Emerging threat of ISIS forces Somalia, US to old tools
The aftermath of a terror attack in Mogadishu, Somalia on October 29, 2022. Recently, ISIS attacked a military camp of Puntland troops in one of the deadliest suicide missions.
Somalia's Puntland region seemed stable and peaceful. But that calm seems to have broken in the past month.
First, ISIS attacked a military camp of Puntland troops in one of the deadliest suicide missions.
Last week, the US launched its first airstrike on the group in Somalia, destroying its hideouts in the mountains of Puntland. The raid came as authorities in Puntland brought together elders to try and tame the spread of violent extremism ideologies.
On Monday, Puntland authorities reported capturing a high-ranking member of ISIS, identified as Abdirahman Shirwac Aw-Saciid, also known as Lahoor.
Lahoor had been the head of ISIS assassinations unit, according to a dispatch from Puntland security ministry, and had been accused of planning the attack on forces in Bosaso, Puntland’s largest port city. His capture was said to be the result of a network of informants led by clan elders now tasked with finding out terror merchants in the community.
On Saturday, Pete Hegseth, US Defence Secretary, said that the strikes by US Africa Command (Africom), on the direction of President Donald Trump and in coordination with Somalia’s government raided ISIS hideouts in Golis Mountains in Puntland.
Trump stated, “The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.”
“Our Military has targeted this ISIS Attack Planner for years, but (Joe) Biden and his cronies wouldn’t act quickly enough to get the job done. I did!” the president added, referring to the administration that preceded his.
Besides the politics, aerial raids seem to be a complimentary tactic to countering the ideology on the ground, largely because ISIS in Somalia has been stayed in the rugged mountains away from reach in Puntland.
The Igad Centre of Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (ICEPCVE) says it has observed a growing prominence of the ISIS in Puntland with a high number of foreign fighters being recruited into the group from countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Mozambique, Morocco, Yemen and Libya.
“The number of the fighters has steadily increased from about 200 to now over 500,” said Dr Simon Nyambura, director of the Igad Centre. Although originally a splinter of al-Shabaab, the group may have profited from the fact that more of the regional and international attention was focused on the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab, allowing it a decade of steady rise from a sleepy cell to the current menace and becoming a major source of finance for operations as far as in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique.
There is something else: being in Puntland allowed the group unfettered extortion and less competition for resources from al-Shabaab.
“The group’s presence in northern Somalia is rather strategic for financial reasons because Puntland is geostrategically located with access to trade routes with the port of Bosaso which ISIS uses to generate revenue through illicit activities such as extortion, kidnapping and smuggling of goods and weapons,” Dr Nyambura told The EastAfrican on Monday.
The decision by ISIS, or Daesh in Arabic, to set up base in Puntland, was opportunistic in 2015, according to Abdisaid Ali, a former foreign minister in Somalia, now chairperson of the Lomé Security and Peace Forum.
“There are geopolitical tensions and internal cleavages that sustained the group,” he said, arguing the solution may lie in a non-military way of doing things.
“An important aspect of addressing these complex interplay of factors is to rethink of how the national and international actors are interacting with the Puntland authorities?”
But ISIS itself has taken advantage of the gaps in communication channels to launch its own campaign. For example, Igad Centre says it has observed an increase in frequency of attacks by ISIS targeting security forces as the group disseminates its propaganda through social media in local languages such as Amharic and Oromo in Ethiopia and Somali in Somalia.
The Centre speculates that the group will get more aggressive in recruitment processes and expand influence with the potential of increased recurrence of attacks.
Ali said one gap noted in Somalia is authorities using the wrong method to address local problems. For example, traditionally, donors have often focused on specific issues like health and education through the federal government, rather than targeting the solutions via local communities.
“Donors in Mogadishu have continued to design interventions with a top-down approach, they’re probably well-meaning external actors and FGS (federal government of Somalia) dictating solutions without fully grasping the intricacies of the context in Somalia,” Ali told The EastAfrican.
“In Somalia’s context the local actors are best positioned to understand the unique challenges, conflicts and strengths of their communities. FGS must understand that the local insights and implementation are invaluable in crafting interventions that are not only effective but also beneficial politically and contextually appropriate in the context of fighting Daesh.”
In Puntland, however, dialogue channels have already seen an improvement in responses to threats of ISIS. ICEPCVE indicated that it has been studying how ISIS is taking advantage of certain narratives to recruit fighters or radicalise youth and work with authorities to counter them.
It said it is continuing “with efforts to enhance capacities of the communities including the religious leaders, civil society, youth, and media to identify the narratives being perpetrated by violent extremist groups including ISIS to radicalise and recruit and how to develop counter/alternative narratives to discredit them.”
Somalia belongs to 87 countries across the world known as the Coalition against ISIS. Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia are the other countries in the Horn in this Coalition that has committed to “the goal of eliminating the threat posed by ISIS and have already contributed in various capacities to the effort to combat ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and globally,” according to a profile of the bloc.
After the airstrike last week, Somalia said such “unwavering counterterrorism partnership” will help bring stability to the region.
“By removing key figures from the battlefield, Somalia and the United States reaffirm their commitment to ensuring security and stability, averting extremist networks from gaining ground, and protecting innocent lives,” the Villa Somalia said.
The FGS and Puntland have started speaking on common terms about countering violent extremism, following months of frosty relations. In December, Puntland leader Said Abdullahi Deni declared ‘war’ on ISIS, inviting international and regional support.
Since then the State’s force locally known as Dervish confronted the extremist fighters comprising of local militants and foreign fighters, are locally referred to as migrant jihadists, seizing tens of bases at Cal Maskat.
On Saturday, Puntland thanked the United States and the United Arab Emirates for their support in the ongoing military offensive against ISIS militants in Bari region.
Ali Farah Ali ‘Farmayeri’, director of Puntland Development Research Centre (PDRC), a non-profit research institution, said the rugged terrain has been providing refugee to extremists.
“The armed operation by Puntland against was caused by reliable reports of ever growing number of jihadists mainly foreigners sneaking into the mountain areas,” he told The EastAfrican from Garowe, the capital of Puntland state. In the mountains, he said, the fighters are trying to settle in with wives they have reportedly moved with from lower areas.
Trump, however, says it won’t matter where the terror merchants hide.
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