Pursuing the Islamic Courts

Islamic Courts leadership unaccounted for; foreign fighters captured fleeing to Kenya

After taking the southern port city of Kismayo, the news has dried up on the pursuit of the remnants of the Islamic Courts and their leaders. The last reports indicated elements of the Islamic Courts were holing up at the island base of Ras Kamboni on the Kenyan border, and Ethiopian forces were headed south to pursue.

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the former chairman of the Islamic Courts, has not been heard of since the Fall of Kismayo, and Hassan Dahir Aweys, has been silent since the fall of Mogadishu. An American military intelligence source tells us Aweys has maintained the core of his forces and has moved into the forests west of Kismayo in the hopes of avoiding an open confrontation with the Ethiopian armored forces. The three wanted al Qaeda plotters in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are also still unaccounted for, along with numerous senior members of the Islamic Courts.

The Kenyans have reinforced the border and have captured ten foreign fighters of the Islamic Courts crossing the border at Libol, about 100 miles west of Kismayo. “The fighters, suspected by Kenyan security agencies to double as financiers of the Islamic Courts Union, were intercepted while fleeing Somalia in a four-wheel drive vehicle,” reports Shabelle. “Eight had Eritrean passports while two had Canadian passports, police said.” The Somali government claims several Eritrean and Arab fighters are among those captured during the fighting. The Eritrean government denies the charges.

A spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet states he was “unaware of an official request from the Somali transitional government or the Ethiopians for U.S. naval forces to interdict fleeing Somali Islamists.” But the likelihood is high that Combined Joint Task Force 150, the international naval presence in the Horn of Africa, is blockading the southern Somali coast. U.S. trainers have been working behind the scenes at training the Ethiopian Army. Yemen is also concerned about the influx of Islamists from Somalia, and its forces fired on 4 boats smuggling people from Somalia. Two were sunk in the incident.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross reports the Islamic Courts are establishing ‘shadow governments’ in the country side to counter the Somali government control. We noted on December 27, 2006 that the Islamic Courts may be working to infiltrate the government as well.

Somali government officials and warlords appear to be trying to head off grass roots support of an insurgency. Colonel Bare Aden Shire (or Hirale), the Minister of Defense, has called for an amnesty for foot soldiers in the Kismayo region. “I am asking all the militiamen who were misled by the Islamists to go back to Kismayo and lay the weapons so as to be given army training,” said Hirale. He has also disbanded the Jubba Valley Alliance, “a clan-based administration that did not share power with all local clans.” Abdi Hassan Awale (or Qeybdid), a warlord from the Mogadishu region, has said “he would not make retaliation of the past conflict in Mogadishu in which he was ousted by the defeated Islamic Courts.”

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: Somalia