Political Islam, Greater Somalia and the AIAI-UIC: Past Lessons & Future Pointers
(Appraising Need & Relevance)
Zerihun Teshome
Oct 30, 2006
Center for the Study of Federalism & Public Policy Research (CEFPOR)
The brain and force at the center of what has become to be known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) is Al Iltihad Al-Islamiya( AIAI). AIAI has gone through many mutations. "It was formed in Burco (Somaliland) in 1984 through the merger of Sheikh Mohammed Issa’s al-Jamma al-Islamiya and that of Sheikh Ali Warsame (Wahdat al-Shabab al-Islam). Sheikh Ali Warsame is reported to be an Islamic scholar who is known for his opposition to wars and revolutions". After a retreat to Galguduud, latter to Mogadishu, Sheikh Dahir Aweys took over AIAI; imbued it with the Salafi ideology and turned the organization into a fighting extremist force. The armed wing of AIAI/UIC is headed by "Somali Afghanis (Somalis who were trained and who participated in the Afghanistan wars)". Over time AIAI morphed into Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) with Sheikh Dahir Aweys as its dynamic ideologue. As seen since the Mogadishu victory the Aweys's and the Ayro's came out at the top, very vocal and committed to the same fundamentalist agenda of establishing an Islamic Caliphate incorporating not only pre1990 Somalia, but also all the Somali( and if possible all Muslim) inhabited areas that are currently under the control of "infidels" in the region. Sheikh Sharif Sh. Ahmed, though a moderate and a good man, has no armed force and no political organization. When his services as a moderate cover is no longer necessary, big brother Aweys will give him the choice of a junior partner or else he will have to accept the "unpleasant fate of the warrior Afghani"; Ahmed Shah Masood( see Dr Jowhar's Article).
Indeed going beyond rhetoric, the AIAI- UIC has moved to parts of Southern Somalia, which are close to Ethiopia, Puntland & Baidoa. Just this week Hassan Turki of the AIAI stated the following: "Our forces advanced to Baidoa, and we are 40 kilometers away. Our main agenda is to seize Baidoa, and then we will capture the Punt land and Somaliland regions. We want to achieve a unified Somalia," which includes Somali- speaking areas of neighboring Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti".
What all these show is both an opportunistic flexibility and an organic adeptness of the AIAI-UIC hard-line leaders, uncharacteristic of a conventional fundamentalist. More importantly it points both to a foundational need and limit posed by a socio-anthropological fact woven in the very fabric of the Somali social world/ life/cosmology. And this, namely, is the quintessential Somali clan/ lineage segmentation. It is the central principle informing the social organization of life among the Somali's. Equally, it has remained the perennial deficit of post colonial Somali nationhood and nationalism, appearing as the absence of a trans-clan shared value/loyalty providing a lasting anchorage thereof. Transcending it, either in the form of a shared national agenda or ideology, has conversely been the distinguishing preoccupation of all Somali political actors since independence.
Both the Socialist ideology imposed in the mid 1960's, the long held Pan Somali ideology based on the concept of Greater Somalia are the two prototypes representing this search as it unraveled in the annals of post independent Somali history. Yet both failed to serve as the Supra-clan transcendent panacea that could hold the Somali polity healthy, united and well anchored for long. And as witnessed, the SDR fragmented in to mostly autonomous clan enclaves; and particularly in the case of South Somalia it became an enclave permeated by total anarchy for that matter.
Many of the Sheik's in the present AIAI-UIC are officers/officials who passed through such passage of failure. Yet they are also current actors with a very grand project to see through: operating and moving, not only carrying such a legacy, but mainly within a context that lacks even the early loose territorial nationhood the old SDR represented. On the religious register also, the Somalis are moderate Muslims, who all through have displayed the willingness to enjoy every benefit the religion brings, but not a readiness to carry any burden of loss grafted up on them on behalf of it. A good case illustrating our point is the denial of support by the local Muslim Somali communities in and around Gedo &Luuq: it made the AIAI unable to both withstand as well as to subsequently recuperate from the defeat the Ethiopian attack of 1995 while staying put in this same area i.e. its main base then. The few leaders who survived holding on to their feet, like Sheik Aweys, have had therefore no option but retreat to their respective clan enclaves, such as Galgudud.
So the challenge: find a political framework/concept or ideology that somehow has a nostalgic resonance and a cross-clan shared status/ observance as spread and as old as that of the lineage system within which the Somali social world revolves. This is indispensable because such carries a relatively better chance to be retrievable from within the clan centered Somali life world/History/collective memory. Thus, the choice the AIAI-UIC found as befitting: riding resurgent fundamentalist Islam; and though bankrupt, the revived concept of Greater Somalia. But this time elevated as one dimension in the messianic mission i.e. the creation of an Islamic caliphate across and beyond Somalia, which the AIAI-UIC has articulated as its overarching political goal. This way, the Sheiks hope, the concept of Greater Somalia would be infused with a renewed galvanizing vigor: a feature that makes it "different" from being identified as a historically failed mundane agenda handled by impure executioners during the era of the now defunct SDR.
Notwithstanding all, and lacking a sustained practical success discernable to all Somalis across clan, such embrace of puritanical Islam by itself could not be a guarantee a supra-clan rallying point. Nor would it be a ground for the provision of an assured safe heaven, and un-splintered public support that the AIAI-UIC needs to carry this wider project of creating the "Islamic caliphate of the Horn", the midwife of which is jihad. Thus, here comes the other significance contained in AIAI-UIC's choice of the fundamentalist -revolutionary, and the mundane- irredentist/nationalist combination. It offers a tangible earthly cause--Greater Somalia, and the "quintessential nemesis-cum close by infidel-Ethiopia": an uncontestable fanatic belief in a heavenly duty as provided in the Jihad of the AL-QUEADA' type providing the "divinely" fuel to embrace sacrifice while holding unto hope. Also coming along with these is one more variable: a constant engagement allowing brutal enforcement of purpose and discipline-- war, understood as "perpetual war with all neighbors in search of a Moslem Great Somalia; perpetual war until the Islamic Caliphate spreads over god’s earth and frees it from all signs of the infidel, the heretic and the apostate".
Such ensures the required blend to register success in carrying a mission where and with which others failed once. All said, however, this stand of the AIAI-UIC is as much based on an opportunistic political consideration of entrenching unquestioned power in an otherwise fractured society, as it is from the professed religious commitment of its hard core leaders to such tenets.
The move made so far by the AIAI-UIC perfectly fits a mind set of such orientation: blending a realism bordering opportunism: and that of uncompromising rhetoric bordering fanaticism. Thus whenever possible, the AIAI-UIC expands beyond its clan: it displays readiness to negotiate, it turns strict or looks over what it defines as standards of puritanical observance etc: yet it is primarily committed to maintain what it had achieved, and manipulate its success at all levels i.e. local, regional, international, symbolic, territorial, PR, etc.
Underpinning all therefore, is the social and political reality of Somalia, at the center of which lies the foundational prominence of clan/lineage segmentation, which finds its validation as the defining variable only within a given context, and as long as it lasts as such relevant. As it is a foundational reality that stands against the materialization of the AIAI-UIC's ambitious project, subscribing to a rhetoric/agenda saddled with a dichotomous allegiance to the mundane agenda of Greater Somalia and to the divine mission of creating an Islamic Caliphate, appears to have been the better way available for the Sheiks to garner cross clan support, avoid clan induced fracture, and eventually guarantee political longevity.
In a recent article that appeared on a Somaliland website (awdalnews.com) a certain Dr. Abdishakur Sh. Ali Jowhar, provides a very insightful analysis further substantiating our argument. It shows how and why, on the part of the Mullah's of "Islamic revolution ala Al-Qaeda", controlling the AIAI-UIC, the embrace of pan Somali nationalism or the Greater Somalia project is much of a rhetorical and tactical one dictated by political expediency than lasting commitment.
"The revolution will bring peace to South Somalia and it will bring “North Somalia” back to the fold of the nation. The forcible reunification of Somalia and the rebirth of Great Somalia with new Islamic credentials will coerce Somali “Nationalists” to the embrace of the Sheikh...... The nationalist may not know, but he is sleeping with the enemy. The revolutionary...sees all nationalism as another variation of idol worship..... The war...will not end until the divine laws are fully established on this earth, until all nationalism, democracy and every other infidel institution is destroyed ....For the revolutionary the union of... Somalia is nothing more than the first step towards Islamic Caliphate that will take over....."
Indeed, neither is the embrace of political Islam exempt. As noted in the same piece, "....the question", for the AIAI-UIC embrace "... is not about religion. It was never about religion". It is, "... about power."
But how far would the Sheiks be able to go, and thereby realize both political agendas? Is there a socially grounded political currency and traction in political Islam and the concept/project of Greater Somalia, which the AIAI-UIC could exploit in a sustained manner among the Somalis? What lesson do both historical and existential facts lend us in this regard, and as to its prospects? How do Islam and Greater Somalia fare vis-à-vis the centrality of lineage segmentation in informing political alliance and social action among Somalis?