Sharia Law under the UIC

Hard­line el­e­ments of the UIC have made ma­jor im­pinge­ments on civil lib­er­ties, pub­lic ex­pres­sion and en­ter­tain­ment al­ready, al­though we must be care­ful – the UIC’s fed­er­al­ist-clan struc­ture makes it hard to draw con­clu­sions from ex­am­ples. They have shut down groups watch­ing soc­cer matches. They have shut down the­aters show­ing sup­pos­edly ‘porno­graph­ic’ movies – and it is not clear what counts as ‘porno­graph­ic’. There have been re­ports of strict dress code en­force­ment on women. Elope­ments have been banned. The UIC also banned khat, a pop­u­lar stim­u­lant, lead­ing to protests. The US has ac­cused the UIC of plan­ning to es­tab­lish a Tal­iban-like state; this has been de­nied and is un­likely given the ex­ist­ing So­mali cul­ture, fed­er­al­ist struc­ture and no sig­nif­i­cant Arab in­flow as oc­curred in Afghanistan. But we should re­mem­ber that the UIC, what­ever its fed­er­al­ist bless­ings, is a theo­cratic move­ment. Other than Aweys, the main leader in the UIC is Sheikh Sharif Skeikh Ahmed. Ahmed is the more mod­er­ate of the two: he is chair­man of the UIC, a law grad­u­ate and for­mer high school teacher. He heads the eight-mem­ber ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee and is the pub­lic face of the UIC.

Aweys, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya and Osama bin Laden

In the 1990s Aweys headed an Is­lamist group, al-Iti­haad al-Is­lamiya, which re­ceived funds from Osama bin Laden, but also had el­e­ments of a So­mali so­cial move­ment. Ac­cord­ing to US in­tel­li­gence, al-Iti­haad al-Is­lamiya co­op­er­ated with the al-Qaeda mem­bers who car­ried out the 1998 US em­bassy bomb­ings in Kenya and Tan­za­nia. Like the dic­ta­tor Muham­mad Siad Barre be­fore him, Aweys calls for a greater So­ma­lia. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, on the other hand, has de­nied any great de­sire for land, pro­fess­ing that the courts are no threat and de­sire only or­der.

Power consolidation (2006-present)

As the UIC has taken fur­ther con­trol of the coun­try, it has im­posed ad­di­tional el­e­ments of gov­ern­men­tal power. It has be­gun col­lect­ing taxes in the mar­kets. It has sent its ‘for­eign min­is­ter’ to Yemen. In No­vem­ber, talks be­tween the TFG and UIC broke down, and the UIC has since moved to con­sol­i­date their po­si­tion and move to­wards Baidoa. By De­cem­ber 4 Baidoa was ef­fec­tively en­cir­cled. On De­cem­ber 12 the UIC gave Ethiopian forces a week to leave the coun­try or face at­tack. Troops on both sides dug in around Baidoa on De­cem­ber 13, and an EU diplo­matic ef­fort to avert war be­gan, though with no re­sults yet. Ethiopian troops have backed up TFG fight­ers in re­cent bat­tles, and re­mained sta­tioned in Baidoa in the city’s de­fense. On De­cem­ber 19 the UIC-im­posed dead­line ex­pired, and heavy fight­ing con­tin­ues around Baidoa. On De­cem­ber 24 Ethiopian war­planes be­gan bomb­ing UIC tar­gets.

This comes at a time when over 400,000 peo­ple in So­ma­lia are af­fected by flood­ing, with up to 900,000 at risk if the flood­ing wors­ens.

Foreign involvement

The so-called So­mali civil war can­not be re­garded as en­tirely an in­ter­nal af­fair. Sev­eral coun­tries have pro­vided sup­port to the fac­tions in the con­flict. So­ma­lia is sub­ject to an arms em­bargo, so any such armed in­ter­ven­tion, mil­i­tary aid or pro­vi­sion of arms and ma­te­r­ial is il­le­gal un­der in­ter­na­tional law.

Ethiopia

Per­haps the largest in­volve­ment is that of So­ma­li­a’s west­ern neigh­bor Ethiopia. So­ma­lia and Ethiopia have a long his­tory of vi­o­lence, dat­ing back at least to the 1977 Ogaden war. There is sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence of sev­eral Ethiopian gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tions in So­ma­lia in re­cent years. Since the rise of the UIC, the main in­ter­est of largely Chris­t­ian Ethiopia has been to pre­vent the es­tab­lish­ment of an Is­lamic state on its bor­der, and to sup­port the TFG, which is led by a long-time Ethiopian ally. Ac­cord­ing to Reuters, a con­fi­den­tial UN re­port es­ti­mated 6,000-8,000 Ethiopian troops were in So­ma­lia in early No­vem­ber. The buildup has con­tin­ued since then, and Reuters quotes wit­nesses and se­cu­rity ex­perts es­ti­mat­ing 10,000 Ethiopian sol­diers presently in the coun­try. The UIC has re­peat­edly de­clared ji­had on Ethiopia for sup­port­ing the TFG; Ethiopia has re­peat­edly de­nounced the UIC as a threat.^[7]

It seems clear from mul­ti­ple con­firmed re­ports that, de­spite Ethiopian de­nials, there are tens of thou­sands of Ethiopian troops in So­ma­lia at pre­sent, mainly around Baidoa, de­fend­ing the TFG. Since the TFG is so mil­i­tar­ily weak, it is ef­fec­tively de­pen­dent on Ethiopia, ap­pear­ing as lit­tle more than an Ethiopian pup­pet.

On De­cem­ber 12, the UIC is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to Ethiopian forces in Baidoa to leave; that ul­ti­ma­tum ex­pired on De­cem­ber 19, and heavy fight­ing con­tin­ues, in­clud­ing aer­ial bomb­ing by Ethiopian forces.

The United States

The US has also been in­volved. Its main in­ter­est now, like Ethiopia, is against any Iran-style Is­lamist regime. As a re­sult, in an ex­tra­or­di­nary act of cyn­i­cism, the US came to sup­port some of the same war­lords who were US en­e­mies in 1993, de­mo­nized in ‘Black Hawk Down’. The CIA funded an al­liance of war­lords, the ‘Al­liance for the Restora­tion of Peace and Counter-Ter­ror­ism’, in their bat­tle against the UIC for con­trol of Mo­gadishu. Not only did this strat­egy fail mil­i­tar­ily when the UIC took con­trol in June, it also en­hanced the le­git­i­macy of the UIC. The US has re­peat­edly claimed that ter­ror­ists in So­ma­lia are plan­ning sui­cide at­tacks in Kenya and Ethiopia, and re­peat­edly de­nounced the UIC as har­bor­ing al-Qaeda ter­ror­ists. In par­tic­u­lar, it has ac­cused Aweys of con­nec­tions to al-Qaeda, pre­sum­ably re­fer­ring to his pre­vi­ous in­volve­ment with al-Iti­haad al-Is­lamiya. US rhetoric ap­pears in­flated, for ex­am­ple, the US as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of state on De­cem­ber 15:

The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by al-Qaeda cell individuals, East Africa al-Qaeda cell individuals. The top layer of the court are extremists. They are terrorists. They are killing nuns, they have killed children and they are calling for a jihad.

Such de­nun­ci­a­tion seems con­tra­dicted by the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the UIC, as dis­cussed pre­vi­ously, and achieves ob­vi­ous po­lit­i­cal and pro­pa­ganda goals. The ‘killing nuns’ ac­cu­sa­tion ap­par­ently refers to the mur­der of a nun out­side a Mo­gadishu hos­pi­tal on Sep­tem­ber 17, swiftly con­demned by the UIC, with two ar­rests made shortly af­ter­wards. Thus the US seems to con­flate the UIC with ex­trem­ist el­e­ments that the UIC it­self pub­licly de­nounces and pur­sues – tar­ring them with the same brush, a strat­egy which will go un­ques­tioned by a servile main­stream me­dia, and which suc­ceeds in de­mo­niz­ing the UIC, guilt achieved by as­so­ci­a­tion.