Somalia: not piracy catch all thread

[jcustis]

Former Special Envoy to Somalia, Ambassador Robert Oakley, passed away at age 83 earlier this month.

[davidbfpo]

A press report from Somalia, by a Somali reporter, on a previosuly unknown website; on a controversial topic in all insurgencies:

The defection of former al-Shabaab intelligence chief Zaakariya Ismail Ahmed Hersi has sparked debate on the Somali government's amnesty offer and the benefits of pardoning al-Shabaab officials who seek to leave the group.

Link:http://sabahionline.com/en_GB/articl.../02/feature-01

[davidbfpo]

The Somali militant group Al-Shabaab has developed an extensive financial infrastructure. Security actors seeking to disrupt and defeat the group must tackle the financial dimension of its activities.

The Role of Finance in Defeating Al-Shabaab offers detailed analysis of Al-Shabaab’s sources of revenue and recommends ways forward for using financial instruments to target and disrupt the group. As with Islamic State, undermining the financial management of Al-Shabaab and offering those people subject to its control better governance will be at the heart of the group’s ultimate failure and defeat.

Link:https://www.rusi.org/publications/wh...54A2A05DDC85F/

[davidbfpo]

Sometimes ostensibly sensible measures simply go wrong. I am sure the banks involved fear action by the USG if money transfers lead to Al-Shabaab getting money:

Somali families are panicking and businesses are running short of funds two weeks after the last major U.S. bank stopped transferring money to the fragile Horn of Africa country, development groups said. Somalia has no formal banking system due to decades of war, so Somalis living abroad use money transfer companies to send some $1.3 billion home each year - far more than the country receives in aid, Oxfam and Adeso said in a report on Thursday.

Link:http://news.yahoo.com/somalis-panic-...--sector.html?

[davidbfpo]

Spotted by Clints Watts:

In recent years, however, al Shabaab has turned on the foreign fighters in its own ranks, waging a brutal campaign to purge the perceived spies from its midst. An intimate account of the Shabaab civil war was provided to The Intercept in a series of interviews conducted with a current member of al Shabaab and a source who has maintained close contacts with the group.

(Citing the source) I want my voice to be heard. I don’t want others to make the same mistake I did. Especially to the youth who are in the West, I just want to tell them, don’t come to Somalia. This is advice from the bottom of my heart. You will not improve yourself, first of all, and you will not improve the Muslim Ummah in general

Link:https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2...n-fighter-cia/

[davidbfpo]

Yesterday an "insider" spoke and today the BBC has a - for them a quite long - report based on a defector:

One of the most senior figures to defect from Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab has urged his former colleagues to stop targeting civilians and to begin negotiations with the Somali government.

Forming an alliance with al-Qaeda "was a very big mistake. Our duty at that time was only to liberate Somalia - our interests were local." He added that it had a huge effect and diverted al-Shabab from is purpose.
"Now it turns to terror acts, organised crime... we were against all that. In late 2010/2011 there was a lot of misunderstanding within the core leadership of al-Shabab... in terms of these terrorism events.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-32791713

[davidbfpo]

There are a small number of posts on the Somali charcoal trade, which reportedly assists financing Al-Shabaab and the murky part of the Kenyan Defence Force who did control Kismayo port.

Al-Jazeera has a detailed report, mainly graphs and diagrams:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/int...75925833.html?