Tag: Our Man on the Horn

NATO COE-DAT Defence Against Terrorism Analysis – Quarterly

On By ourmanonthehornIn AMISOM, Counter Insurgency, Counter Terrorism, Insurgency, IS, Islamic State, Media, Media Sector Development, Mogadishu, Press freedom, Public Affairs, Public Information, Social Media, Somalia, TerrorismLeave a comment

“Al-Qa’ida is in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. Al-Qa’ida is in a media battle for the hearts and minds of the ummah”

Ayman al-Zawahiri

DATAQ 2023.pdfDownload

The first issue of NATO Centre of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism (NATO COE DAT)’s new publication, Defence Against Terrorism Analysis – Quarterly is out. It includes excellent articles on the need for caution in the handling of far right extremists and the calculated abuse of children by terrorist groups, as well as Our Man on the Horn’s thoughts on communications around a terrorist incident, ‘Crisis Communications during Terrorist Incidents: The Somali Experience ‘.

NATO Strategic Direction & Krypteia – South: The Spread of al-Shabaab

On By ourmanonthehornIn AMISOM, Counter Insurgency, Counter Terrorism, Da'esh, Insurgency, IS, Islamic State, Mogadishu, Somalia, TerrorismLeave a comment

NATO’s Strategic Direction – South in Naples, in conjunction with Krypteia, an East Africa-based research company, and Dr Harmonie Toros of the University of Kent, has published a fascinating new paper on al-Shabaab’s international agenda. https://thesouthernhub.org/publications/nsds-hub-publications/the-spread-of-al-shabaab-from-somalia-to-kenya-and-beyond

The paper can be downloaded here

Krypetia is a Somali woman owned business that was set up in 2014 and originally focused on translation between Somali, Swahili and English. Since then the company has expanded its activities significantly and now provides a range of services including media production, facilitation across East Africa and the Horn and specialist insight, with a particular focus on gender and CT & P/CVE. Client include the UN, the EU, the British Embassy Mogadishu, academia and the private sector, including private security providers. Krypteia recently provided two chapters (‘Women in al-Shabaab’ & ‘Negotiations with al-Shabaab’) in the UN’s War and Peace in Somalia collection.

Contact Krypetia on krypetiain@gmail.com

Seeds of Doubt: The El Adde Edit

On By ourmanonthehornIn AMISOM, Counter Insurgency, Counter Terrorism, Somalia, Terrorism1 Comment

 

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It’s all about the video… An al-Shabaab cameraman films during the El Adde Attack

As al-Shabaab video products go, it’s not one of the better ones. While not as sprawling as the one-and-a-half hour Mpeketoni product, it is still a ponderous 48 minutes long (try blue-toothing that to your pal). Like the Mpeketoni video, a great deal of the build-up focuses on imagery of Muslims being abused by Kenyan security forces, followed by a reminder of the ‘body count’ of al-Shabaab’s various forays into Kenya (Westgate, Lamu County, Garissa, Mandera) carried out in apparent direct reprisal for and in defence of the oppressed Muslims of East Africa. (The logic of reminding the audience of atrocities, each almost exclusively against civilians, is questionable.)

 

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Monoped Farhan: not much use for anything else except suicide bombing

After the obligatory, lengthy suicide bomber ‘leaving speech’ (monoped Farhan of the Habargidir – not much use for anything else after he lost his leg, we must assume), the attack begins in the same old way, with a flash against the dawn skyline.

 

The attack, too, is very much akin to the previous video products produced on al-Shabaab’s behalf by al-Kutaib, al-Qa’ida’s media house. Technicals mounting Dushka heavy machine guns, twin 23mm anti-aircraft cannon go back and forwards. Plenty of ammunition is expended (sometimes aimed, mostly not), PK machine guns are fired from the hip and above the head, RPGs and heavy recoilless rifles engage targets (although two unfortunates standing behind one of the recoilless rifles appear to take the backblast in the face). Loose lines of troops advance at a gentle pace and begin to overrun the hotch-potch AMISOM position. Apparent leaders, rifles slung over their shoulders, kneel, speak into Tetra-style radios, give some direction. Most of the troops wear the proud badge of the Abu Zubayr Brigade, a bright orange flash, either as a head or arm-band.

 

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A profusion of orange head- and arm-bands: not so much bravado as a simple control measure for troops unused to fighting as a unit

But there are jarring notes throughout, not just for the two clowns who forgot that some of the fiery fury that comes out the front of the recoilless rifle also comes out the back as well. Those bright orange bands must make nice aiming marks and, as much as they might be a piece of bravado, they might also be a unit marker, needed to a coordinate a loose rag-tag that has come together for the operation, probably never having worked as a formed unit before. (There are also some blue bands to be seen later in the video.)

 

More questioning of what we seem to be seeing. A colleague comments, ‘it’s some men firing at some bushes’: and she is right. For most of the video, we willingly suspend our disbelief and go along with al-Shabaab’s version of events. But most of the video is just that, men firing at some bushes, or a tarpaulin, or something, maybe a running man, in the distance.

 

Occasionally the fighters do shoot at a target – it takes a section strength group a few minutes, a few hundred rounds to hit a prone, probably already dead AMISOM soldier at a distance of about 30 metres. Despite the apparent profusion of anti-armour weapons (according to the editing at least), an AMISOM-tagged armoured car meanders through melee, does some ‘turning in the road using forward and reverse gears’ and goes away again.

 

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Al-Shabaab uses the Kenyan government’s ill-judged messaging against it – again

The fighting putters out and, again, to a format, we view some burning vehicles, the shooting of some soldiers who are already dead, boxes and boxes of ammunition being carried away, imagery of al-Shabaab fighters wandering around a deserted town, a slideshow of dead bodies. The video product ends with the standard judo flipping of ill-judged Kenyan government and military messages set against apparently contradictory video evidence (the Kenyans really must ditch the ‘aspirational messaging’– al-Shabaab throws this back at them every time).

 

But numerous seeds of doubt are planted by this product. Yes, the Kenyans obviously lost a lot of troops: it was pointless and it continues to be pointless to claim otherwise. But virtually every one of the corpses is in helmet and body armour, holding a rifle. These men died fighting, and, small compensation to their families as that is, it is how soldiers are meant to die in battle. That deserves recognition.

 

Which leads to another point: where are the al-Shabaab casualties? Recently defected former fighters claim that al-Shabaab suffered something like 50% dead and wounded in the El Adde attack. Judging by their still-much-too-close spacing, their gentle, strolling pace as they advance and the atrocious marksmanship, that is feasible, especially when the Kenyan light armour started engaging. It is easy to forget that this is an edit, a propaganda product with a deliberate effect in mind, something to be taken with a very large pinch of salt and set against a backdrop of a disastrous, illogical amphibious assault in Puntland (probably 200+ killed out of 400) and a series of drone strikes (Raso Camp: nearly 200 killed) and special forces raids (various senior leaders killed). But, and in spite of over $20 million worth of communications projects focussed on Somalia, a plethora of radio stations, TV channels, websites and a purported ‘getting’ of Strategic Communications (after ten years of trying to ‘get’ Strat Comms in two other long CT/COIN campaigns), there is still no real challenge to al-Shabaab’s inconsistency-ridden messaging. No-one is answering the questions these video products pose.

 

Hardest to forget, though, is the chilling sequence where a dazed Kenyan crewman appears out of the hatch of a stalled armoured vehicle. After a long section that captures his bewilderment all too well he is fired at, finally some of the rounds hit, he slumps, dies. That, along with an ominous message that many of the captured-and-paraded Kenyan troops subsequently ‘succumbed to their injuries while others still remain in captivity and their fate hangs by a thread’, has ramifications that we should not forget whilst caught up in an exciting video re-enactment of a battle. These are war crimes, outrages against humanity, and, one day, some of these murdering bastards should be held to account for that.

 

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War crimes: a captured AMISOM soldier whose life, ominously, ‘hangs by a thread’

NOTE: as a matter of policy and out of respect to the dead we do not publish imagery of  the dead: we counter propaganda, not amplify it

 

The Shop-fronts of Mogadishu – 6

On By ourmanonthehornIn Mogadishu, SomaliaLeave a comment

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Bar Kamal Diin

Via Moscow, Hamarweyne district, Mogadishu

Back in the day when literacy levels were low, Mogadishu shopkeepers would engage a local artist to depict their offerings on the exterior wall. Sadly these are disappearing and being replaced by blast walls and HESCO bastions or, worse still, the tatty plastic faux-glitz signs you see in every African and Middle Eastern city.

 

‘But They’re So Much Better Than Us’

On By ourmanonthehornIn AMISOM, Counter Insurgency, Counter Terrorism, Insurgency, Social Media, Somalia, Terrorism1 Comment

The Myth of Terrorist Communications Superiority

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The moment an al-Shabaab cameraman is shot and killed while filming the attack on Janaale, captured on camera: it is unclear which direction the bullet came from

Another day, another al-Shabaab attack video.

Janaale, near Marka town, was occupied by Ugandan People’s Defence Forces serving under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) flag. The camp was in the process of being dismantled as part of AMISOM force re-posturing, recognising the danger posed to isolated positions in the hinterland by al-Shabaab’s continuing ability to mass hundreds of fighters for set-piece attacks. Unfortunately for the Ugandans that day the re-posturing meant that, while the artillery and armour had been withdrawn, the infantry remained. At dawn on September 1st, al-Shabaab destroyed a nearby bridge (denying reinforcement by land) and then, under a low grey sky (denying air support), attacked.

The President of Uganda and senior military figures are mocked in the video

Released 6 weeks later (this appears to be the standard period), the video unfolds to the usual pattern: a lengthy educational introduction by a luminary, then the attack itself. A suicide attacker initiates the assault (just as it did during the attack on the Burundian position in Leego) and seemingly hundreds of troops fight through the spartan, disorderly seeming AMISOM position. Heavy weapons blaze away, fighters fire from the hip and over their heads. (Did I see two pale fighters, about half way through?) An occasional Ugandan is seen in the distance. At the conclusion of the attack, stockpiles of captured weapons, ammunition, uniforms, identity cards. The dead are made more dead by being shot at close range.

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A captured Ugandan is displayed

A novelty: a captured Ugandan chats amiably about being woking up by the explosions, only to find he had been abandoned. Connections, quite possibly artificial, are made: to the killing of civilians in nearby Marka town by AMISOM forces in the aftermath of an IED attack, to the anniversary of Godane’s death in a US airstrike. The product is bookended by footage of the Ugandan president and senior military figures, set-up to look like bluffers, African Comical Ali’s, as they mock al-Shabaab’s weakness and praise their own forces.

Captured AMISOM equipment is displayed

The videos are definitely improving in production quality. The Janaale video is tighter, certainly tighter than the ponderous Mpeketoni video that spent 45 minutes focussing on President Uhuru Kenyatta’s denials of al-Shabaab involvement in the attacks before it actually got down to showing al-Shabaab involved in attacking Mpeketoni (another 45 minutes). The edits are good, split screens, multiple angles. Six different cameramen were involved, laboriously proven by six different views of the suicide attack that initiated the attack. And the gamer’s eye view of an attack can’t be beaten. It almost feels like you’re there.

Oddly, though, no mention of the ongoing purge within al-Shabaab of those who seek a shift of allegiance to the Islamic State.

 

 

‘Slick,’ says a colleague, also former military, also in his 40s. ‘Sophisticated,’ says a female acquaintance working for a friendly government, also in her 40s. ‘But they’re so much better than us,’ despairs another (also in his 40s). 

But a 14 year old wouldn’t say that: they would find these products laughable. Why is it so long? (Tut.) And why don’t you actually see anything? (Sigh.) Are these videos actually authentic? (Tut.) Haven’t they heard of Go-Pro? (Tut.) And how are you meant to download something 30 minutes long onto your phone? (Tut.) Aren’t there highlights of the best bits? (Sigh.) Booorrriiing. (Tut. Sigh.)

Situations Vacant: al-Shabaab Cameraman

The Janaale video is ripe with specifics for the 14 year old to rip apart. During one of the many scenes of ‘men standing in a field firing at distant bushes,’ there is a puff of earth in front of the cameraman… A pause… The image slides to the left and hits the ground… ‘The martyrdom of the cameraman, brother Abdulkarim al-Ansari,’ announces the slate.

How amusing would a 14 year old find that? Your cameraman gets shot and you actually include it in the video…? Epic fail. Lucky they had six of them! Who’d be an al-Shabaab cameraman?

 

 

What we are facing in the information war is not the over-whelming creative sophistication and technological aptitude of the other side: the problem there lies more with the lack of creativity and the technical ineptitude of many of those we choose to implement our response. Sometimes it is much simpler: volume and a bit of initiative, for example. While institutions focus on what might go wrong, the enemy is focussing on what might go right.

As Dr Neville Bolt of the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, points out, we are moving towards a new phase in the way institutions communicate: we have moved from 80s-style complete control of communications (think Falklands – print this); through the millennium period of ‘control-management’ (think spin-doctors and embeds); and, now, institutions engage in management-responsiveness (‘I will be answering your Tweets questions at midday today…’).

But the process of development is not finished: next, predicts Dr Bolt, comes Pro-active Responsiveness, the ultimate delegation of messaging (with all the risk that brings). He attaches an arbitrary ‘2024’ deadline for that to come about. There is now so much communicating going on that governments, militaries and other lumbering monstrosities cannot hope to control it but must instead engage with it through trusted and maybe not-so-trusted advocates, and in the knowledge that there will be ‘epic fails’.

In some ways, that is how terrorists and insurgents are already communicating, as if it is Dr Bolt’s 2024: totally off the lead, making mistakes (like getting shot dead while filming), but getting a message out nonetheless.

But it is also how gaming communities and trendy clothing brands and media houses and bars and restaurants are already communicating – groups that are on our side but not yet On Our Side. (They probably are not yet On Our Side because we haven’t asked them if they want to be on our side, because they have beards or piercings or didn’t go to the same schools as us.)

Come to think of it, it only seems to be 40-somethings like me and my chums, and institutions, with their collective, 40-something mindsets, that aren’t communicating this way. Like all wars this war this will be a young man’s game, but this time we should perhaps consider giving the young men and, increasingly, the young women, a say in the strategy rather than just asking them to do the dirty business of getting killed (albeit now on camera).

Everything Ends in IS

On By ourmanonthehornIn Counter Insurgency, Counter Terrorism, Somalia, TerrorismLeave a comment

The Islamic State Releases a Confusing Video of its new al-Shabaab Members

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I was speaking to a group of military men a few days ago, playing the age old soldierly game of wargaming: not with little metal soldiers, but sitting around, beer in hand, working through scenarios.

In this case, we considered the fate of al-Shabaab. The group’s leader, Diriye, is killed: IS takes over. Al-Qa’ida’s Zawahiri dies: IS takes over. Al-Shabaab descends into a civil war over allegiance to al-Qa’ida or IS: IS takes over. Everything ended in IS.

I disagree. Being an only child, I’ve always found being contradicted hard to take.

But my fellow wargamers proved hard to shift in their beliefs – understandable, when the presence of the Islamic State is fundamental to your existence (armies need enemies to fight, after all) and Islamic State presence means more budget for fighting that particular bogeyman.

This was still preying upon my mind last night (being an only child, I dwell on things), when the Islamic State, through its media house, ar-Raqqah, released a video product celebrating the shift of allegiance by a group of al-Shabaab members led by the ideologue, Mumin.

The video is short, running to just under seven minutes (compared with al-Shabaab products released through al-Kutaib, which run up to 90 minutes.)

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Sexy M4 with fore grip and light unit – you don’t see many of them in Somalia

The first three speakers are all in Iraq/Syria (although this is never stated, allowing for the assumption to take hold that this is all set in Somalia). The talking heads switch between Somali and Arabic, quote from the Q’ran. They provide a religious argument for mutiny, explicitly asking aS fighters to leave ‘the battlefield’ if al-Shabaab’s leaders refuse to let them shift their allegiance. But they speak poor Somali – Diaspora, possibly never having set foot in Somalia itself. (This not the first time the Islamic State have commited a faux pas in their messaging to Somalia. See Do We Want al-Shabaab to Join the Islamic State?)

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Sexy MP5 and a sprinkler in the background –                                                           don’t see many of either of those in Somalia

Their weapons are sophisticated (an MP5, an M4 with a foregrip and a sexy sight unit) – too sophisticated for Somalia. There is a sprinkler in the background of one shot – you don’t see many sprinklers in Somalia.

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Fighters follow a man carrying an Islamic State flag through some bushes

The production quality shifts dramatically down and fighters with faces covered are shown wandering through the bush (well, some bushes), following a flag-bearer, swearing allegiance – they might be in Somalia. (It is also reasonable that they should cover their faces given the ongoing Amniyat purge of Islamic State supporters.) The terrain could be the Galgala mountains. Or it might not.

 

Mumin, who leads the al-Shabaab-Islamic State faction 

Mumin himself appears, but this is a lift from his original video statement.

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Group shot – 27 fighters, which matches the number of Mumin’s group 

Then group shot: there are 27 fighters and, adding those recording, this could be the group of fighters who fled with Mumin. But where is Mumin, then? (Perhaps he was the one filming. I suspect not.) The video ends with a few fighters watching an Islamic State video on a laptop.

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Watching an Islamic State video product on a laptop

The product feels wrong, as wrong as al-Shabaab feels within the context of the previously moderate, Suffist Somalia.  Too often there is a ‘could be…’

But it is probably convincing enough for those who haven’t developed fingerspitzengefuhl for all things Somali. Or for those who have their conclusions pre-formed.

And that is dangerous. This is a period when the Islamic State might be changing form and becoming an international terrorist organization, rather than a territory-focussed entity. (Although that assumption is based on events over Sinai, and I might be the one with the prepared conclusions. But I’m not the only one.)

There is a battle going on right now in Somalia, but the battle is not the Islamic State trying to control Somalia. It is between factions within al-Shabaab, young and old, globalists and nationalists, foreign fighters and Somalis, Diaspora and homelanders, even. (And there is also a battle going on between the Somali government and their international partners against al-Shabaab.) Unless there is a widening of the strategic view of those in the military, in government, in the media, the elements of the international community who might actually have some influence over events, then this scenario might well end in IS after all.

Al-Shabaab’s Da’esh Problem

On By ourmanonthehornIn Counter Insurgency, Counter Terrorism, Insurgency, Somalia, TerrorismLeave a comment

Mumin

Abdul Qadir Mumin, who swore allegiance to the Islamic State/Da’esh on Thursday

There have been rumblings of a shift of allegiance by al-Shabaab from al-Qa’ida to the Islamic State/Da’esh for some time. In February, for instance, there media reported that a senior leader, Karate, was strongly in favour of the move, in direct opposition to the relatively new and unestablished leader of al-Shabaab, Diriye. (The story was grossly exaggerated, though, claiming that, in a moment of tension in the discussion, Karate had threatened to behead Diriye: while authentically Da’esh, the likelihood of even a senior leader making such a threat and surviving is very unlikely.)

During the Holy Month of Ramadan, the rumour appeared again, with claims of an announcement of the change of allegiance to come at Eid al-Fitr. But it didn’t. Eid al-Adha brought a different, albeit indirect message, hidden within a video product focused on al-Shabaab’s attack on the Burundian camp in Leego: quotations from Usama Bin Laden, but also from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qa’ida. Al-Shabaab was never going to answer the rumours directly, but this concluded the discussion.

Except that it didn’t conclude the discussion. Abdul Qadir Mumin, a relatively well known al-Shabaab religious ideologue, declared his allegiance via an audio message on Thursday evening along with 20 of his followers, somewhere in Puntland.

‘Da’esh has an appeal,’ says a chum in the Somali intelligence community. ‘Da’esh are Manchester City right now, al-Qa’ida are… Born. Mouth.’ (Ah, Bournemouth, I realise after a moment.) ‘The young people, the footsoldiers, and the foreign fighters, they are taken by Da’esh, by their daring, by their media. Al-Qa’ida is for the old men.’

Foreign fighters can mean both non-Somalis but also Somali Diaspora. Which does he mean?

‘A group of foreigners declared in the mosque a few weeks ago, two Arabs and three Kenyans. In a village somewhere between Barawe and Jamame, where they have no internet, no television or radio. They didn’t know what was happening and they were arrested by the Amniyat.

‘But it is not just foreigners – another groups, Somalis, all from the same clan, they decalred their allegiance to Da’esh and are strong enough with their own clan militia that al-Shabaab has sent religious men to negotiate with them.’ (Where? Near Jilib, also in the hinterland between Mogadishu and Kismayo.)

(This raises an interesting point, the clan dynamics of al-Shabaab. As much as the group claims to be above clan, no Somali is not influenced by clan and al-Shabaab itself regularly mediates in clan disputes, using the ancient system to their advantage. And as much as al-Shabaab has representatives of virtually every clan within its ranks, the leadership of al-Shabaab, the Shura Council, is dominated by one clan. It was only a matter of time before the clan issue appeared.)

So this isn’t a one off. There are elements within al-Shabaab, not just one isolated group, but groups of foreigners, Somali Diaspora and ‘real’ Somalis, swearing allegiance to Da’esh. The response from al-Shabaab depends on how strong the individual group is. For now, at least.

Kulwa, an al-Shabaab leader in Puntland, condemns Mumin’s move and states that al-Shabaab will fight anyone who opposes ‘the movement’. This is a standard approach by al-Shabaab, low level responses first: a tweet here, a statement to local media there. Al-Shabaab then assesses the response. If the story goes away, they leave it at that. But if the story is ‘sticky’, they respond commensurately: a more senior leader responds, a statement might be issued, it might even go all the way up to Diriye if required. (‘If only the government adopted that approach,’ my intelligencer acquaintance wryly comments.)

But al-Shabaab isn’t just about communications. It is also about deeds.

In 2013, when Godane purged al-Shabaab of those who opposed his ideology of the Global Jihad and his alliance with al-Qa’ida, there were no Tweets or statements. Al-Shabaab’s actions spoke for themselves, and there is no reason to doubt that al-Shabaab won’t adopt a similar course in the coming months against its errant, vacillating members.

Al-Shabaab’s Eid Message: the Attack on Leego

On By ourmanonthehornIn AMISOM, Counter Insurgency, Counter Terrorism, Eid, Insurgency, Media, Somalia, Terrorism1 Comment

Al-Shabaab’s latest video, produced by al-Qa’ida, reminds us of some old lessons and also teaches us some new ones.

The Attack Begins with the detonation of a Suicide Bomber

A suicide attacker initiates the attack on the AMISOM base in Leego

 

It’s sometimes hard to tell if al-Shabaab’s timing is as intentional as the media sometimes interpret it to be. Was the attack on Ugandan troops serving with AMISOM in Janaale on September 1st really in memoriam Godane, marking the first anniversary of his death in a drone strike? Was Monday’s attack near the perimeter gate of Villa Somalia really meant to coincide with the anniversary of Westgate? And was Thursday’s release of the obligatory video product that follows every major attack, this time of an attack on Burundian troops under the AMISOM flag in Leego, really al-Shabaab’s message for the people at the time of Eid al-Adha?

It doesn’t matter, of course, because whether it was or wasn’t, that is how social meeja and subsequently the media have interpreted it. And perception is reality, some say.

Once again the video product was produced by al-Kutaib, al-Qa’ida’s production house. Once again, al-Shabaab and Somalia provide the cast and the set for the ailing al-Qa’ida studio. The quality is consistently improving: there are at least three different cameramen (occasionally filming each other – how very Vice) and the editing is slick, with lots of split screens and the like. The subtitling again is in English and Arabic. The product as a whole is tighter, too, only 27 minutes this time, as opposed to the sprawl of some previous products, notably the 90 minute ‘Western Shopping Mall’ product (that fleetingly mentioned western shopping malls). It is undeniably exciting to watch the attack unfold, as graphic as the violence is and as ambivalent the thrill might be.

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Al-Shabaab footsoldiers parade prior to the attack on the AMISOM base in Leego

The video itself begins and is subsequently punctuated by a series of inspirational comments from Osama Bin Laden, Godane and Zawahiri. Various scarfed footsoldiers prance around for a while but any comic value (they make the Italian Army on parade look intimidating) is lost when the camera pans out to reveals hundreds of fighters. A lengthy interview with a combat medic who has decided Allah has a greater role for him sings a song, looks wistfully into the distance.

A Lengthy Interview with the Suicide Attacker Who Initiates the Attack

A suicide attacker, eulogised, initiated the assault on the AMISOM base

Darkness falls, broken first by the flash of the self detonation of the healer-turned-killer in the distance, then webs of tracer rounds from 7.62mm PK light machine guns and then the heavier 12.7mm Dushkas, mounted on the backs of 4×4 ‘technicals’. (A sharper eyed/more spotterish colleague spies even heavier ZSU 23mm anti-aircraft cannon mounted on technicals too. There are at least four different technicals involved, possibly more.)

Technical Mounted Heavy Weapons During the Assault

One of the many technicals mounting heavy weapons that were used in the Leego attack

The assault itself takes place, strangely lacklustre after the build-up and the previous video products. Burundian troops are seen in the distance, in a mixture of states of dress, confused and meandering around entrenchments aimlessly.

Burundian Troops Move Along a Trench System

Burundian troops under fire meander along a trench

Sniper Shot

A sniper targets a Burundian soldier: probably a post-event overlay

The Burundian Church is Destroyed

The Burundian church is destroyed

It is after the assault that the most striking images appear: a sniper scope view of a Burundian killed by a headshot, so derivative of many similar clips produced in Iraq; the destruction of the Burundian church tent, the cross stomped upon until it splinters; the seizure of quantities of ammunition, weapons (including heavy mortars), AMISOM uniforms and Burundian rank-slides; and finally, dead bodies. Many dead bodies.

Captured AMISOM Burundian Uniforms and Rank Slides

Captured AMISOM Equipment including Heavy Mortars and Ammunition

Significant quantities of arms, ammunition and uniforms were seized in the attack

Bodies are finished off with headshots; a series of single images of corpses build into a cascade, designed to justify the assertion that 80 Burundians were killed in the attack; bodies are strung together and dragged behind a technical.

Many of the messages from this video are not new. The video shows once again that al-Shabaab can concentrate large numbers of troops and weapons systems against isolated positions, seemingly at will. We knew this in December, when al-Shabaab attacked Interim Jubba Authority troops on Kodhay Island, but now the focus is on AMISOM. We also know that al-Shabaab will always produce a communications output from their operations and it is likely that they may even design their operations around the communications output. We also see that AMISOM, while they certainly outclass al-Shabaab in the offence, are weak in defence. The fact that al-Shabaab can mass vehicles and fighters and assault AMISOM positions with impunity shows that AMISOM has not yet adjusted to the physical terrain or to counter-insurgency: no aggressive foot-patrolling, no dominating ground, no exploitation of the technical advantage, no offensive spirit, obviously no support amongst the local population: all the tactics you would expect in rural counter-insurgency.

But there are is a new, albeit indirectly stated message: al-Shabaab’s allegiance remains with al-Qa’ida. Any doubt about that is confirmed by the fact that it is not just Bin Laden who is quoted in the video, but also Zawahiri. The media flurry around al-Shabaab’s supposed shifting of allegiance to the Islamic State can now be seen to be a red herring, although it allowed the Daily Mail to fill a few pages with pictures of Samantha Lewthwaite and stills from the latest ‘ISIS-style’ video release by al-Shabaab (who were producing such video products long before the Islamic State came into being).

One final, ominous thought. Al-Shabaab is releasing video products somewhere between 6 weeks and 3 months after each major attack. That means we can expect a video product based on the assault on the Ugandan-manned AMISOM base in Janaale earlier on September 1st (in memoriam Godane) in the coming weeks. That incident, rooted as it was in the loss of confidence of the local community after the massacring of members of a wedding party in nearby Marka (which in turn was in revenge for an IED attack on AMISOM forces) will once again cast doubts on AMISOM’s ability to operate in the rural environment. The subsequent confusion in reporting (12 dead, say Uganda; 25 dead say local sources; 50 dead say al-Shabaab), compounded by claims and counter claims of Ugandan hostages taken, prepares the ground for al-Shabaab’s next video. It is a sorry state of affairs when we have to rely on al-Shabaab to provide clarity on what is going on in the hinterland of southern and central Somalia.

POLICY: out of respect to fallen combatants and on the grounds of decency this site does not carry graphic imagery. If you wish to view the video for research, please send a request via the comments section below. 

Death by Hashtag

On By ourmanonthehornIn Media, Social Media, SomaliaLeave a comment

Journalists now risk crucifixion on social media if they offend the sensibilities of Africans – maybe that’s a good thing.

DeathbyHashtag

As famous as the oral tradition of the Somalis is, that doesn’t mean that they don’t occasionally commit things to paper. As it transpires, and in spite of high (although mainly rural) levels of illiteracy, there is actually a voracious appetite for seeing the Somali language in print.

Riding on the back of the success of the long-running and internationally recognised Hargeisa International Book Festival, a local activist, Diini, decided Mogadishu needed its own book festival. So, on a rainy morning in late August (it rains in Mogadishu – not a lot of people know that) at the City Palace Hotel, books perched like birds on the hand and the poets and authors of the city strutted their stuff in front of an audience of hundreds. (On the two subsequent days of the festival, that became thousands: people waiting for the weekend, people waiting to see if it’s worth the risk.)

The President attends: as an academic, he is obviously a book lover. Ugaaso Abukar Boocow, made internationally famous by her jocular Instagram miniatures of life for a Diaspora returner (@ugaasada), is also there. (Another surprise: she’s quite small. And bossy. And very good looking.) The wifi, generously provided by the telecoms company, Hormuud, buckles under the weight of postings.

And then, amidst all exuberance and the superlatives, the #mogadishurising and #theafricathemedianevershowsyou: a bomb blast.

Not an actual bomb blast. The City Palace Hotel is right beside the headquarters of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), and couldn’t be safer. The BBC provide the bomb blast. Mary Harper, a known Somaliphile and author of ‘Getting Somalia Wrong’, publishes a positive piece about the festival. So far so good. But the image attached to the article is the stereotype of Mogadishu: a street desolated by an explosion.

A new hashtag appears, started by Mohamed Ahmed Cantoobo (@cantoobo), another activist, who runs Act for Somalia: #someonetellmaryharper.

#someonetellmaryharper #Somalia is moving forward regardless of how @mary_harper and BBC chooses to portray

Others agree:

#someonetellmaryharper enough is enough, Somalis are defining their own narrative, and stereotypes won’t define us

@MogadishuNews

And, after the successful conclusion of the Book Fair without incident, still further:

In Mogadishu, ricocheting bullets and bouncing bazookas is replaced by retractable and quill pens #someonetellmaryharper

@Mazario2012

Abdihakim Ainte spreads the word:

Hello Kenyans: this hashtag #someonetellmaryharper is equivalent to #someonetellcnn. Speaks of Somali narrative. Please use and promote.

@AbdihakimAinte

#someonetellmaryharper is a development of another hashtag, developed during another case of western-media-offends-African-sensibilities-and-gets-hashtagged-to-death, #someonetellcnn. In the run up to the Obama visit to Kenya. CNN ran a feature (from the US, not from its Nairobi bureau), noting that POTUS was headed to ‘a region that’s a hotbed of terror’ – provoking a ferocious response from Kenyans on Twitter (#KOT) using the hashtag #someonetellcnn and eventually forcing an apology from CNN in the face of cancelled advertising contracts.

The BBC response was diversionary, muted. ‘An editor chose the photo,’ claims Mary Harper, ‘not me.’ That’s quite possible: the BBC has resisted pestering (mainly from this callsign, but also from BBC Africa staff) to update the map of the country it uses online, a map shows al-Shabaab controlling most of southern and central Somalia. It did: until 2012. Even last month the BBC used the out of date map for stories detailing the fall of towns like Baardheere and Dinsoor, deep in the heart of what used to be al-Shabaab territory. But the BBC doesn’t need to worry about big advertising contracts in the way CNN does. So the out-of-date map continues to appear. They are the BBC, after all.

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The BBC map of Somalia – al-Shabaab controlled territory in green

Slide2

What al-Shabaab actually controls (in red)

After six days, use of the #someonetellmaryharper dwindles. (That’s double the normal duration for a ‘Trending’ hashtag. Somalis are persistent.)

But BBC or not, western journalists beware: young, articulate, connected Africans, brought up on Binyavanga Wainaina’s ‘How to Write About Africa’, are watching out for the next stereotype, the next attempt to use Africa to prove your adventure-journalist creds. And they have a hashtag with your name on it.