Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, Sharif Ahmed, a Complex Relationship

This is an excerpt from a larger story by Xan Rice or Kenya. He describes The History and relationship between Dahir Aweys of the Union of Islamic Courts, and Sharif Ahmed the New President of the Somalia Transitional Federal Government.

-Shimron Issachar


.........The Islamic Courts Union had two main leaders: Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, forty-four, a former geography teacher, and Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a seventy-four year old henna-bearded cleric who appears on US terrorism lists for his alleged links to al Qaeda. One afternoon my fixer arranged an interview with Ahmed. We met in a heavily shaded room in a house near the mayor’s office.
“We just want to bring peace to the country,” Ahmed told me, speaking softly in Somali and trying to stress that being an Islamist did not necessarily mean being a threat to the outside world. “We will not impose anything on the people if the people are against it, not even sharia law.”

There was little time to impose anything. Within months the Courts had been swept out of power by Ethiopian forces backed by the United States, which viewed the Islamists as a terror threat. The weak and corrupt Transitional Federal Government, disliked by most Somalis and completely dependent on Ethiopian muscle, was installed in Mogadishu. Ahmed and Aweys both fled the country, leaving behind a brewing insurgency that claimed more than 16,000 civilian lives in two years, according to local human rights groups.

Today the Ethiopia occupation is over and the two former leaders are back in Mogadishu – and on opposite sides. In a twist that would have seemed highly improbable in 2006, Ahmed is now the Western-backed president of the transitional government. He has installed sharia law, though less out of popular demand than as a means of appeasing the hardline Islamist groups fiercely trying to oust his administration. This opposition, which is not united, includes the radical Shabaab guerillas, who have been carrying out punishing alleged criminals in areas under their control using amputations, and a more politically motivated militia called Hizbul Islam, which owes loyalty to Aweys.

Aweys returned to Mogadishu in April from Eritrea, where he had set up an opposition group that had strongly opposed Ahmed’s move in government. There were hopes that he would enter in discussions with Ahmed, who had said he was willing to talk to his former ally. Indeed, according to diplomatic sources, Sudan had even hosted Aweys for three weeks before his return, with the Sudanese president Omar el Bashir personally trying to convince him to support the transitional government.

Instead, Aweys’s passage home has breathed life into the insurgency, which had slowed significantly following the departure of the Ethiopian troops in January. A day after arriving back Aweys demanded the withdrawal of the 4300 African Union peacekeepers before entering into any talks, and then called for all Islamist groups to fight the government, which he described as a tool of the West.

Soon Mogadishu was in turmoil once more. Nearly 200 people have been killed in the fighting between pro-government and Islamist-led militias over the past two weeks, and more than 40,000 people have fled the city. Some have headed into neighbouring Kenya, to the world’s largest refugee settlement, Dabaab, designed for 90,000 people, which squats in desert-like terrain. When I visited last August there were 210,000 people in the camp, and no space for new arrivals. Now the population is 270,000, with 5000 more people arriving every month.

The Shabaab, which has used Somalia’s complex social dynamics to advantage by securing the support of some smaller clans that feel marginalised, has gained ground in Mogadishu in the latest fighting and took control of the strategic town of Jowhar, fifty-six miles north of Mogadishu, last Sunday. Hizbul Islam has also made gains. There are reports of several hundred foreign guerrillas fighting alongside the opposition groups, and warnings that the government may soon fall, leaving al Qaeda-linked radicals in charge. Both the likelihood of the government’s collapse and the strength of the Islamists’ terror links may well be exaggerated, but nonetheless there is serious concern as to what comes next.
One of the a

One of the diplomats who was closely involved in the talks in Djibouti that led to Ahmed joining the government said that both Somalis and international community had “taken their foot off the accelerator” over the past few months, thinking that the worst fighting was over. “There is a very serious risk of underestimating and failing to understand the dangers ahead, particularly among the international community. In New York [at the United Nations], some diplomats are still saying: ‘So Aweys is back in Somalia, and that’s a good thing isn’t it?’ – they still don’t get the dynamics at play.”....

(Xan Rice is a Nairobi-based journalist who writes regularly for Inside Story.)

The Rest @ Inside Story (Australia)

Does Al Qaeda Leadership matter in Africa Anymore?

Part of a March 20. 2009 Commentary by Douglas Farah

-Shimron

Fight on, Champions of Somalia,” is, in effect, a lambasting of the current Somali leadership of Sheikh Shareef as too moderate, and a hand-wringing over how any serious Islamist could engage in negotiations with non-Islamists.

"..How can intelligent people believe that yesterday’s enemies on the basis of religion can become today’s friends? This can only happen if one of the two parties abandons his religion. So look and see which one of them is the one who has abandoned it: Shaykh Shareef or America? ...These sorts of presidents are the surrogates of our enemies and their authority is null and void in the first place, and as Shaykh Shareef is one of them, he must be dethroned and fought.”

This clearly someone who has no real influence on the ground and is reduced to watching from the sidelines, shouting instructions that no one feels obligated to listen to.

This is not to imply there is not a strong ideological/theological affinity among these groups, only to point out that bin Laden and Zawahiri are trying to become relevant in theaters of operations where they are no longer the guiding lights, and least in an operational sense.

For the Rest:
Douglas Farah.com

Sharif Ahmed Steps Down from Islamic Courts Union

Sharif Ahmed Steps Down from Islamic Courts Union - I believe this is a concesion to Robow and the Shabaab- Somalia Islamists are aiming at reconcilation to make the Emirate of Somalia work.... Watch for other alignment or battles between groups as negotiations occur.

-Shimron


(Apprciation to Terror Free Somolia)

BELETWEIN, Somalia Nov 5 (Garowe Online) - Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the opposition leader in Somalia, has announced that he is stepping down as executive head of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

In a BBC Somali Service interview, Sheikh Sharif said the ICU is planning to hold a general congress and elect new leadership.

Nov. 4: Sheikh Sharif lands in Beletwein/GO"I am not ready to become a candidate because I have been holding [the post] for a long time and I must now give an opportunity to new people," Sheikh Sharif said.

He offered an ambiguous answer when asked whether or not he will join the Somali Transitional Federal Government a charge often voiced by ICU hardliners who have rejected the Djibouti Agreement.

• This week, Sheikh Sharif led a delegation to Somalia that includes other officers of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), an opposition coalition formed in Eritrea in 2007 but split into rival factions after the Djibouti Agreement was signed to end the two-year insurgency.
  
• The ARS delegation has been warmly received in Jowhar and Beletwein, two provincial capitals controlled by ICU forces.
• Ahmed Abdullahi, spokesman for Sheikh Sharif's delegation, told reporters Wednesday that the ARS delegation has met with ICU officials and traditional elders in Beletwein.
  "Sheikh Sharif presented our [ARS] political agenda and urged all groups to support the peace process," the spokesman said.
• He welcomed a recent fatwa issued by a group of Islamic scholars that called for the ICU to hold a general conference this month inside Somalia intended to settle internal political differences.
• READ: Big welcome for Islamist chief in central Somalia

The Rest @ Garowe Online

Nuriye Ali Farah Assinated by al Shabaab

Islamist groups waging war in Somalia against the country's feeble, foreign-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) have been riled by a new fatwa issued earlier this month by self-appointed Somali clerics.

A spokesman for the clerics, Sheikh Nur Barud Gurhan, told an October 27 telephone press conference that the clerics issued a six-point fatwa regarding the internal dispute among Islamic Courts Union (ICU) leaders, who are divided over the Djibouti Agreement.

The group of clerics, including well-known religious authorities of Somali and Oromo ethnicity, decided to hold the meeting and issue the fatwa due to "the colonization of Somalia, the massacre of our people and destruction of our religion and country," Sheikh Gurhan said.

The Rest @ Rantburg

• Point one of the issued fatwa declares that "it is a duty for the jihad to continue until all enemy soldiers leave the country."
• A key clause calls for an emergency gathering of ICU executive and legislative officials, inside and outside the country, to be held within one month.
• "The signing of agreements must be stopped until after the dispute is resolved," said Sheikh Gurhan, while reading the document.
• The clerics' fatwa prohibited the exchange of conflicting statements over the media that "divide up the fighters and the public," while warning fighters against acts that cause more harm than good.
• Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the ICU's executive head, signed the peace agreement with the TFG on October 26, which calls for a ceasefire effective November 5 and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops within 120 days.
• But Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, chairman of the Shura (legislative) council, rejected the peace pact and urged guerrillas to continue the anti-Ethiopia insurgency.
• The two men helped form the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) in Eritrea in 2007, which included exiled Islamist leaders, ex-lawmakers and Diaspora activists.
• However, after the signing of the Djibouti Agreement, the ARS split into two rival wings, with a Djibouti-based faction led by Sheikh Sharif and an Eritrea-based faction led by the hardliner, Sheikh Aweys.

A spokesman for the ARS-Djibouti faction, Dahir Gelle, dismissed the clerics' fatwa in early comments to the media as "servicing the interests of Hassan Dahir [Aweys]." However, unconfirmed reports told Garowe Online that Sheikh Sharif might be reconsidering the clerics' call for an ICU general conference.

Key Islamist figures associated with the ARS-Eritrea faction have publicly denounced the clerics' fatwa. Sheikh Omar Iman, who was recently crowned ARS chairman by the Eritrea-based faction, said he welcomes the new title while condemning the Djibouti-based peace process as "being organized by Ethiopia and the U.S."

"The jihad will continue and no one can stop it as long as the enemy is in the country," Sheikh Omar said from Eritrea, where he lives in exile with Sheikh Aweys.

On the clerics' fatwa, Sheikh Omar Iman rejected calls for an ICU emergency gathering while dismissing notions that the Islamic clerics take control of the war until the dispute is resolved.

• Another figure, ex-warlord Yusuf Indha Ade, rejected the fatwa and accused the clerics of supporting the Djibouti-based ARS faction. Indha Ade, who was a notorious warlord in the early 2000s before joining the ICU as defense chief, is closely associated with the Eritrea-based faction.

Sheikh Dahir Addow, the ICU chief in Middle Shabelle region, returned to the provincial capital Jowhar on Thursday after attending the peace talks in Djibouti.

• Local reports said Sheikh Addow traveled by land through Hiran region, where he held meetings with ICU officials.
• Also Thursday, the ICU administrator in Hiran region, Sheikh Abdirahman Ibrahim Ma'ow, told a press conference in the regional capital Beletwein that all groups should support the clerics' decision. He held the press conference to respond to Abukar Mohamed, a top ICU military commander based in Hiran, who rejected the Djibouti Agreement and dismissed the ceasefire. "His [Abukar Mohamed] comments do not speak for the ICU administration in Hiran region," Sheikh Ma'ow said

• More divisions became evident when one of ex-warlord Indha Ade's top lieutenants, Nuriye Ali Farah, was assassinated in Lower Shabelle region.
• Indha Ade's supporters immediately blamed al Shabaab, with unconfirmed reports saying three al Shabaab members were killed in retaliation.