Somalia... New jihadist land for extremist organizations

The civil war in Somalia has played an important role in creating internal conditions conducive to the establishment and  spreading of Islamic Jihad movements and groups, including the Union of Islamic Courts, which dominated most areas in Somalia before its collapse in 2006.

For a long time, Somalia has witnessed many challenges between the Islamic reactionary identity and the attempts of national progress, two trends that do not agree or meet. This divided country between the Salafi-Takfiri seculars and the attempts of president, Muhammad Abdullah Muhammad Faramaju, to create a progressive atmosphere to lift Somalia out of bloody conflicts to catch  the process of human civilization.

However, the emergence of many extremist organizations, especially  Daesh posed  the most formidable challenges facing Somalia as   this country  is filled d by the extremist ideology, which was able to penetrate all the way, in schools and universities, which produced three generations of successive Islamists.

It is worth noting that Somalia has not witnessed for more than a century a stable and fundamental concept of any country. This has made it a breeding ground and fertile environment for the emergence of extremist ideas, where the civil war lasted for two decades from 1988 to 2006.

Crisis and extremism

Somalia for  long periods has many crises that had a prominent role in making it the jihadist destination of many organizations, such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh, Perhaps the most prominent of these events:

1) the conflict between Somalia, on one hand and  Kenya and Ethiopia on the other  , which led to the Ogaden war between Somalia and Ethiopia and the defeat of Somalia and the loss of the Ogaden region.

2) Somalia was caught in the quagmire of the civil war between 1989 and 1990 between both the government and the Somali National Movement in the northwest. Somalia also witnessed a conflict between the government and the tribal liberation forces. The civil war lasted for two decades from 1988 to 2006, and the central country was absent “lost”

3) Somalia suffered  many declarations of independence of self-entities, in 1998, Puntland declared unilateral independence. In the same year, Juba Land declared independence in the south. In 1999, the Rahhonin army stated that Bay  And Bakol are independent  in the south and the heart of Somalia, as well as  another split in Jalmodj in 2006.

4) For three decades, Somalia has waves of drought and famine, denial of education and social services, and total underdevelopment in all spheres of life.

5) The absence of Islamic and national discourse,  led to the dominance of the Takfiri conduct of the Salafist movement, which promotes hostility and the absence of opportunities for stability and achieving peace. Accordingly  the jihadist discourse is the only option available to the Somalis.

Jihadist Incubator

In the past, the Islamic movements in Somalia used religion as a factor to unite the Somalis in the face of Western occupation, especially during the period of national independence. After the declaration of the Italian tutelage of Somalia in 1949 and the increasing activities of the Christian missionary organizations the Somali Islamicc league emerged in 1952. This association received support from the party «Somali Youth League», founded in 1943 as a social-cultural association, and then turned into a political party in 1947  aiming  at the liberation of Somalia from occupation.

The Somali Islamist movements were characterized by movements that were immature and passionate in connection with Islamic consciousness. They enjoyed poor  organizational capacity, few economic resources and an impractical approach to social and political realitie. Moreover, all these organizations were in their initial stages of operation and worked  secretly, where all forms of social and political participation were tightly closed by the military regime.

Because radicalism creates only counter-extremism, the radicalization of the Somali regimes of the Islamic movement, and the immaturity of the Islamic consciousness of that generation, contributed to the transformation of these movements from moderation to militancy.

There has been a societal environment and climate favorable to extremist ideology in Somalia, such as Salafi Jihadism and Takfiris (the Muslim community), as well as the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The extremist organizations map

Somalia embraces many extremist Islamic groups that adopt an armed approach and share among themselves in the general framework of jihadist activity who  are the most prominent Islamic movements in Somalia:

1) The Islamic Party: It is a jihadi group composed of 4 Islamic fronts united in 2009, which aims to unite the efforts of extremist Islamic groups, led the party «Omar Iman Abu Bakr» before announcing his resignation from the presidency of the party on May 25, 2009, on After him the party «Hassan Tahir Awis».

In 2010, the official spokesman of the Islamic Party, "Mohammed Osman Aros," the unification of the ranks of the party with the Mujahedeen Movement of al-Qaeda, in order to unite the jihadist action against the Somali government.

2) The movement of Ahl al-Sunnah and al-Jama'ah: The armed wing of the movement of Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama'a emerged in Somalia at the end of 2008 when its militias clashed with al-Shabaab fighters and the Islamic Party in areas of central and southern Somalia controlled by the two movements. Cities in the south and center of the country.

3) The Mujahedeen Youth Movement: A Somali Salafist movement that emerged in 2006 as a military arm of the Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled Mogadishu, it was founded as a means of self-protection due to resentment of the existing jihadist organizations. Mujahideen Movement to the end of the nineties as one of the dissident factions of the group «Islamic Union» Salafi.

Al-Shabab al-Islamiyya was declared the leader of the al-Shabab al-Islamiyya movement after it was confirmed that its former leader Mokhtar Abi Zubayr, also known as the " Ahmed Abdi Goudan »who was killed in a US air strike. In the same year, al-Shabab renewed their loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al Qaeda leader.

ISIS and the possibility of proliferation

The successive defeats suffered by a pro-Syrian organization in Syria and Iraq in December 2017, and the loss of many areas of influence in the country of origin, were the main motive for many extremist groups to change their jihadist orientation to many regions; especially Afghanistan in Asia and Somalia in civil war since in 1991.

Despite the fact that Somalia's "pacifier" is still in the making, despite its declaration of presence in Somalia in October 2015, it emerged largely after the assassination of Ahmed Abdi Godani, the spiritual leader of al Shabaab, in a US air strike in September 2014.

The killing of "Godani" has had a great impact on the Somali youth movement, which has been subjected to many internal divisions and divisions within the movement, where the liquidation of internal accounts to deepen the differences, this cracking between the ranks of the movement led to the allegiance of many dissident fighters to ISIS and its leader, "Abu Bakr al - Baghdadi”, and ISIS has become a staunch organization that attracts increasing numbers of fighters from abroad.

The new strategy of ISIS, focusing on the organizations close to the shipping lanes, similar to that of the Mujahedeen Youth Movement in Somalia, which is the most dangerous shift of the threats emanating from the regional expansions of the organization, began to review the current changes in the map of regional expansion of " Reveal the extent to which the organization was able to achieve, especially in the same time of the announcement of various terrorist groups sold to him, similar to Boko Haram group in Nigeria and other extremist groups.

It is worth mentioning that despite the security constraints and military prosecutions of the Mujahedeen Movement and the Mujahedeen Movement, there are 68 Somali fighters in a sympathetic organization in Iraq and Syria, in light of the increasing numbers of those who belong to it.

Dozens of armed men from ISIS organization took control of the coastal town of Kundala in the northern Puntland region, calling it the headquarters of the "Islamic Caliphate in Somalia.", they killed a number of civilians, forcing more than 20,000 people to flee for weeks, and detained the city of Pusasu Commercial Center in Puntland

Despite the lack of a "stingy" trick in the north-east of Somalia, and the lack of fingerprints is large, but the threat of the threat to the region raised concern locally and internationally, and the American strikes came to shed light on this fear, in a strong message to respond to the supposed rise of the followers of «ISIS» In Somalia, and drew the world's attention to the seriousness of extremist organizations in the countries of the Horn of Africa, including Somalia.