya”

Police Abuse of Somali Refugees

June 17, 2010

Based on interviews with over 100 refugees, this 99-page report documents widespread police extortion of asylum seekers trying to reach three camps near the Kenyan town of Dadaab, the world's largest refugee settlement. Police use violence, arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention in inhuman and degrading conditions, threats of deportation, and wrongful prosecution for "unlawful presence" to extort money from the new arrivals - men, women, and children alike. In some cases, police also rape women. In early 2010 alone, hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Somalis unable to pay extortion demands were sent back to Somalia, in flagrant violation of Kenyan and international law.

Read the Press Release

Read the Report
ISBN: 1-56432-641-1

Get the Report

• Download this report (PDF, 1.02 MB)
• Download summary and recommendations in SOMALI (PDF, 89.63 KB)
• Purchase this report in print

Table of Contents

• “Welcome to Kenya”
• Maps
• Summary
• Key Recommendations
• Methodology
• I. Border and Refugee Transit Center Closures: A Recipe for Police Abuses
• II. Police Abuses against Asylum Seekers near the Dadaab Refugee Camps
• III. Abuse of Asylum Seekers by Criminals in the Border Areas
• IV. Police Violence against Refugees in the Dadaab Refugee Camps
• V. Police Failures to Respond to Sexual Violence in the Dadaab Refugee Camps
• VI. Unlawful Restriction on Refugees’ Free Movement and Abusive Imprisonment of Refugees Convicted of Moving without Permission
• VII. UNHCR’s Role in Monitoring Violations of the Rights of Asylum Seekers and Refugees
• VIII. Comprehensive Recommendations
• IX. Acknowledgments

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Children Carry Guns for a U.S. Ally, Somalia

Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images, for The New York Times

Mohamed Adan Ugas, left, a 12-year-old, and Ahmed Hassan, 15, work for the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection.

But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.

“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.

“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”

The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.

It is well known that Somalia’s radical Islamist insurgents are plucking children off soccer fields and turning them into fighters. But Awil is not a rebel. He is working for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, a critical piece of the American counterterrorism strategy in the Horn of Africa.

According to Somali human rights groups and United Nations officials, the Somali government, which relies on assistance from the West to survive, is fielding hundreds of children or more on the front lines, some as young as 9.

Child soldiers are deployed across the globe, but according to the United Nations, the Somali government is among the “most persistent violators” of sending children into war, finding itself on a list with notorious rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Somali government officials concede that they have not done the proper vetting. Officials also revealed that the United States government was helping pay their soldiers, an arrangement American officials confirmed, raising the possibility that the wages for some of these child combatants may have come from American taxpayers.

United Nations officials say they have offered the Somali government specific plans to demobilize the children. But Somalia’s leaders, struggling for years to withstand the insurgents’ advances, have been paralyzed by bitter infighting and are so far unresponsive.

Several American officials also said that they were concerned about the use of child soldiers and that they were pushing their Somali counterparts to be more careful. But when asked how the American government could guarantee that American money was not being used to arm children, one of the officials said, “I don’t have a good answer for that.”

According to Unicef, only two countries have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of soldiers younger than 15: the United States and Somalia.

Many human rights groups find this unacceptable, and President Obama himself, when this issue was raised during his campaign, did not disagree.

“It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land,” he said.

All across this lawless land, smooth, hairless faces peek out from behind enormous guns. In blown-out buildings, children chamber bullets twice the size of their fingers. In neighborhoods by the sea, they run checkpoints and face down four-by-four trucks, though they can barely see over the hood.

Somali government officials admit that in the rush to build a standing army, they did not discriminate.

“I’ll be honest,” said a Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject, “we were trying to find anyone who could carry a gun.”

Awil struggles to carry his. It weighs about 10 pounds. The strap digs into his bony shoulders, and he is constantly shifting it from one side to the other with a grimace.

Sometimes he gets a helping hand from his comrade Ahmed Hassan, who is 15. Ahmed said he was sent to Uganda more than two years ago for army training, when he was 12, though his claim could not be independently verified. American military advisers have been helping oversee the training of Somali government soldiers in Uganda.

“One of the things I learned,” Ahmed explained eagerly, “is how to kill with a knife.”

Children do not have many options in Somalia. After the government collapsed in 1991, an entire generation was let loose on the streets. Most children have never sat in a classroom or played in a park. Their bones have been stunted by conflict-induced famines, their psyches damaged by all the killings they have witnessed.

“What do I enjoy?” Awil asked. “I enjoy the gun.”

Like many other children here, the war has left him hard beyond his years. He loves cigarettes and is addicted to qat, a bitter leaf that, for the few hours he chews it each day, makes grim reality fade away.

He was abandoned by parents who fled to Yemen, he said, and joined a militia when he was about 7. He now lives with other government soldiers in a dive of a house littered with cigarette boxes and smelly clothes. Awil does not know exactly how old he is. His commander says he is around 12, but birth certificates are rare.

Awil gobbles down greasy rice with unwashed hands because he does not know where his next meal is coming from. He is paid about $1.50 a day, but only every now and then, like most soldiers. His bed is a fly-covered mattress that he shares with two other child soldiers, Ali Deeq, 10, and Abdulaziz, 13.

“He should be in school,” said Awil’s commander, Abdisalam Abdillahi. “But there is no school.”

Ali Sheikh Yassin, vice-chairman of Elman Peace and Human Rights Center in Mogadishu, said that about 20 percent of government troops (thought to number 5,000 to 10,000) were children and that about 80 percent of the rebels were. The leading insurgent group, which has drawn increasingly close to Al Qaeda, is called the Shabab, which means youth in Arabic.

“These kids can be so easily brainwashed,” Mr. Ali said. “They don’t even have to be paid.”

One of the myriad dangers Awil faces is constant gunfire between his squad and another group of government soldiers from a different clan. The Somali government is racked by divisions from the prime minister’s office down to the street.

“I’ve lost hope,” said Sheik Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a defense minister who abruptly quit in the past week, like several other ministers. “All this international training, it’s just training soldiers for the Shabab,” he added, saying defections had increased.

“Go ask the president what he’s accomplished in the past year,” Sheik Yusuf said, laughing. “Absolutely nothing.”

Advisers to President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed say they have fine-tuned their plans for a coming offensive, making it more of a gradual military operation to slowly take the city back from the insurgents.

Awil is eager for action. His commanders say he has already proven himself fighting against the Shabab, who used to bully him in the market.

“That made me want to join the T.F.G.,” he said. “With them, I feel like I am amongst my brothers.”

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Islamist Insurgents Seize a Pirate Base in Somalia - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and MOHAMED IBRAHIM

Radical Islamist insurgents in Somalia seized one of the country’s most notorious pirate dens on Sunday, raising questions about whether rebels with connections to Al Qaeda will now have a pipeline to tens of millions of dollars — and a new ability to threaten global trade.

Dozens of insurgents stormed into Xarardheere, a pirate cove on the central Somali coast, around noon, but instead of putting up a fight, the pirates sped off. According to witnesses, several pirate bosses raced out of town in luxury four-by-four trucks, with TVs packed in the back and mattresses strapped on top. Islamist fighters in a fleet of heavily armed pickup trucks then occupied the strategic points in town, including the defunct police station and several crossroads.

What will happen next is not clear. Two of Somalia’s biggest problems and its most troubling exports — Islamist extremism and piracy — seem to be crashing into each other.

For several years, an intense civil war has raged in the country between a weak United States-backed government and radical Islamist groups that are trying to overthrow it. The ensuing lawlessness has given rise to a thriving piracy trade, in which Somali thugs in small skiffs have commandeered some of the biggest vessels on the sea, including a 1,000-foot-long oil tanker.

Maritime experts estimate that Somali pirates have received more than $100 million in ransoms — an enormous sum for a nation with virtually no economy. The pirates prowl the busy Gulf of Aden, one of the most congested shipping lanes in the world, and recently struck as far away as 1,200 miles offshore.

The pirates of Xarardheere currently hold several hijacked ships. But before they fled, they sent the ships further out to sea to prevent Islamist insurgents from capturing their hostages — a worrying prospect for Western diplomats and others, who fear the insurgents could exploit the hostages for political ends.

An insurgent spokesman implied on Sunday that his movement would shut down Xarardheere’s piracy business.

“We have peacefully seized the town and now we will bring Islamic Shariah,” said Sheik Abdinasir Mohamed Afdhuub, a spokesman for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.

But many people fear that the insurgents were actually attracted to Xarardheere because of its criminal enterprise and that different groups of insurgents will now battle for control of the town.

“Tension is very high,” said Nor Ahmed, a Xarardheere resident. “People are worried about possible Shabab attacks any time soon.”

Hizbul Islam and the Shabab are two of the most powerful insurgent groups in Somalia and were once closely allied. Both espouse a harsh Islamist ideology and have organized public amputations and stonings. American and Somali security officials said that the leaders of both groups have worked closely with wanted terrorists of Al Qaeda.

But recently, the two groups seemed to have turned against each other. On Saturday, a deadly bombing at a mosque in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, was believed to have wounded a top Shabab official. On Sunday, another mosque was bombed, this time in the southern port town of Kismayu, where the Shabab drove out Hizbul Islam in a power struggle last year. At least two people were killed and eight wounded, in a neighborhood controlled by the Shabab.

Under strict Islamic law, piracy is considered haram (forbidden), and in 2006, during a six-month period when an Islamist movement pacified much of Somalia, the Islamists curtailed piracy significantly.

But now that Hizbul Islam and the Shabab desperately need money, the situation may be changing. The insurgents’ draconian rules banning music, television and bras have steadily alienated much of Somali society, making it harder for the insurgents to raise money and find recruits.

Additionally, Hizbul Islam lost access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in port taxes when they were kicked out of Kismayu last year and may have needed to find a new source of cash.

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mohamed Ibrahim from Djibouti.

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For Somalis caught between Islamists and weak government, fleeing is only option

Image via Wikipedia

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 17, 2010; A01

IFO, KENYA -- Two Islamist militants delivered an ultimatum to Zahra Allawi's daughters: marry them or die. The men were from al-Shabab, a militia linked to al-Qaeda that is fighting Somalia's U.S.-backed government. The two girls were 14 and 16.

Allawi said her neighbor in southeastern Somalia received the same command. But he swiftly married off his daughter to someone else. The next day, the fighters returned with a butcher's knife.

"They slaughtered him like a goat," she recalled.

Three hours later, she and her 10 children fled. After handing their life savings of $300 to a smuggler, they crossed into northeastern Kenya last month, joining tens of thousands of Somalis in this sprawling refugee settlement. They are the human fallout from Africa's most notorious failed state, haunted by unending conflict and a quiet U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

About 2 million Somalis, roughly one-fifth of the population, have sought refuge in other parts of their country or in neighboring countries, most of them since 2007, when the fighting intensified. Nearly 170,000 have fled this year alone, according to U.N. officials, arriving in desolate camps inside and outside Somalia with barely anything except the clothes on their backs.

Many are running from al-Shabab's radical dictates and increasing savagery, as well as fears of a major government offensive.

This article is based on more than 60 interviews conducted in Somali refugee communities in Kenya and Yemen. The refugees' stories of life under al-Shabab could not be independently verified, but community leaders, refugee officials and human rights groups as well as al-Shabab spokesmen gave similar accounts of recent events in Somalia.

Allawi had plenty of reasons to flee. Al-Shabab fighters, she said, once whipped her for not attending midday prayers at the mosque. Last month, she was forced to prove that the man she was walking with was her husband.

An al-Shabab commander also sought to recruit two of Allawi's sons, ages 10 and 13. Allawi begged him not to take them. In exchange, he forced her to buy three weapons for his force.

"If they could all afford to come, not a single person would remain in Somalia," said Allawi, 37, seated with her children on the reddish, sunbaked earth a day after they arrived. "There is no freedom in Somalia, only death."

Instability since 1991

War has gripped Somalia since 1991, when the collapse of President Mohamed Siad Barre's regime plunged the country into lawlessness and clan fighting. Two years later, mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. soldiers through Mogadishu, the capital, during a U.N. peacekeeping mission, an event later depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

The country has vexed U.S. policymakers, who fear that Somalia could become the next Afghanistan. In December 2006, the George W. Bush administration indirectly backed an Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Islamists, who had risen up against Somalia's secular warlords.

But within two years, the Islamists returned, more radicalized and led by al-Shabab, which in Arabic means "The Youth." The Obama administration and European nations are backing the Somali government with arms, training, logistics and intelligence.

Yet al-Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization, now controls large swaths of Somalia. It has imposed Taliban-like Islamic codes in a region where moderate Islam was once widely practiced. Urged on by Osama bin Laden, the group has steadily pushed into Mogadishu, importing foreign fighters and triggering U.S. concerns that the movement could spread to Yemen, across East Africa and beyond. Somalia's government controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu and has little legitimacy elsewhere.

Many Somalis say they believe the United States is guiding the war.

"We expect American helicopters to strike Mogadishu at any moment," said Aslia Hassan, 40, who arrived at this refugee settlement three days ago with two small plastic bags of possessions. "This is why we are running."

Al-Shabab's dictates

The refugees say they are also escaping al-Shabab's puritanical dictates. Western and Somali music is outlawed in the areas the group controls in southern and central Somalia. Movie theaters have been shuttered, and the watching of films on DVDs is prohibited. In some areas, the refugees say, playing soccer -- and even watching it on television -- is banned. So is storing pictures on cellphones and using Western-sounding ringtones. Only Koranic music is allowed.

Al-Shabab's religious police, often led by children, order people to put out cigarettes and give haircuts at gunpoint to anyone with modern hairstyles or longish hair, the refugees say. As a warning to those who defy their dictates, al-Shabab fighters have displayed severed heads on steel poles.

Women must sheath themselves from head to toe in abayas made of thick cloth and are not allowed to wear bras. In Mogadishu, buses are segregated, with women sitting in the back.

"Even if a pregnant woman asks to sit in the front of the bus, where it is less bumpy, she will be refused," said Dahaba Duko Ali, 35.

She arrived here last month with her seven children, evading al-Shabab checkpoints. Fearing the police -- Kenya has closed its border with Somalia -- the smugglers drove along back roads and dropped the family just over the border. Under cover of night, Ali and her children walked 30 miles to Ifo.

Ali Mohamud Raghe, an al-Shabab spokesman, said that "our Islamic religion tells us" to separate men from women and for women to wear thick abayas. The militia forbids all "the evil things that infidels aim to spread" among young Muslim Somalis.

"So music is among the evil actions," he said in a telephone interview.

Even donkeys are not beyond al-Shabab's dictates. The militia has decreed that donkeys cannot wear harnesses, nor can they carry more than six sacks. They are also segregated: Women can use only female donkeys; men must use male ones. "How can I feed my children?" lamented Hassan Ali Ibrahim, 40, a gaunt donkey-cart driver who arrived in Yemen with his eight children.

Savage methods

On a Friday in October, the Ibrahim brothers -- Sayeed and Osman -- were taken from their prison cell in the coastal Somali town of Kismaayo. An al-Shabab court had convicted them of robbery, they said, adding that their imprisonment was politically motivated.

The brothers and a third inmate were driven in a minibus to a field in front of a police station. A crowd of 4,000 had gathered. Ten masked men stood in the field; one held a microphone and another clutched a knife, the brothers recalled.

The third inmate, in his early 20s, was taken out of the van. Several of the masked men held him down and his foot was chopped off above the ankle, the brothers recalled.

It took five minutes.

"God is great," chanted the fighters, drowning out the screams.

Minutes later, the brothers were taken out of the van. Sayeed looked away as his brother's leg was sliced off.

"I felt powerless," Sayeed said. "I wanted a miracle to happen."

A voice over the loudspeaker announced that Sayeed's right hand and left leg were to be amputated. By the time his limbs were hacked off, he had passed out. He woke up in a hospital. After 10 days, the brothers fled Kismaayo. In February, relatives hid them inside a crowded minibus and smuggled them into Kenya.

"What they did to us has nothing to do with Islam," said Osman, as he struggled to get up from a chair with his crutches.

But Mohammed Muse Gouled, 70, said al-Shabab had helped bring stability. For years, he said, warlords contested for power and territory, and chaos and insecurity grew. "No one can harm you under the Shabab," said Gouled, adding that he fled shelling by the regional African Union peacekeeping force.

One woman's journey

Habiba Abdi, 19, was five months pregnant and unmarried. Under the dictates of al-Shabab, she would have faced death by stoning. Fighters entered her neighborhood in Kismaayo, searching for the woman with the "illegal child."

She hid with relatives. Four days later, she begged a smuggler to take her to Kenya. A few months later, she had a baby girl. She named her Sabreen, which means "tolerance."

They live here with a cousin. Other refugees taunt her as the "one who broke the law of Islam." Some call her dhilo, or whore.

But she is more worried about al-Shabab. Last year, fighters from the militia crossed into Kenya and abducted three aid workers and a Somali cleric; last week, the group raided a Kenyan border town.

"Sometimes, I prefer to die," said Abdi, as she cradled Sabreen in her arms.

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BBC News - Kenya denies links to Somalia's al-Shabab

Image by alles-schlumpf via Flickr

BBC News - Kenya denies links to Somalia's al-Shabab

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Somali Sufi group joins government to fight al-Shabab

A powerful Sufi Muslim group has joined Somalia's government to tackle the al-Qaeda-inspired al-Shabab insurgents who control large parts of the country.

The deal, signed at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia, is seen as a significant military boost for the beleaguered UN-backed government.

The Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa group controls several areas in central Somalia, where it has been fighting al-Shabab.

AU head Jean Ping welcomed the deal as a historic opportunity for peace.

He urged al-Shabab to lay down its weapons.

Rage at grave desecration

Al-Shabab and its allies control much of southern Somalia, while the government, backed by AU peacekeepers, controls only a few parts of the capital, Mogadishu.

"We have agreed to share power," said Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke at the signing ceremony.

Under the deal, Ahlu Sunna will be given five ministries and its forces will be incorporated into the government's security structures.

Ahlu Sunna and al-Shabab have very different interpretations of Islam.

However, some Ahlu Sunna factions have opposed the deal.

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Food Aid Bypasses Somalia’s Needy, U.N. Study Finds

Image by DFID - UK Department for International Development via Flickr

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and NEIL MacFARQUHAR

As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from needy people to a web of corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local United Nations staff members, according to a new Security Council report.

The report, which has not yet been made public but was shown to The New York Times by diplomats, outlines a host of problems so grave that it recommends that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon open an independent investigation into the World Food Program’s Somalia operations. It suggests that the program rebuild the food distribution system — which serves at least 2.5 million people and whose aid was worth about $485 million in 2009 — from scratch to break what it describes as a corrupt cartel of Somali distributors.

In addition to the diversion of food aid, regional Somali authorities are collaborating with pirates who hijack ships along the lawless coast, the report says, and Somali government ministers have auctioned off diplomatic visas for trips to Europe to the highest bidders, some of whom may have been pirates or insurgents.

Somali officials denied that the visa problem was widespread, and officials for the World Food Program said they had not yet seen the report but would investigate its conclusions once it was presented to the Security Council next Tuesday.

The report comes as Somalia’s transitional government is preparing for a major military offensive to retake the capital, Mogadishu, and combat an Islamist insurgency with connections to Al Qaeda.

The United States is providing military aid, as the United Nations tries to roll back two decades of anarchy in the country.

But it may be an uphill battle. According to the report, Somalia’s security forces “remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt — a composite of independent militias loyal to senior government officials and military officers who profit from the business of war.”

One American official recently conceded that Somalia’s “best hope” was the government’s new military chief, a 60-year-old former artillery officer who, until a few months ago, was assistant manager at a McDonald’s in Germany.

The report’s investigators, part of the Monitoring Group on Somalia, were originally asked to track violations of the United Nations arms embargo on Somalia, but the mandate was expanded.

Several of the report’s authors have received death threats, and the United Nations recently relocated them from Kenya to New York for safety reasons.

Possible aid obstructions have been a nettlesome topic for Somalia over the past year and have contributed to delays in aid shipments by the American government and recent suspensions of food programs in some areas by United Nations officials.

The report singles out the World Food Program, the largest aid agency in the crisis-racked country, as particularly flawed.

“Some humanitarian resources, notably food aid, have been diverted to military uses,” the report said. “A handful of Somali contractors for aid agencies have formed a cartel and become important power brokers — some of whom channel their profits, or the aid itself, directly to armed opposition groups.”

These allegations of food aid diversions first surfaced last year. The World Food Program has consistently denied finding any proof of malfeasance and said that its own recent internal audit found no widespread abuse.

“We have not yet seen the U.N. Somalia Monitoring Group report,” the World Food Program’s deputy executive director, Amir Abdulla, said Tuesday. “But we will investigate all of the allegations, as we have always done in the past if questions have been raised about our operations.”

The current report’s investigators question how independent that past audit was, and called for a new outside investigation of the United Nations agency.

“We have to tell these folks that you cannot go on like this — we know what you are doing, you can’t fool us anymore, so you better stop,” said President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, who was at the United Nations, where his country holds the presidency of the Security Council this month.

The report also charges that Somali officials are selling spots on trips to Europe and that many of the people who are presented as part of an official government entourage are actually pirates or members of militant groups.

The report says that Somali officials use their connections to foreign governments to get visas and travel documents for people who would not otherwise be able to travel abroad and that many of these people then disappear into Europe and do not come back.

“Somali ministers, members of Parliament, diplomats and ‘freelance brokers’ have transformed access to foreign visas into a growth industry, matched possibly only by piracy,” selling visas for $10,000 to $15,000 each, the report said.

The report’s authors estimate that dozens, if not hundreds of Somalis have gained access to Europe or beyond through this under-the-table visa business.

Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya, said: “Maybe there’s been one or two cases that have happened over the years. But these are just rumors. These allegations have been going around for years.”

The report also takes aim at some of Somalia’s richest, most influential businessmen, Somalia’s so-called money lords. One, Abdulkadir M. Nur, known as Eno, is married to a woman who plays a prominent role in a local aid agency that is supposed to verify whether food aid is actually delivered. That “potential loophole” could “offer considerable potential of large-scale diversion,” the report said.

The report accuses Mr. Nur of staging the hijacking of his own trucks and later selling the food.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Nur said he had sent the investigators many documents that “showed very clearly that the gossip and rumors they are investigating are untrue,” including the alleged hijacking or any link to insurgents. He said that his wife merely sat on the board of the local aid agency and that only “a tiny fraction” of the food he transported was designated for that aid agency.

In September, Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, wrote a letter to Secretary General Ban, defending Mr. Nur as a “very conscientious, diligent and hard-working person” and saying that if it were not for the contractors, “many Somalis would have perished.”

The report questions why the World Food Program would steer 80 percent of its transportation contracts for Somalia, worth about $200 million, to three Somali businessmen, especially when they are suspected of connections to Islamist insurgents.

The report says that fraud is pervasive, with about 30 percent of aid skimmed by local partners and local World Food Program personnel, 10 percent by the ground transporters and 5 to 10 percent by the armed group in control of the area. That means as much as half of the food never makes it to the people who desperately need it.

In January, the United States halted tens of millions of dollars of aid shipments to southern Somalia because of fears of such diversions, and American officials believe that some American aid may have fallen into the hands of Al Shabab, the most militant of Somalia’s insurgent groups.

The report also said that the president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northern Somalia, had extensive ties to pirates in the area, who then funneled some of the money they made from hijacking ships to authorities.

Puntland authorities could not be reached on Tuesday, but Mr. Aden, the Somali diplomat, dismissed the allegations, saying that the Puntland government had jailed more than 150 pirates and that it had not “received a penny from them.”

“It’s unfortunate that this monitoring group thinks they can stick everything on the Somalis,” he said.

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Gisenyi, Rwanda, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.

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Somalis fleeing to Yemen prompt new worries in fight against al-Qaeda

Image by Remolacha.net pics via Flickr

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 12, 2010; A01

KHARAZ, YEMEN -- Thousands of Somali boys and teenagers fleeing war and chaos at home are sailing to Yemen, where officials who have long welcomed Somali refugees now worry that the new arrivals could become the next generation of al-Qaeda fighters.

As the United States deepens its counterterrorism operations in Yemen, officials are concerned that extremists could find growing Somali refugee camps fertile ground for recruiting. U.S. and Yemeni authorities also fear that Islamist fighters from Somalia could slip into the country among the throngs of refugees, deepening ties between al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen and the particularly hard-line militants of Somalia.

Fleeing a failed state for a failing one, the Somali youths arrive daily in this refugee outpost, which is filled with rickety tents and tales of misery, in the vast desert of southern Yemen. They bring stories of brutality and forced conscription by al-Shabab, an Islamist force battling Somalia's U.S.-backed transitional government.

"They ordered us to fight the nonbelievers," said Abdul Khadr Salot, 19, a burly ex-fighter with a thin scar across his cheek who escaped from a militant training camp. "Even if your father tells you to leave the Shabab, you must kill him."

Image by Monica's Dad via Flickr

But this longtime haven is becoming increasingly inhospitable since the United States bolstered its operations here, largely in response to the Yemeni al-Qaeda connections of the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to bomb a U.S. airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, and to the links of an extremist Yemeni American cleric to the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex.

Yemen's fragile government fears that Somali fighters from al-Shabab will swell the ranks of Yemen's Islamist militants at a time when links between the Somali group and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are growing, according to Yemeni officials and analysts.

As it quietly wages war against extremists in the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa, the Obama administration could find itself confronting a unified, regional al-Qaeda on two continents. This would further stretch U.S. resources as Washington fights major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could also push Yemen -- beset by mounting internal strife, poor governance, extreme poverty and dwindling resources -- even deeper into a downward spiral.

"Somalia for Yemen is becoming like what Pakistan is for Afghanistan," said Saeed Obaid, a Yemeni terrorism expert who wrote a book on al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate.

Leaders of al-Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda's central body, said last week that they will send fighters to help al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. That prompted Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi to issue a stern warning through the state-run Saba news agency that Yemen will not allow "any terrorist elements from any country to operate in its territory."

In recent days, Yemeni security forces have staged raids on Somali refugee communities, detaining suspected loyalists of al-Shabab, which means "The Youth." Overnight, an atmosphere of fear has gripped the community, which numbers more than 1 million.

"The climate has changed, and it is heating up," Mohammed Ali, a top leader of the Somali community in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, lamented over a glass of Somali coffee.

An estimated 74,000 African refugees, mostly from Somalia and Ethiopia, arrived in Yemen last year, 50 percent more than in 2008, according to statistics from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR officials say 309 either drowned in capsized boats or were killed by smugglers.

Forced recruitment

In September, a gang of al-Shabab fighters grabbed 14-year-old Saber Ahmed at his father's shop in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

They blindfolded him and took him to a nearby militia base, he said. There, they brought out recruits he knew from his neighborhood, who urged him to join. The peer pressure didn't work. Then, an al-Shabab commander gave him an ultimatum.

"He said, 'We will kill you if you don't join us,' " recalled Ahmed, tall and lanky with a soft voice and chiseled face.

After 20 days of training, he was sent to the front lines. Within hours, he said, a battle erupted; Ahmed was shot in the leg. He managed to crawl to his house. His father took him to a hospital. When Ahmed regained consciousness, his father gave him $100 and ordered him to flee to Yemen.

In the Somali port of Bossaso, he handed the money to a smuggler, who placed him on a crowded boat headed for a treacherous sea. As the boat neared Yemen, it flipped over. Ahmed swam nearly a mile to the shore. He later learned that seven passengers had drowned.

Ahmed's experience is a familiar one, according to Somali community leaders and officials at the UNHCR, which runs the camp here in Kharaz. Parents often say they bring their children to Yemen to prevent them from one day joining al-Shabab. "It's very easy to brainwash youth. They tell them, 'We'll give you money. We'll give you power,' " said Rocco Nuri, a UNHCR official in Aden.

When told that former al-Shabab fighters were in Kharaz, Nuri expressed concern but said it was "impossible to monitor this" in an open camp where residents come and go freely. Nevertheless, he expressed confidence that the camp is not a haven or recruiting hub for Somali militants.

In Yemen, Somalis are worse off than Yemenis. Jobs are scarce. Thousands of Somali youths eke out a living washing cars. They sleep under trees and bathe in public water tanks. Most Somali refugees view Yemen as a transit point to richer nations such as Saudi Arabia. But in recent months, a war between the Yemeni government and Shiite Hawthi rebels in the north has stemmed the migration.

Salafist schools, which teach a puritanical brand of Islam, have attracted several hundred young Somali refugees with offers of free food and lodging, said Somali community leaders. They fear some could join al-Shabab.

"Some boys did return back to Somalia," said Deka Muhamed, a Somali elder in Sanaa. "We've heard they've been killed, but we don't know how or why."

Yemeni officials, meanwhile, worry that al-Qaeda could lure Somali ex-fighters into their ranks with promises of money or aid. But so far, there has been no evidence of this, say Western diplomats and Yemeni officials.

In an audiotape last year, Osama bin Laden exhorted al-Shabab to overthrow the Somali government. Radical Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, whom the United States has linked to the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing and to the gunman charged in the massacre at Fort Hood, has also expressed support for al-Shabab.

Yemeni officials and analysts say there is regular communication between al-Qaeda militants in Yemen and al-Shabab. Last week, Somalia's state minister for defense declared that Yemeni militants had sent al-Shabab two boats filled with arms. They have also traveled to Somalia to fight.

"Some elements went to Somalia. Some were killed there," said Rashad al-Alimi, Yemen's deputy prime minister for security and defense.

Foreign Minister Qirbi, in an interview before the failed Christmas Day attack, urged Western nations to provide greater support for Yemen's coast guard to protect its shores from militants entering or leaving. "We also need better surveillance of refugees in the country," he said.

'All become suspects'

Many Somali refugees refuse to leave their houses at night, fearing they will be picked up in a security sweep. "Nobody carries a Shabab I.D. It's not written on our foreheads," said Ali, the community leader. "We have all become suspects."

Most Somalis, he noted, practice a moderate form of Islam that stresses tolerance.

At the Somali Refugee Council office in Sanaa, more than 20 refugees have reported losing their jobs in the past week, said Mohamed Abdi Gabobe, its chairman. The council, he said, is planning a demonstration to show solidarity with Yemen, in the hopes that this will lessen the pressure on the community.

But many refugees are worried about their futures. They say they have become the latest victims in the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

"When two elephants fight each other, it is always the grass that is destroyed," said Sadat Mohamed Yusuf, a Somali community leader. "We are the grass."

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Somali Rebels Pledge to Send Fighters to Aid Yemen Jihad

Image via Wikipedia

By MOHAMMED IBRAHIM

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Senior leaders of the Shabab rebels promised Friday to send their fighters beyond Somalia to Yemen and wherever jihad beckoned.

In a military ceremony here, where the rebels publicly showed off hundreds of new recruits, Sheik Muktar Robow, a senior rebel official, said the group would “send fighters to Yemen to assist our brothers.”

He said that the fighters had been trained to fight the African Union peacekeeping force and the transitional federal government in Somalia but that Yemen was just across the Gulf of Aden and that “our brothers must be ready for our welcome.”

While it was not clear when or whether the rebels could carry out their threat, the avowed goals signaled a shift in strategy from an Islamist insurgency that has drawn foreign fighters here to one that aims to provide them to insurgencies abroad.

The Shabab have increased their ties with Al Qaeda, which has recently been fighting the American-backed military in Yemen.

A Shabab spokesman, Sheik Ali Mohamoud Rageh, said the fighters, who had just completed military training, would fight in every corner of the world that is ready for jihad, or holy war.

The Shabab and allied Islamist insurgent groups control most of Somalia, while the weak transitional government controls a small enclave in Mogadishu, the capital, under the protection of African Union peacekeeping troops.

At the ceremony on Friday at a rebel camp near the former animal market in northern Mogadishu, hundreds of jubilant fighters paraded before reporters and senior rebel leaders chanting, “God is great.” It was the first time the rebels had presented their recruits to the news media.

The officials rebuffed reports of a split among Shabab fighters and vowed that they would unite with a rival rebel group, Hizbul Islam.

Somalia has not had effective central government since the former government was overthrown by armed clan militias in 1991, leading to the current chaos.

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Al-Shabab Militants Divided over Tactics, Foreign Control

A rising dispute between militants in Somalia may have split the country's al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group into two factions. Reports say the suicide bombing at a Mogadishu hotel earlier this month deepened divisions between an al-Shabab leader closely aligned with foreigners and another opposed to foreigners dictating the group's agenda.

Alisha Ryu | Nairobi 22 December 2009

Photo: AFP

Somali man is carried away from scene of suicide bomb attack during university student graduation ceremony at a local hotel in Mogadishu, 3 Dec 2009

Reports say a dispute has been simmering for months between the Mogadishu-based ultra-hardline al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Abu Zubayr, and Muktar Robow Abu Mansour, a leader based in the Bay region, southwest of Mogadishu.

Godane, who came to power after the death of al-Shabab founder Aden Hashi Ayro in a U.S. missile strike in May 2008, is firmly committed to the idea of using al-Qaida-trained foreign fighters to help al-Shabab violently overthrow Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government and establish an Islamic caliphate in Somalia. Robow is reported to be in favor of engaging in talks with al-Shabab rivals and maintaining a popular backing for the militant group.

International Crisis Group, Horn of Africa analyst Rashid Abdi says al-Shabab has a decentralized leadership structure that has been vulnerable to dissent.

"It has serious trouble in the sense that those who are wedded to the idea of a permanent global jihad with Somalia as a staging post are now in the driver's seat," he said. "Foreign jihadis are the ones who are calling the shots. They are the ones who are behind the waves of suicide bombings, which have caused horrific civilian casualties. And increasingly, they are alienating those people who have a local agenda."

The exact number of foreigners in Somalia is not known. But in June, the president of Somalia's transitional federal government, Sharif Sheik Ahmed, said hundreds had arrived in the country to support al-Shabab. According to VOA sources in Somalia, many foreigners are based at al-Shabab training camps in the towns of Marka, Barawe, and Kismayo, teaching thousands of recruits bomb-making skills and guerrilla fighting tactics.

Officials in Somalia say one of these recruits, a Somali man who had grown up in Denmark, carried out the December 3 suicide bombing at a graduation ceremony for medical students attended by several government ministers. The blast killed four ministers, but also killed and wounded at least 60 bystanders.

Amid a public outcry, al-Shabab's Mogadishu-based spokesman Ali Mohamed Rage denied his group had carried out the bombing. The denial prompted some observers to speculate that foreign al-Shabab commanders may have planned the mission without consulting some of their key Somali counterparts or receiving their endorsement.

Rashid Abdi says the bombing has convinced many ordinary Somalis that al-Shabab is increasingly being controlled by foreign fighters, who have no regard for Somali lives.

Abdi says that public perception could now give Somalia's beleaguered president an opportunity to erase the humiliation his government suffered six months ago, when it was forced to beg for troops from neighboring countries to keep the government from being toppled.

"We have to be cautious. Anger against al-Shabab does not necessarily translate into support for Sharif. But Sharif has to get out there and try to regain the political territory lost to al-Shabab," he added.

On Monday, President Sharif attended the opening session of the Somali transitional parliament in Mogadishu, dressed in a military uniform. He said the time had come to re-take the country from al-Shabab and urged parliament members and Somali citizens to assist the government in efforts to defeat the militants.

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Somali Money From Abroad Is a Lifeline at Home - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH

PARIS — As Somalis struggle to survive the chaos that has overtaken their country, a network of companies that distribute money from the nation’s large diaspora has quietly expanded, providing a crucial safety net.

As in other poor countries, the main purpose of these companies is to ensure that money from those working abroad reaches family members left behind.

But in war-torn Somalia, where the government has little control of the country and is itself struggling to survive, the companies are now also helping international organizations shift money into and within Somalia, according to the World Bank, academics and aid workers.

And in Somaliland, a breakaway region where the government is more stable than in other parts of the country, the Somali diaspora has contributed money for education, health and other social programs.

“The remittance system has become the lifeline for the Somali people and the lifeblood of the economy during the last two decades of civil strife,” said Samuel Munzele Maimbo, a World Bank specialist based in Mozambique, who added that many Somalis survived only because of the money from abroad. For others, the money has been crucial to establishing or propping up businesses.

A study sponsored by the British Department for International Development from May 2008 found that 80 percent of the start-up capital for small and medium-size enterprises in Somalia benefit from money sent by the diaspora.

Dilip Ratha, a World Bank economist, said that Somalia, like Haiti, was among the countries that are the most dependent on money from abroad.

The remittance system — and its importance in Somalia — has grown as decades of political upheaval have driven many Somalis abroad and, in recent years, as Islamists have wrested control over much of the country from a weak transitional government. The government, which has international support, is trapped in a small section of the capital under the protection of African Union peacekeepers.

A recent study by the United Nations Development Program estimated the size of the Somali diaspora at more than one million and the amount of annual remittances to Somalia at up to $1 billion, equivalent to about 18 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

The system began to take off during the dictatorial rule of President Mohammed Siad Barre, who ran the country from 1969 to 1991. As the banking system weakened, according to Mohamed Waldo, a consultant who has worked with Somali remittance companies, traders stepped in with a solution: act as middlemen in the resale of consumer goods shipped home by the increasing number of Somalis working abroad, especially in the Persian Gulf region. The traders kept a small cut of the proceeds and turned the rest over to the laborers’ relatives in Somalia. The shipments got around currency restrictions.

Eventually, when the government collapsed, Somali workers abroad began to send money instead.

Mr. Waldo said that these days, there were more than 20 active Somali remittance companies, five of them large. One of the leading companies is Dahabshiil, founded in the early 1970s by Mohamed Said Duale from his general store in Burao in northwest Somalia.

In 1988, fighting between government forces and rebels with the Somali National Movement swept Burao. Mr. Duale subsequently left the country and continued his work from abroad.

In 1991, when the Barre government was overthrown, Mr. Duale returned to Somalia. He opened offices in major towns and later in remote villages that the Western money-transfer giants would struggle to serve.

“Through word of mouth we built this business,” said his son, Abdirashid Duale, now chief executive of the company.

Today, Dahabshiil says it has more than 1,000 branches and agents in 40 countries.

The United Nations Development Program uses Dahabshiil to transfer money for local programs, said Álvaro Rodríguez, the agency’s director for Somalia. Such companies provide “the only safe and efficient option to transfer funds to projects benefiting the most vulnerable people of Somalia,” he said. “Their service is fast and efficient.”

Abdirashid Duale, who gives his age as “35, but with 25 years of experience,” declined to provide profit or revenue figures, saying that would only help his competitors. The company charges commissions that vary from 1 percent to 5 percent depending on the size of the transaction; he said most Somalis he worked with abroad sent home $200 to $300 a month.

Nikos Passas, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston who researches terrorism and white-collar crime, said Dahabshiil was helped by the closing of a larger rival, Al Barakaat, at the behest of the United States authorities in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the end, F.B.I. agents found no evidence linking Al Barakaat to terrorist financing. But for Dahabshiil, gaining market share from Al Barakaat was “like shooting fish in a barrel,” Professor Passas said.

Dahabshiil’s image has been helped by its charitable works. It says it invests 5 percent of annual profit in such ventures; Abdirashid Duale said this represented around $1 million a year.

In Mogadishu — a city of pockmarked Italian architecture and rubble — Dahabshiil operates from Bakara Market, despite continued clashes in the area between the weak government and Islamist insurgents.

Its office, in an unassuming two-story building, is protected by security guards.

Looking ahead, Abdirashid Duale plans more expansion.

“One day the fighting will stop,” he said, “and we will still be here.”

Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu.