Life Under Al Shabaab in Somalia

Picture this

• All functioning government outside of your local home town leaders disappears.
• A local kid, who has been off to college in Saudi Arabia or Egypt comes back and says that he will set up local law according to Sharia (Islamic Law) an elder from another town is appointed "judge"







• He says that He will need a local security force of police/military to maintain order.


(Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and Mukhtaar Abu Mansur Robow,


• Your city is in severe draught, and your local-son-leader demands that every one bringing food or any aid of any kind must pay a $5000 per year registration fee, and 20% of all the food the aid agency brings in goes to Him - (in reality he keeps 50%)
  
  
  
  
• He brings in military "consultants" from outside to train up his new security force. These are foreigners trained by al Qaeda.







• In exchange for training the security, the al Qaeda consultants set up training camps for other foreign fighters in your town.







• The town leaders are told that they must pay a tax, and that they must offer up their daughters as wives for the foreign fighters that have come to your town.





• Every so often, the security force gathers up all its fighters and goes into the capital, where many are killed or captured. Each time they come back to your town.
• Sharia law is strictly enforced, like the cutting off hands, and the stoning of young women who report rapes by Mujahdin.
• Soon, every male of 13 years or older gets "drafted" in the the local militia, and there is no one to plant the crops, and the drought gets worse.
  
  (child soldier chewing the Narcotic plant Khat)
  

Some of you kids are sent of to be suicide bombers in other towns

This same thing is happening in every cluster of small towns in your part of the country. Your Young children are starving, your older children are serving as mujaheddin or "wifes" of Mujaheddin.

You just try to hold your family together. More and more foreign fighters come, and less and less food arrives.

• If you find you are a Sufi Muslim, that your faith has been declared heretical. Taliban like laws keep women oppressed.
• Your local police leader ( al Shabaab) sends some of your kids out to surrounding areas and countries to commit bombings. These are aimed at spread this form of government, the one you currently enjoy.

There is no way out unless some outside force comes in and does it for you.

This is life under Al Shabaab

-Editor

-Shimron