Issue No. 890

Al-Shabaab, ISS, and Somalia's Fractured Islamism

Watching Al-Shabaab's prodigious propaganda output over the past decade, one might be convinced that there was a theological gulf between the jihadists and Islamic State-Somalia (ISS). Likewise, the Daesh faction-- now scattered through the Cal-Miskaad Mountains by Puntland's Operation Hilaac-- has sought to cast their counterparts as 'gradualists', viewing the accommodation of Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab as a betrayal of monotheism, or tawhid. But beyond the occasional barbed statement-- and localised clashes in the Bari region-- the theological divergence between these two Somali Salafist jihadist groups is marginal, and reflects more of a battle for legitimacy and airwaves than ideological supremacy. 

The tortured history of Somalia's arrayed, competing Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood groups is far more petty and parochial than many would surely like to admit. More often than not, splinters and fractures within the legitimate forces at the centre of the country —the ruling Damul Jadiid, Aala Sheikh, much-diminished Al-Islah, and others — emerged from quarrels over clan or personalities rather than vision. However, for some years now, the proselytising and financial influence of Al-Shabaab's ideological Salafist twin, Al-I'tisaam b'il Kitaab wa Sunna, has enabled it to establish itself as a kind of 'power behind the throne' in Mogadishu, regardless of its divergence from the Ikhwanist reformists of the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, last year's Islamist-slanted, centralising revisions to the Provisional Constitution by the incumbent Damul Jadiid clique were nevertheless infused with Al-I'tisaam-inspired positions, spurred on by Sheikh Bashir Salaad, a senior figure of Al-I'tisaam and chair of the government-affiliated Ulema Council. The aspiration towards a centralised Islamist state is one shared among several supposedly competing movements-- including those at the very heart of this Western-backed government and state-building agenda.

But at the same time, the squabbles and jostling for power continue at the centre-- and between the armed movements that have adopted jihad on the state's periphery. Like many of the splits within Somalia's complex Islamist trajectory, the emergence of ISS in Puntland was not driven by a grand ideological cleavage, but rather by clan. In 2015, having fled Britain and become an Al-Shabaab commander in a remote militant enclave in eastern Sanaag, the radical preacher Sheikh Abdulqadir Mumin chose to defect and pledge his services to the ascendant Daesh in the Middle East. In large part, Mumin abandoned his Al-Shabaab credentials due to his inability to command his non-clan subordinates, and so established an ISS splinter cell with a few dozen of his Majerteen/Ali Salebaan kinsmen. Such a dynamic exemplifies the often-overlooked, complex, and interwoven relationship of clan and ideology within Somalia. Today, though, somewhat ironically, ISS considers Al-Shabaab as theologically 'deviant' for their allegiance with Al-Qaeda and for their engagement with clan politics.

There are naturally theological and strategic distinctions between ISS and Al-Shabaab, particularly concerning the latter's aspiration of establishing an Islamic Emirate across the Somali-speaking Horn of Africa, encompassing parts of Djibouti, the Somali Regional State of eastern Ethiopia, North-Eastern Kenya, and potentially even territory in Eritrea. Daesh, on the other hand, has the aspirations of a global Islamic caliphate, centred around the coming of the Mahdi and the 'end-times.' Further, ISS and its counterparts believe in the immediate implementation of God's law through purifying jihad, with anyone who refuses to submit subject to takfīr - the Islamic term for excommunication - a more extreme stance than Al-Shabaab. But from a governance perspective, these minor quibbles matter less when both are antithetical to secular, democratic, and constitutional principles. 

Their competing attempts to cast the other as infidels is more a symptom of their rivalry as they swim in the same sphere of influence, competing for the same disillusioned men, taxable businesses, and Houthi armaments. Though muted this year amidst Puntland's anti-Daesh offensive, Al-Shabaab and ISS intermittently clashed in their vying for control over Al-Miskaad-- and by extension, the taxation of the aortic Bosaaso port and sea access. In March 2023, for instance, dozens were killed in intense clashes that ousted Al-Shabaab from parts of the Bari region, with violence continuing into the following year as well. Today, with ISS having been dispersed into the mountains, Al-Shabaab is now attempting to covertly reclaim its former positions in Cal Miskaad, though its focus remains on defensive preparations in the neighbouring Cal Madow range ahead of Operation Onkod. 

Still, there are other divergences between the two jihadist groups, not least their recruiting processes, which reflect their own contrasting ambitions. Much like its Middle Eastern forebears, ISS has drawn nationals from across Eastern and Northern Africa to its ranks, as well as ethnic Oromo and Amhara from neighbouring Ethiopia. Prior to the Puntland offensive, one senior commander, Abu Farah al-Habashi, was reported to be Tigrayan. The leadership and composition of Al-Shabaab, on the other hand, remain intrinsically rooted in its Somali context, with the movement skilled in exploiting historic clan grievances. There are well-known foreign jihadists within Al-Shabaab's ranks, though, most of all Jehad Serwan Mostafa, an American national and senior commander believed to be affiliated with explosives production. But ISS arguably has had less need to recruit from and engage with the peripheral clans around Bosaaso, as its strategic importance lay in hosting Daesh's Al-Karrar Office, a key financial node within its global architecture and responsible for overseeing its counterparts in eastern DRC and Mozambique, rather than territory as a whole. 

Leaving aside the Al-Shabaab and ISS's distinctions, one has to look no further than their interactions with the Yemen-based Houthis to see how easily both have dropped their ideological veil for pragmatic reasons. The Iranian-backed Ansar Allah group are a Zaydi Shi'ism revivalist movement, theologically incongruous with the Sunni Salafist visions of ISS and Al-Shabaab. Though Zaydism has some historical affinities with Sunni jurisprudence, the Houthis have also absorbed some of the teachings of their Iranian patrons-- supposedly antithetical to ISS and Al-Shabaab, which are strenuously anti-Shi'a. And yet the prospect of armed kamikaze drones and jihadists trained in maritime interdiction for both Daesh and Al-Shabaab is naturally appealing, even while their theological differences to the Houthis are much more significant than with one another. Of course, that is not a dynamic just unique to Islamist jihadists, with so often the most bitter political rivals in democracies hailing from the same schools of thought.

In turn, the scaling up of particularly Houthi-Al-Shabaab linkages in the past 12 months has been extraordinarily rapid, with senior Houthi operatives repeatedly having travelled to Al-Shabaab-held towns in south-central Somalia. Hundreds of Somali youth have now been trained in everything from maritime interdiction to IED assembly, while the Houthis have purportedly established a distinct base near Las Qoray in the contested Sanaag region under Al-Shabaab's protection. The Yemen and Somalia-based groups share a number of elements in common as well, with both arguably functioning as 'proto-states' more than insurgent jihadist movements, such as their degree of territorial control, taxation, and service delivery.

The evolution of Al-Shabaab from a clandestine jihadist cell in the 2000s into the best-armed and pre-eminent Al-Qaeda affiliate today did not happen overnight, and it has had profound consequences on the nature and structure of the movement. Today, Al-Shabaab blends elements of jihadist irredentism in Ethiopia and Kenya, a transnational criminal network, as well as incorporating licit aspects, such as investments into Mogadishu and Nairobi's construction boom. As such, it chooses to moderate its extremist ideology as and when it pleases — even if it rails against ISS in its prolific documentaries, claiming it is less 'pure' than itself. In turn, Al-Shabaab is also known to recruit women as part of its Amniyaat networks in Mogadishu, smuggling weapons and explosives into the capital, while there remain severe prohibitions on their daily lives in militant strongholds like Jilib and Jamaame. 

None of this is to diminish the role of ideology or the discrepancies between Al-Shabaab and ISS, far from it. But from an ideological vantage, there is much more that binds these groups than divides them, and their theological divergences have clearly been shown to be negotiable in relation to their competing strategic interests. And the myriad Islamist movements considered 'legitimate' at the centre of the country similarly play upon and exaggerate their differences as well, all in a bid to claim legitimacy or purity. But try as they might, in the words of the French philosopher Albert Camus, "to assert is not to prove."

The Somali Wire Team