Al Shabaab

Since the primary school re-opened in the New Year, we have noticed the absence of some of the adolescent boys with whom we had come to know. In particular, we began to miss Jamaal*, a fourteen year old boy whom we had spent some time with last fall. We were shocked to learn that he had been taken back to Somalia to train as a soldier. This does not surprise our Somali friends. "All over Eastleigh young boys are going to Jihad camp" our friend Abdi* tells us. "They are looking for boys to fight and free Somalia. They promise them heaven but all they are giving them is war."

The "they" our friend refers to is "Al Shabaab" a hard line militant youth movement of Somalia. "Al-Shabaab" literally means "The Youth". Since the overthrow of Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has been without a stable government. It is believed that Al-Shabaab developed out of the fall of the Islamic Courts Union in the Autumn of 2006 as an opposition to the Transitional Federal Government and its backers (primarily the Ethiopian Military). While the origins of Al-Shabaab in Somalia are not clear, the roots certainly go back to extreme Islamists in 2004. They have been actively recruiting jihadists to wage war against the "enemies of Islam".

Since we arrived in Kenya in 2006, the Ethiopian forces have kept Al Shabaab back from the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Now after two years of setbacks and losses, Ethiopia announced its withdraw late last year. Reports from Somalia tell us that their abandoned military outposts were almost immediately seized by Al Shabaab.

Somalia's new president Sheik Aharif Sheikh Ahmed has tried to dissuade the advance of Al-Shabaab, even this week agreeing to institute a lenient form of Sharia law to appease them. Despite this, they vow to continue fighting.


In Prayer:

* Please pray for our young friend, Jamaal, and for hundreds of youth like him who are being enticed to join a so-called "Holy War" against their fellow countrymen. Hatred is a powerful evil. We pray that God's peace would over come the deep distrust and spiritual conflict within Somalia. We pray for vulnerable youth like Jamaal that they will have eyes to see through the lies and hatred that will never free Somalia from war and death.

* Please keep our friend Moxamuud and his group Somali Youth for Peace in your prayers. Together they are working to promote peaceful conflict resolution among the Eastleigh Community.

Economist Story on Al Shabaab
http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12815670&CFID=37713077&CFTOKEN=44056901







* Names changed.