Issue No. 889

Remembering Al-Shabaab's October attacks in Somaliland 

October is a sober month of anniversaries in Somaliland. In October 2003, well before Al-Shabaab was the fearsome movement it is today, it announced its clandestine presence in two separate killings that left three foreign nationals dead and shocked the polity. Five years later, Al-Shabaab carried out five separate suicide bombings in Bosaaso and Hargeisa on 29 October 2008 on several government and international targets, leaving 25 dead and more than 30 injured. This complex attack-- 17 years ago to the day-- represented the zenith of Al-Shabaab's jihadist violence in Somaliland, but while Hargeisa has been able to mostly subdue its threat in the years since, the danger has not disappeared altogether either. Today, Al-Shabaab's presence is spread through the hidden Amniyaat cells in Somaliland's major cities and their entrenched bases in the rugged mountainous Cal Madow coastline in eastern Sanaag. Most concerning of all remains Al-Shabaab's penetration through elements of SSC-Khaatumo, Villa Somalia's proxy administration in Laas Aanood.

Hargeisa's developed democracy and mature civil society are anathema to the theological extremism of Al-Shabaab, its constitutionalism and capacity for peaceful political alternation running antithetical to the ideologues on the militant shuraa council. After the obliteration of Somaliland's capital and the brutal massacres perpetrated by Siyaad Barre's forces against the Isaaq in the late 1980s, the rebuilding of a stable and peaceful democratic society inevitably proved complex and fraught. But by 2003, the polity had largely stabilised with a functioning central administration under President Dahir Riyale Kahin that could project at least some force and development into the peripheries, having declared unilateral independence over a decade prior. Threats remained, however, particularly via the remnants of the Islamist extremism emanating from Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, Somalia's first 'home-grown' jihadist group that briefly seized control of Bosaaso in the 1990s. 

It was in this context that Al-Shabaab-- then still an underground terror cell-- carried out its first deadly attack on Somaliland soil, murdering Annalena Tonnelli in early October 2003 in Borama. An Italian national, Tonnelli was a Christian health worker supporting HIV/AIDS patients at her hospital, with many wrongly attributing her death to locals furious at the treatment of HIV/AIDS cases in Borama in the wake of her murder. Two weeks later, on 22 October, Dick and Enid Eyeington were killed at home at Sheikh Secondary School in the town of Sheikh in central Somaliland. The two elderly British teachers had set about reviving a well-known school in Sheikh, opening the doors in January 2002 to 50 pupils. A month following the second intake in 2003, the Eyeingtons were murdered, again with a rush to mistakenly ascribe the killings to a disgruntled local population. Others, however, accurately ascribed an Islamist slant to the murders, but only in time and the capture of the attackers of two German GTZ aid workers in March 2004 by Somaliland security forces that broke open the case.

Nor did the threat cease there, with the jihadists conducting an ambush of a German aid vehicle in 2004. A Kenyan national, Florence Cheruiyot, was killed, and a German national was seriously injured as well in the attack. But the peak came 17 years ago, as Al-Shabaab surged in south-central Somalia in the wake of the Ethiopian invasion. Over two dozen people were killed in the coordinated suicide bombings, with the jihadists claiming them as retaliation for the Ethiopian incursion and Hargeisa's cooperation with Addis. The targets of the presidential palace, the Ethiopian consulate, and the UN Development Programme offices in Hargeisa symbolised all that remains despised by Al-Shabaab —democracy, Addis, and foreign development. And, notably, one of the Bosaaso suicide bombers was also the first known American suicide bomber.

In the aftermath of the 2008 attacks, the administrations of Dahir Riyale Kahin and his successor, Ahmed Mohamed 'Silanyo', worked to expand and develop the polity's intelligence capabilities, seeking closer ties with Addis and Western partners. And, since then, Somaliland has been able to broadly stifle the threat of terrorism by interdicting and breaking up cells routinely through the National Intelligence Agency and the Somaliland National Police Counterterrorism Unit, diminishing Al-Shabaab's ability to carry out large-scale attacks. And thus today, Hargeisa, Bosaaso and Bur'ao are not choked by the innumerable checkpoints of their southern counterparts, all bristling with heavily armed units or paramilitaries. One can walk or drive from Egal Airport to the Maan Soor Hotel on the other side of Hargeisa without fear. But that does not mean the threat of Al-Shabaab has evaporated, far from it, and amidst their developing linkages with the Yemen-based Houthis movement, increased attentiveness will be needed.

Further, Al-Shabaab's presence in the contested Sool and Sanaag regions remains deeply contentious. Since at least 2009, Amniyaat operatives have been present in Laas Aanood, the long-contested city predominantly occupied by the Dhulbahante in the Sool region. In the intervening years, jihadist killers conducted dozens of targeted murders-- at least 40-- of largely Dhulbahante politicians and public figures in a covert attempt to destabilise Hargeisa's control of the region. And it worked, with many ascribing the killings to successive Isaaq-majority administrations in Hargeisa, including the assassination of opposition Dhulbahante politician Abdifatah Abdullahi Abdi in December 2022, which sparked mass protests and the genesis that led to the conflict between SSC-Khaatumo and Somailland forces. 

Here, too, Al-Shabaab sought to insert its destabilising presence, deploying clandestine Jabhat forces stationed in Buuhoodle in 2022 into the fighting in Laas Aanood. Commanded by Dhulbahante militia leader Abdi Madoobe, who denies any linkages to Al-Shabaab, these forces remain some of the best-armed fighters arrayed under the new North-Eastern State (NES) administration. In turn, the ousting of the Somaliland presence from Sool and parts of Sanaag has empowered Al-Shabaab, with the jihadists having quietly dispatched hundreds of reinforcements from southern Somalia in the past 18 months. Today, Al-Shabaab is able to surreptitiously recruit and transport its forces and armaments all the way from Buuhoodle to the Sanaag coastline, amplifying its preparations ahead of Puntland's anticipated Operation Onkod as well. After years of denial, more are finally awakening to their danger, not least after the public admission by SSC-Khaatumo officials that the killing of an Ethiopian consular officer earlier this year was carried out by Al-Shabaab.

The dangers of cross-pollination between Houthis and Al-Shabaab should not be dismissed either. Since 2023 and particularly in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks that year in Israel, the ties between the two militant groups have radically developed, with the Yemen-based movement providing increasingly sophisticated armaments and training to Al-Shabaab. Despite their theological differences, a shared disdain towards the West, the UAE, and Israel, as well as clear strategic interests of both parties, have brought them together, with yet untold consequences. In particular, the Houthis have now trained over 1,500 Somali youth in everything from maritime interdiction to IED assembly, developing their own latent proxy capacities amongst disenchanted Sanaag communities, including the Warsangeli, and establishing distinct bases in the peripheral territory. 

Thankfully, both Hargeisa and Garowe are increasingly alive to such threats, symbolised by this month's security-political cooperation pact in Nairobi. A huge step forward, it has already paved the way for a peace conference in Eerigaabo to help facilitate the return of particularly Warsangeli displaced by over three years of tensions and intermittent clashes in Sool and Sanaag. Further, it is intended to develop and formalise intelligence ties between Hargeisa and Garowe ahead of Puntland's Operation Onkod, which aims to dislodge Al-Shabaab from its entrenched bases in Cal Madow. Somaliland's role in interdicting senior withdrawing jihadists and armed militants from the mountain passes to their east is critical. Still, due to the nature of clan relationships, it is improbable that all will be detained, with tradition dictating that unarmed men are able to pass into their clan homeland undeterred. 

One can never rule out the threat of a large-scale attack like the 2008 suicide bombings, but Somaliland's police and intelligence services have proven incomparably more effective than Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) at suppressing and disrupting Al-Shabaab. Yet it is tragic that 22 years after the murders of the Eyeingtons and Annalena Tonnelli and 17 years after the Hargeisa and Bosaaso bombings, Al-Shabaab has been able to reassert itself more forcefully than ever across Sool and Sanaag. Al-Shabaab's bombs may have fallen silent in the capital long ago, but its networks and ambitions across Sool, Sanaag, and the Gulf of Aden remain not only a live but evolving threat-- and one that will require ever greater vigilance from Somaliland.

The Somali Wire Team