The Boys from Kismayo

It makes sense to refer to al Shabaab (الشباب‎) as "boys", as that's exactly what the word means in Arabic. The organisation's full name is the "Mujahadeen Youth Movement" (حركة الشباب المجاهدين‎), possibly to differentiate themselves from the many Gulf Arab football clubs also called "al Shabaab". Its built around a core of veterans who fought for the now-defunct Islamic Courts Union (ICU) when it took Mogadishu in 2006, back when al Shabaab was just a hardline youth faction under the ICU. Since the ICU's fall, al Shabaab seems to have become its successor organisation, albeit in the form of an alliance of jihadi militias rather than an actual government in the ICU mould.


But the boys have just moved into the big leagues: today, on the outskirts of Mogadishu, where the embattled Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is under siege, hundreds of Somalis rallied in support of the merger announced a few days ago -the merger of al Shabaab and al Qaeda. Yes, that al Qaeda, not another poorly-named football club. Al Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the merger first, in an online clip which included an audio recording by Al-Shabaab’s leader Ahmed Abdi Godane in which he pledged allegiance to Zawahiri. Today, the (appropriately named) al Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told the gathered crowds of armed men and veiled women outside Mogadishu that al Shabaab is "happy" with the merger. Al Shabaab is no longer just an affiliate of al Qaeda, it is a full-blown part of it. In essence, it has become al Qaeda's Somalian youth wing, its regional feeder club.


Why would al Shabaab choose to fully merge into an organisation which has lost much of its leadership over the past year and whose ability to both inspire and terrify seems to have sharply declined? Mostly because al Shabaab's own fortunes have fared none-too-well recently, and this has brought pressure on Godane, easily the most pro-al Qaeda amongst al Shabaab's leading figures (barring the actual al Qaeda members already on loan to them in Somalia). Godane has already seen a split emerge amongst the leadership last year as the southern al Shabaab commanders favored lifting Godane's ban on Western emergency aid (due to the ongoing East African famine), and in July he was (briefly) forced to back down and lift some restrictions, although they have largely been restored. Al Shabaab has also suffered multiple military setbacks recently, losing the strategic border towns of Bulo Hawo and Dhobley in spring 2011, and their "tactical retreat" in which they surrendered all of Mogadishu to the TFG in August (followed by the loss of the town of Beledweyne in December). This pullout from Mogadishu may well have been linked to the aforementioned leadership split, and it has had serious ramifications for al Shabaab's finances: it lost the taxes it collected from about 4,000 shops in Mogadishu (ranging from $50 a month each from small traders to thousands from telecom companies). This isn't to say al Shabaab is broke (it still enjoys a lucrative charcoal export business out of the port of Kismayo, Somalia's second city, and may also be receiving money from the Eritrean government according to the UN), but the financial blow was significant. Some of the southern commanders who wanted the aid ban lifted now support abandoning any attempt to retake Mogadishu altogether. In this environment, Godane badly needs a win.


Godane has (not surprisingly) also grown increasingly paranoid about enemies within al Shabaab acting against him. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a top Godane ally and native of Comoros who was al-Qaeda's military operations chief in East Africa, was killed at a government roadblock in Mogadishu, leading Godane to suspect that his enemies within al Shabaab had tricked Fazul into an ambush. This paranoia can only have been re-enforced by the killing of Bilal el-Berjawi, a British national and al Qaeda member who acted as trainer for al Shabaab, by a US drone attack just three weeks ago. Facing significant internal opposition, Godane may now see foreign fighters from al Qaeda as his most valuable and most loyal allies, and thus an outright merger with al Qaeda (presumably to be accompanied by greater support from al Qaeda abroad, especially in terms of personnel) may seem like the best move to re-enforce his leadership and control of al Shabaab. The merger re-affirms the organisation's commitment to the global jihad movement (the basis on which it receives the aid from al Qaeda Godane seems increasingly reliant on) and is likely to help al Shabaab in terms of recruitment (both amongst Somalis and non-Somalis abroad, likely to Godane's pleasure) and finances.


Finally, it is notable that al Shabaab is moving more and more in the direction of a global jihadi organisation rather than a strictly Somalia-centric one. In November 2010 al Shabaab established an "Al Quds Brigade" specifically tasked with attacking Israel and Jewish targets throughout Africa. Since at least January 2010 al Shabaab has been exchanging fighters with rebels in Yemen, and in the same month a man linked with al Shabaab attempted to kill one of the Danish authors of the "Mohammed cartoons". Al Shabaab declared jihad against Kenya last February for its support of the TFG, and may well be linked to recent kidnappings in north-east Kenya. Most significantly, al Shabaab has attracted dozens of American Somalis (mostly from the Minneapolis area) to travel to Somalia to join their cause. Last October, one of these American recruits called for terrorist attacks against the US in his martyrdom video (before blowing himself up in Mogadishu, the fourth American to do so). The US is a noted backer of the TFG and, of course, enemy of al Qaeda. It is this connection which makes the merger with Al Qaeda so worrying. As General Carter Ham, head of AFRICOM, said in late 2010:


"If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it is the thought of an American passport-holding person who transits through a training camp in Somalia and gets some skill and then finds their way back into the United States to attack Americans here in our homeland".


Having secured his position (now as manager for a feeder club to a much larger franchise), and hoping to increase revenue and draw in foreign players, Godane seems to be looking to make his boys bigger players on the world stage -and that may well mean sending some of the team out "on tour".