Monday, May 27, 2013
By Adnan Hussein
In a May 16th interview on Somali Channel television, senior al-Shabaab leader Hassan Dahir Aweys (right) accused the group's emir Ahmed Godane of authoritarianism. Above, Aweys talks to an unidentified man in 2010 when his Hizbul Islam group joined with al-Shabaab. The two groups split two years later. [Stringer/AFP]
The Somali government is closely monitoring the widening rift within al-Shabaab's leadership, vowing to take advantage of this instability and intensify its ongoing military campaign against the militants.
"The war on al-Qaeda and the rogue al-Shabaab group will continue until they are completely decimated and destroyed, regardless of the sacrifices that have to be made," Somali Minister of Interior and National Security Abdikarim Hussein Guled told Sabahi.
"Al-Qaeda fighters and al-Shabaab militants are locked up in our prisons, and our security units are closely following the militia members and supporters of this group who have started to return to the capital," he said.
Guled said many al-Shabaab members who have laid down their arms are returning to Mogadishu to live with their families and relatives after the group failed to secure the people's support.
"Most members of this group have now come back to their senses and have become convinced that fighting alongside al-Qaeda to kill innocent Somalis and destroying their country is not the right thing to do," Guled said.
Aweys: Godane a 'tyrant and dictatorial emir'
The widening rift within al-Shabaab's leadership has been caused by a growing number of senior organisation leaders in the past two months openly dissenting with top commander Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubayr.
In the latest example, senior al-Shabaab leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys sharply criticised Godane in a phone interview aired May 16th on Somali Channel television.
Aweys accused Godane of authoritarianism, hijacking the group to expand his powers and blindly disregarding other al-Shabaab leaders' opinions.
"We have been weakened militarily and have retreated from large cities and towns and our forces are still rebellious and breaking away into different factions. All of this is because the leader of the group has unilaterally made fateful decisions," Aweys said.
"Somali government forces have taken over the areas from which we withdrew, which is why their power and influence have grown stronger," he said. "We disagree among ourselves, sometimes fight and have ideological differences that have confused our Mohammedan principles with Machiavellian methods and wrong policies that this leader is following based on killing, wounding, starving and throwing muhajireen [foreign fighters] in secret prisons."
"Why are these [foreign] fighters being targeted although they have come all the way to our country to defend Islam and Muslims?" Aweys asked.
Aweys, a founding member and head of the anti-Somali government Hizbul Islam group that joined forces with al-Shabaab in 2010, said that under the leadership of Godane, al-Shabaab has resorted to shedding the blood of innocent Muslims, hunting down opponents and critics, and assassinatingprominent Somali clerics.
Aweys urged al-Shabaab fighters to refrain from following orders given by emirs who call for the killing of innocent civilians, executing its own members or targeting other al-Shabaab leaders, which he said can lead to internal chaos.
"I declare that we will renounce the authority of a tyrant and dictatorial emir who makes self-serving decisions that go against Islamic sharia," he said, referring to Godane. "Such an emir who does not take council and advice and is singing off key without harmony or synergy; he is a person fond of hearing his own voice who only satisfies his own desires using a policy of banishment for the sake of keeping his position in an authoritarian manner."
Disputes within al-Shabaab have peaked
Al-Shabaab is in a precarious position as it is under fire from its own senior leaders and at the same time is trying to fight the Somali government and allied forces, said Jamad Sahal Khalif, an activist who works with Iida, a local organisation that focuses on youth rehabilitation.
Disputes between Godane and the group's foreign leaders have peaked, Khalif said, and this internal fighting will eventually destroy the group.
"They have to all die so that Somalia can enjoy peace and prosperity and once again be East Africa's commercial hub and so we can leap from the poor house to prosperity, happiness and comfort," she told Sabahi.
The Somali people refuse to support al-Shabaab's terrorism and its unjust sentences and executions against innocent civilians who refuse to abide by its rules, said political analyst Faisal Ibrahim Nur, who also teaches political science at the University of Somalia in Mogadishu.
"Al-Shabaab has tried to turn our nation's joy into tears since the day the group was born and planted itself in parts of Somalia," Nur told Sabahi.
He said the government has brought order and normalcy back to Mogadishu, Marka, Jowhar, Beledweyne and Baidoa, and improved security conditions in other cities it controls.
"I call on the Somali government to continue its expansionist war on other parts of the country [still under al-Shabaab control] so it can wipe out the takfiris from our country," Nur said.