Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

22. “Every Step Taken by the US Benefited al Shabab”

SOMALIA, 2007–2009—While much of the media focus on Somalia in early 2007 was on the Ethiopian invasion and occupation, JSOC was focused on hunting. It had quickly set up its makeshift “lily pad” at the discreet US base in Manda Bay, Kenya, in early January and was waiting to pounce. US war planners wanted the Ethiopian invasion to force the Islamic Courts Union leadership to flee the capital and head for strongholds, especially along the Kenyan border, where Task Force 88 could take them out. JSOC had AC-130 gunships positioned covertly at an airbase near Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, that could pummel retreating ICU leaders and foreign fighters, enabling follow-up JSOC teams based at Manda Bay to enter Somalia and finish the job, if necessary. US policy had boiled down to one mentality in Somalia: find, fix and finish. “It’s kinetic, hard kill,” asserted Malcolm Nance. “If it’s not hard kill, it doesn’t get played, you know?”

On January 7, an unarmed US Predator drone launched from Camp Lemonnier flew into southern Somalia, tracked down a convoy of vehicles and broadcast a live feed of them back to task force commanders. A short time later, an AC-130 flew into Somalia and strafed the convoy just before it disappeared into a forest along the Kenya-Somalia border. Reports suggested that the target was Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, al Shabab’s military commander; or Fazul or Nabhan, the East Africa al Qaeda leaders. US officials claimed the strike killed between eight and twelve fighters, and rumors spread of an “al Qaeda leader” being among the dead. US and Ethiopian intelligence sources believed it might have been Ayro or Abu Talha al Sudani, the al Qaeda financier. A JSOC team from Manda Bay landed at the site of the strike in Somalia to take DNA samples from the dead. There, among the corpses and wreckage, they found Ayro’s bloodied passport. They believed they had a major kill.

As it turned out, Ayro had indeed been in the convoy and was believed to have been injured, but he ultimately escaped.

On January 9, JSOC launched another strike “against members of the East Africa Al Qaeda cell believed to be on the run in a remote area of Somalia near the Kenyan border,” according to a US diplomatic cable from the Nairobi Embassy. Over the next few days there were several more air strikes that killed scores of civilians, according to witnesses and human rights groups. Whether these strikes were carried out by the United States or Ethiopia, or jointly, has never been confirmed. Undoubtedly, Ethiopia had its own helicopters and other aircraft pounding Somalia unilaterally. The Pentagon took credit for the January 7 strike but would not comment on the others, though anonymous US officials privately acknowledged they were American strikes. Initial US media reports portrayed the strikes as successful hits that were deftly picking off the “al Qaeda” leadership one by one in Somalia. Several reports, based on information provided by anonymous US officials, had Ayro and Fazul killed by US Special Ops troops. One particularly clownish report in the New York Post, claiming Fazul had been killed, bore the headline: “Qaeda Clobbered: U.S. Somalia Raid Kills Embassy Fiend.” In reality, all but one of the major figures sought by the United States went unscathed in these operations. At some point, as US AC-130s, helicopters and Ethiopian aircraft strafed suspected al Shabab or al Qaeda strongholds, Sudani was randomly killed, though the United States did not learn of his death until months later.

This was the beginning of a concentrated campaign of targeted assassinations and snatch operations by JSOC in Somalia, but it initially produced few significant counterterrorism results. In fact, the men they were hunting would ironically become the beneficiaries of the very strikes that were aimed at killing them. “We were coming in and we were doing AC-130 strikes,” Nance told me. “I mean it’s a fine, fine instrument, when used against mass known troops, which is what the AC-130 is very good for.” Rather than troops, he said, “We were wiping out groups of civilians.”

Indeed, the AC-130 attacks resulted in a shocking number of Somali civilians being killed. In one particularly horrible incident, a large group of nomadic Somali herders and their families was attacked. The human rights group Oxfam alleged that seventy innocent Somalis were killed. “There were no combatants amongst them,” said an Oxfam official. “It could possibly be related to a bonfire that the herdsmen had lit at night, but that’s something they normally do to keep animals and mosquitoes away from their herd.” Oxfam joined Amnesty International in questioning the legality of the air strikes. “Under international law, there is a duty to distinguish between military and civilian targets,” Oxfam warned. “We are deeply concerned that this principle is not being adhered to, and that innocent people in Somalia are paying the price.”

The US strikes focused intently on the areas around the Kenya-Somalia border, the stronghold of Ahmed Madobe and his Ras Kamboni militia. Madobe was a protégé—and brother-in-law—of Hassan Turki, a career jihadist commander who founded the militia and led militant forces for each of Somalia’s successive Islamist movements: AIAI, ICU and, eventually, al Shabab. When the strikes began, Madobe and his men were making their way back toward their home base near the Kenyan border, unwittingly putting them directly in the scope of JSOC’s Task Force 88. Members of JSOC’s intelligence division, the Activity, were tracking Madobe’s movements and those of other ICU leaders. Like Indha Adde, Madobe had come to know and respect the international fighters who had come to Somalia and had helped in the battle against the CIA-backed warlords. His mentor, Turki, was now a US-designated terrorist. These facts, along with his leadership position within the Courts, put Madobe on a JSOC target list.

Madobe knew that the United States and Ethiopia were striking at fleeing ICU leaders and, after a few near misses, suspected he might be a target, so he and a small group made their way through the Somali countryside, trying to stay away from the growing number of aircraft overhead. “At night, we were afraid of lighting a fire to cook and in the daylight we did not want to create smoke,” he told me when I met him at an outpost near the Kenyan border. “We had no precooked food, so it was really very tough.” In retrospect, he said, it was likely technology that did him in. “We had Thuraya satellite phones, which clearly helped the Americans easily trace us.”

On the night of January 23, 2007, Madobe and his group set up camp under a large tree. “At around 4:00 a.m., we woke up to perform the dawn prayers, and that’s when the planes started to hit us,” he remembered. “The entire air space was full of planes. There were AC-130s, helicopters and fighter jets. The sky was full of strikes. They were hitting us, pounding us with heavy weaponry.” The eight people, whom Madobe said included both men and women who were with him in the camp, were all killed. Madobe himself was wounded. He believed that a ground force would come for him. “I picked a gun and a lot of magazines. I believed that death was in front of me and I wanted to kill the first enemy I saw,” he remembered. But it did not happen.” Madobe lay wounded and losing blood and energy. Then, at around 10:00 a.m., he said US and Ethiopian forces landed by helicopter near his position. He recalled a US soldier approaching him as he lay shirtless on the ground. “Are you Ahmed Madobe?” the soldier asked. “Who are you?” he replied. “We are the people that are capturing you,” he remembered the soldier telling him. The American held a photo of Madobe. As the American handcuffed Madobe, the guerrilla leader asked him why it was necessary. “You see I am half dead,” he said.

They loaded Madobe onto a helicopter and took him to a makeshift base in Kismayo that the US and Ethiopian forces were using. The US forces, he said, immediately began interrogating him and only after Ethiopian agents intervened did they give him water and medical treatment. In Kismayo, as Madobe recovered from his injuries, he was regularly interrogated by the Americans. “They had names of different rebels and fighters on a list and they were asking me if I knew them or had information about them,” he said. A month later, he was rendered to Ethiopia, where he was held for more than two years.

Unlike Madobe, the former chair of the ICU, Sheikh Sharif, was looking to make a deal. Even though senior US officials had suggested that the ICU was tantamount to the Taliban or was being run by al Qaeda, the United States actually viewed Sheikh Sharif as a “moderate.” On December 31, 2006, as the ICU disintegrated, Sharif had made it to Kismayo, where he spoke by phone to the US ambassador in Nairobi. “The Ambassador told Sharif that it was the U.S. view that he could play an important role in helping to promote peace and stability in Somalia,” according to a US diplomatic cable sent from Nairobi back to the State Department. The ambassador, who consulted with Washington before offering Sharif a deal, “indicated that the U.S. was prepared to recommend that Kenya help bring [Sharif] to Nairobi if he were prepared to give his commitment that he was willing to work to support peace and stability in Somalia…and to reject terrorism.”

It was the beginning of a behind-the-scenes US campaign to rebrand Sharif. As Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer put it: It would be “preferable to co-opt a weak Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, to prevent hard-liners from rallying around him.” Sharif eventually escaped from Somalia to Kenya with the help of US intelligence. Ali Mohamed Gedi, the former Somali prime minister, told me, “I believe that [Sharif] was working with the CIA. They protected him.” Gedi told me that when Sharif fled to Kenya in early 2007, the US government asked him to issue Sharif travel documents allowing him to travel to Yemen. Gedi says he also wrote letters on Sharif’s behalf to both the Kenyan and Yemeni governments asking that Sharif be permitted to relocate to Yemen. “I did that, upon the request of the government of the US,” he recalled. In Yemen, Sharif began organizing his eventual return to power in Mogadishu, this time with US support.

Unlike Sharif, many of those fleeing Somalia were at odds with the CIA and US intelligence. Kenyan security forces—sometimes acting at the behest of Washington—began arresting scores of people. Human Rights Watch reported that Kenya took into custody “at least 150 men, women, and children from more than 18 countries—including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada—in operations carried out near the Somali border. Suspecting the detainees of having links to terrorism, the Kenyans held them for weeks without charge in Nairobi. Over the course of three weeks from January 20 to February 10, 2007, the Kenyan government rendered dozens of these individuals—with no notice to families, lawyers or the detainees themselves—on flights to Somalia, where they were handed over to the Ethiopian military.” In its investigation, Human Rights Watch concluded that when prisoners were rendered to Ethiopia, “they effectively disappeared” and were “denied access to their embassies, their families, and international humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.” It added: “From February to May 2007, Ethiopian security officers daily transported detainees—including several pregnant women—to a villa where US officials interrogated them about suspected terrorist links.” In all, Kenyan security and intelligence forces facilitated scores of renditions for the US and other governments, including eighty-five people rendered to Somalia in 2007 alone. At least one was sent to Guantánamo. Somalia was becoming a microcosm of the larger war on terror for both al Qaeda and the United States.

AS JSOC AND ETHIOPIAN FORCES intensified their hunt for the leaders of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia in January 2007, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed left his family near the Kenyan border and disappeared. Eventually, he made his way back to Mogadishu to reunite with the al Shabab fighters he had helped to train and finance. Fazul had already become al Qaeda’s most seasoned operative in the Horn of Africa, with several spectacular attacks under his belt, including the 1998 embassy bombings. He was about to take on a major role in a play al Qaeda had been producing since the early 1990s. The group had finally drawn the United States back into an asymmetric war in the heart of East Africa.

With the Somali ICU leaders on the run, al Qaeda saw Somalia as an ideal front line for jihad and began increasing its support for al Shabab. In early January 2007, bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, addressed the situation in Somalia in a recording released online. “I speak to you today as the crusader invader forces of Ethiopia violate the soil of the beloved Muslim Somalia,” he began. “I call upon the Muslim nation in Somalia to remain in the new battlefield that is one of the crusader battlefields that are being launched by America and its allies and the United Nations against Islam and Muslims.” He implored the mujahedeen, “Launch ambushes, land mines, raids and suicidal combats until you consume them as the lions eat their prey.”

In the disintegration of the ICU, al Qaeda had found its way into Somalia. “With the help of all these foreign fighters, the Shabab took over the fighting, with al Qaeda leadership,” recalled Indha Adde, who had been the ICU defense minister. “The Shabab started ordering executions and innocent Muslims were killed. They even targeted members of [the ICU]. I was commander for all [ICU] military operations, and I turned against the Shabab, after seeing these violations against Islam.” Indha Adde eventually went underground, along with Hassan Dahir Aweys, and began receiving support from Ethiopia’s grand enemy, Eritrea. Both men would hover around the militant Islamist movement as they waited to see which way the chips would fall. Eventually, the two would go in very different directions.

By early February 2007, the Ethiopian invasion had become an occupation, which was giving rise to widening unrest. In a nation that had already suffered one of the worst fates in recent history, Somali civilians were paying yet another horrifying price. The occupation was marked by indiscriminate brutality against Somali civilians. Ethiopian and US-backed Somali government soldiers secured Mogadishu’s neighborhoods by force, raiding houses in search of ICU loyalists, looting civilian property, and beating or shooting anyone suspected of collaboration with antigovernment forces. They positioned snipers on the roofs of buildings and would reportedly respond to any attack with disproportionate fire, shelling densely populated areas and several hospitals, according to Human Rights Watch. Extrajudicial killings by Ethiopian soldiers were widely reported, particularly during the final months of 2007. Accounts of Ethiopian soldiers “slaughtering” men, women and children “like goats”—slitting their throats—were widespread, Amnesty International noted. Both Somali Transitional Government forces, led by exiles and backed by the United States, and Ethiopian forces were accused of horrific sexual violence. Although forces linked to al Shabab were also accused of war crimes, a large proportion of those reported to Amnesty International, which included looting, rape and extrajudicial killings, were committed by Somali government and Ethiopian forces.

Some 6,000 civilians were reportedly killed in fighting in Mogadishu and across southern and central Somalia in 2007, and more than 600,000 Somali civilians were internally displaced from and around Mogadishu. An estimated 335,000 Somali refugees fled Somalia in 2007. The stability of the Islamic Courts had been replaced by a return of roadblocks, warlordism and, worse, troops from Somalia’s archenemy, Ethiopia, patrolling the streets and regularly killing Somalis.

“The major problem is that no steps were taken to avert an insurgency—and indeed, very early on, you had an insurgency arise because of lack of stability in the country,” recalled Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, who had advised CENTCOM on its Somalia policy. “What we ended up doing was basically depending upon the Ethiopians to stabilize Somalia. And that in itself was a terrible assumption.”

With the ICU dismantled and the brutal Ethiopian occupation continuing for nearly three more years, al Shabab emerged as the vanguard in the fight against foreign occupation. “For them, it was the break that they were looking for,” said Aynte. “It was the anger that they had been looking for, to harness the anger of the people and present themselves as the new nationalist movement that would kick Ethiopia out. So throughout the three years that Ethiopia was in Somalia, al Shabab never uttered a word of global jihad at all. They always said that their main goal was just to kick the Ethiopians out.” For al Qaeda, this was just the beginning of a whole new world, made possible in no small part by Washington’s actions. “What brought about the Islamic Courts?” Madobe asked. “The US-backed warlords. And if Ethiopia did not invade, and the US did not carry out airstrikes, which were viewed as a continuation of the warlords’ and Ethiopia’s ruthlessness, al Shabab would not have survived. Every step taken by the US benefited al Shabab.”

By April, a full-blown insurgency had risen up against the Ethiopian occupation. In a four-day battle in April 2007, an estimated four hundred Ethiopian troops and Somali rebels died. Later that year, Somali mobs dragged Ethiopian soldiers through the streets, and al Shabab began targeting the leadership of the government that had been installed on the backs of Ethiopian tanks.

On June 3, 2007, a Toyota Land Cruiser packed with explosives burst through the security gates in front of Prime Minister Gedi’s house in Mogadishu and detonated just outside his residence. The suicide attack killed six of his guards and wounded scores of others. After the attack, witnesses found severed limbs almost a mile from the scene. “They targeted me, and they sent a suicide bomb packed with more than two hundred kilos of explosives. They blew up my house,” Gedi told me. “It was the start of the suicide bombing in Mogadishu, targeting the leaders and the government.” It was the fifth assassination attempt against Gedi. Later that year, he resigned.

Although Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, proclaimed the invasion a “tremendous success,” that was simply not true. If Somalia was already a playground for Islamic militants, the US-backed invasion blew open the gates of Mogadishu for al Qaeda. Washington was giving Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda an opportunity to achieve a status in Somalia that it had repeatedly failed to attain on its own. “I think when they [started to have] real power was when Ethiopia invaded,” said Aynte. Fazul and Nabhan “had become the bridge between al Shabab and al Qaeda, tapping into the resources of al Qaeda, bringing in more foreign fighters, as well as financial resources—more importantly military know-how: How to make explosives, how to train people, and so on. So that’s when they have gained the biggest influence that they needed.”

While Aweys and his allies, including Indha Adde, vowed to continue the struggle against the Ethiopians and the Somali government, Sheikh Sharif intensified his cooperation with the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the US government. Al Shabab watched and waited, and in the power struggle saw opportunity.

On February 26, 2008, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice officially designated al Shabab a terrorist organization and JSOC intensified its hunt. On March 2, 2008, the United States carried out missile strikes against a suspected al Shabab house believed to be housing Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa. Some reports indicated that he had been killed, but when the rubble cleared, the death toll was several civilians, some cows and a donkey, but no Nabhan.

On May 1, after three months of strikes that seemed to be killing more innocent people than intended targets, JSOC hit its mark. At 3:00 a.m., five Tomahawk cruise missiles rained down on the town of Dhusa Mareb in central Somalia, blowing up a house that CENTCOM alleged was used by “a known al-Qaeda operative and militia leader.” The mission, military officials said, was the result of weeks of surveillance and tracking. Witnesses in the area described seeing the dead bodies of sixteen people. One of them was that of al Shabab’s military commander, Aden Hashi Ayro. Although the US intelligence had been wrong several times about killing al Shabab leaders, this time there was little room for doubt. After the strike, al Shabab released a statement confirming Ayro’s death, praising him as a hero. Attached to the release was the first publicly available photo of Ayro and a bio of their slain leader. Just before Ayro’s death, according to a US diplomatic cable, the al Shabab leader had met with Indha Adde, a member of his Ayr clan, perhaps to broker a deal. US officials hoped his killing would isolate al Shabab from its former ICU allies and would lead to a “short-term disruption of terrorist operations.” The strike may have deterred Indha Adde from deepening his alliance with al Shabab, but the assassination also emboldened al Shabab and made a martyr of Ayro.

THE ETHIOPIAN OCCUPATION began to wind down, following an agreement signed in Djibouti in August 2008 between Sheikh Sharif’s faction and officials from the TFG. In reality, the al Shabab insurgency had bled the Ethiopians out, but the diplomatic charade served as a face-saving cover. The “Djibouti Agreement” paved the way for Sheikh Sharif to assume the presidency in Mogadishu. To veteran observers of Somali politics, Sharif’s reemergence was an incredible story. The United States and Ethiopia overthrew his government, only to later back him as the country’s president. When I met Sheikh Sharif at the presidential offices in Mogadishu, he refused to discuss this period of his career, saying only that it was not the right time. Ironically, Sheikh Sharif, who once declared himself a warrior against foreign occupation, would rely entirely on the US-backed African Union force that replaced the Ethiopians to keep his nominal grip on power.

When some members of the ICU and the Somali government merged following the Djibouti Agreement, Aweys and al Shabab predictably rejected it, believing that the ICU “had submitted themselves to the infidels,” according to Aynte. Fazul and Nabhan were “fundamental in convincing the Shabab not to join the Djibouti Agreement. Because, if the Shabab had joined the Djibouti Agreement that brought about the current government under the leadership of Sheikh Sharif, Fazul and other al Qaeda players would not have been [able to remain] in Somalia. So I think it was a personal interest of al Qaeda figures, to make sure that that doesn’t happen.” Al Shabab’s Somali leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, declared Sharif an apostate and a “favorite puppet” for the “infidels.” As the new government formed, al Shabab prepared to widen its insurrection, vowing to take down the new coalition government and to expel the US-backed African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces that had replaced the Ethiopians.

With much of the ICU leadership dead, exiled or bickering over who would control what cabinet positions within the newly installed US-backed government, al Shabab capitalized on the disarray. The group welcomed the disillusioned fighters who felt that they had been sold out by the leadership of the Courts. Aside from its commitment to carry on the jihad, what separated al Shabab from the Somali government was its indigenous diversity. Its leadership consisted of figures from Somalia’s four major clans, but it also put members of minority clans in influential positions. Also, true to its name, al Shabab began recruiting young Somalis whom it could easily indoctrinate. It gave them a sense of empowerment in a landscape once again dominated by brutal warlords and clan politics.

In 2008, al Shabab evolved into a broad-based movement and significant social force. While keeping up its military offensive, it began establishing itself in the south, by projecting soft power and cultivating popular support. Al Shabab members would make diplomatic “visits,” as they called them, to towns, bringing with them food, money, and “mobile Sharia courts” to settle local disputes. Reminiscent of the ICU’s approach, the Islamist militants would spend time moderating speedy court proceedings in each town, settling local disputes and sentencing criminals. Many of these takeovers of Somali towns were bloodless, involving lengthy negotiations with clan elders to convince them of al Shabab’s noble intentions.

Al Shabab followed up on this diplomacy with popular social programs. One very important move was the further dismantling of roadblocks and checkpoints, a process the ICU had begun during its time in power. These checkpoints were historically used by warlords as tools of extortion rather than security. “The perception that [al Shabab] and other Islamist insurgent groups are a rag-tag army of crude fanatics whose first instinct is to use force and terror to impose their radical vision is a caricature,” noted a report by the International Crisis Group. “Their tactics have been well-adapted and more effective than those of their adversaries. They have largely succeeded in casting themselves as true Somali patriots opposed to the Ethiopian-allied TFG. As a result, they have been gaining popularity in central and southern Somalia, just as they did before the Ethiopian invasion in December 2006.”

At the same time that it engaged in its version of a hearts-and-minds campaign, however, al Shabab also implemented policies reminiscent of the Taliban: banning popular Bollywood films, forcibly shaving the heads of men with “inappropriate” hairstyles and imposing harsh sentences for infractions against the al Shabab interpretation of Sharia law. By early 2009, al Shabab would control of most of southern Somalia. “In many areas al-Shabab is the only organization that can provide basic social services, such as rudimentary medical facilities, food distribution centers, and a basic justice system rooted in Islamic law,” concluded a report for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Western diplomats fear that al-Shabab will continue to win converts by providing services similar to the way Hamas found success in the Gaza Strip. Experts strongly caution that there is little the United States can do to weaken al-Shabab.” Further bombing by the United States or increased foreign military intervention, the report warned, could make al Shabab stronger.

While al Shabab consolidated local support, on the global scene, al Qaeda could now use the jihad in Somalia to recruit. In this narrative, a Christian nation, Ethiopia, backed by the United States—the root of all evil—had invaded Somalia and slaughtered Muslims. Jihadists had risen up and repelled the invasion, making Somalia a front-line battleground against the crusade bin Laden had long alleged the United States was waging. When the Ethiopians withdrew, according to Aynte, al Shabab “emerged far more popular and powerful than ever,” transforming “its domestic, irredentist struggle into a global Jihadist dictum.” Foreign fighters began pouring into Somalia in far greater numbers. Bin Laden released an audio address titled “Fight on, Champions of Somalia,” amplifying calls for the overthrow of Sharif’s “apostate” government. Al Shabab began easily taking territory throughout southern Somalia and soon found itself in control of a far greater swath of territory than the Somali government, despite the latter being backed by thousands of African Union forces funded and trained by the United States and other Western nations. Al Shabab would emerge as the premier jihadi force in Somalia—and would soon control more land than any other al Qaeda–affiliated group in history. US policy had backfired spectacularly, transforming a ragtag group of relative nobodies in Somalia, in just a few short years, into the new heroes of al Qaeda’s global struggle.