Is the leak genuine?

Our Chi­nese source gives us lit­tle on the cred­i­bil­ity of the doc­u­ment other than that it was be­ing passed on di­rectly, not anony­mously, by the TFG. With­out di­rect con­tacts to the in­ner cir­cle of the UIC, we have no way of di­rectly ver­i­fy­ing the doc­u­ment. But we can as­sess the plau­si­bil­ity of the doc­u­ment be­ing gen­uine, or a forgery, based on its con­tent.

Would Aweys write such a doc­u­ment? In tim­ing and out­line, the gen­eral con­tent of the doc­u­ment is cer­tainly plau­si­ble. At the end of 2005 the UIC would have been es­tab­lish­ing strate­gies to be used in the com­ing year. Many of the strate­gies in the doc­u­ment came to fruition. And Aweys would cer­tainly be an ap­pro­pri­ate per­son to write such a doc­u­ment. It is strange that he would re­fer to the or­ga­ni­za­tion al­ready as the ‘Is­lamic Re­pub­lic of So­ma­lia’, a ti­tle which if adopted by the or­ga­ni­za­tion could alien­ate po­ten­tial al­lies im­me­di­ately by its im­plicit as­ser­tion of sov­er­eignty; but, at a time of early plan­ning, one might aim high, and later in pub­lic use more diplo­matic lan­guage. At that time much of the coun­try was con­trolled by war­lords: one might have ex­pected him to spend more time deal­ing with strate­gies against them. But the doc­u­ment does sug­gest fa­vor­ing cer­tain war­lords over oth­ers; war­lords which were min­is­ters in the TFG might well be re­garded sim­ply as part of the TFG; and the doc­u­ment was more one of po­lit­i­cal than mil­i­tary strat­egy. In a se­cret doc­u­ment he might be pre­pared to ad­vo­cate less scrupu­lous tac­tics, such as as­sas­si­na­tions and co­op­er­a­tion with crim­i­nals: note that the UIC it­self would not be per­form­ing the as­sas­si­na­tions, and could achieve de­ni­a­bil­ity through this strat­egy. These tac­tics stop short of ter­ror­ism against civil­ians or for­eign­ers, and it is plau­si­ble that this might be the ex­tent of the UIC’s ter­ror­ist in­cli­na­tions. A forger in­tent on smear­ing Aweys and the UIC might be ex­pected to go fur­ther: the rev­e­la­tion is not that damn­ing, given the con­text. As for shoot­ing leak­ers, it is cer­tainly a dra­matic flash of rhetoric, but Aweys is a reg­u­lar prac­ti­tioner of fiery or­a­tory; and he refers only to those who leak the in­for­ma­tion and are found guilty, which sounds quite plau­si­ble from a Mus­lim judge and less plau­si­ble from a forger.

If gen­uinely writ­ten by Aweys, there is still the mat­ter of ex­plain­ing how it got to the TFG. As it was sent to the Chi­nese, the doc­u­ment came in 4 files: three jpeg im­age files, one scan of each page of the orig­i­nal pa­per doc­u­ment in So­mali, and a word file with what ap­pears to be an ac­cu­rate Eng­lish trans­la­tion. The word file meta­data lists its au­thor as a “Cap­tain Weli” from the “De­part­ment of State”. A US State De­part­ment com­puter; or a TFG of­fi­cial call­ing their fledg­ling of­fice a “De­part­ment of State” – ei­ther is quite plau­si­ble. Us­ing tools that were ef­fec­tive against Blair’s “sexed up” Iraqi dossier word file, we see that the TFG trans­la­tion was last mod­i­fied on Oct 3, 2006, un­der­went at least two re­vi­sions, was last saved by “hi” (an in­tel­li­gence in-joke, or co­in­ci­dence?).

The Great China Project

If the doc­u­ment is gen­uine, there is still the ques­tion why it was not re­leased to the Chi­nese un­til mid Oc­to­ber 2006. One can make all man­ner of spec­u­la­tions: the TFG was pro­tect­ing its source; the doc­u­ment was not cap­tured un­til then; the TFG started cir­cu­lat­ing it as a last des­per­ate mea­sure to em­bar­rass the UIC as its po­si­tion crum­bled; the par­tic­u­lar doc­u­ments cho­sen to cir­cu­late in­ter­na­tion­ally may be some­what capri­cious. But still, if the TFG cap­tured the doc­u­ment not long af­ter its cre­ation, and was pre­pared to share it in­ter­na­tion­ally, one would have ex­pected they would do it ear­lier. Per­haps, since it is not ter­ri­bly dam­ag­ing, it re­ceived low pri­or­ity; it is plau­si­ble it was cir­cu­lated else­where but not seen fit to use pub­licly, since it is not quite con­sis­tent with the usual in­flated de­nun­ci­a­tions. But note the fol­low­ing dra­matic time­line:

Timeline

• Sep 18: At­tempted Baidoa as­sas­si­na­tion of TFG Pres­i­dent Ab­du­lahi Yusuf. Pres­i­den­t’s brother and 5 guards killed.

• Oct 3: Fi­nal ed­its to the Aweys doc­u­ment Eng­lish trans­la­tion.

• Oct 14: TFG sends the Aweys doc­u­ment im­ages and the Eng­lish trans­la­tion to Chi­nese con­tacts.

• Oct 16: TFG am­bas­sador to China re­ceives “The Great China Pro­ject” mes­sage (see be­low)

• Nov 2: Pres­i­dent Yusuf ar­rives in Bei­jing.

• Nov 4: Forty-eight African coun­tries that have diplo­matic re­la­tions with China par­tic­i­pate in a two-day Bei­jing sum­mit. The So­mali con­flict is on the agenda.

The “Great China Pro­ject” mes­sage is an­other Wik­iLeaks.org leak, from a dif­fer­ent source, this time an in­ter­cept of So­mali TNG diplo­matic traf­fic:

Intercepted diplomatic traffic

Analysis of intercepted traffic

Note care­fully the rel­e­vant pri­or­ity min­is­ters. Could there be a So­mali oil rights for Chi­nese arms swap? Such oil rights would have to be rene­go­ti­ated if the UIC con­trolled So­ma­lia. China also en­joys TFG money for in­fra­struc­ture re­con­struc­tion pro­jects.

Other motivations for forgery

What other mo­ti­va­tions are there for forgery? Any­thing em­bar­rass­ing to Aweys and the UIC, which un­der­cuts its al­liances and in­ter­nal co­he­sion, aids the TFG and its al­lies. A forger does not want to ap­pear over the top, but still wants to in­flict dam­age on the tar­get. The dam­age here ap­pears un­rea­son­ably mild for Oc­to­ber 3 of this year. If the in­tended au­di­ence were in­ter­nal to So­ma­lia, it does not seem likely to weaken the UIC dras­ti­cally: the time to unite Punt­land and So­ma­liland against the UIC had largely passed by Oct 3. Per­haps Punt­land and So­ma­liland had re­ceived the doc­u­ment much ear­lier and kept it quiet. If the in­tended au­di­ence were for­eign, such as the US or Ethiopia, a forger would be ex­pected to cater to those in­ter­ests and their fear of rad­i­cal Is­lam and ter­ror­ism.

A forger would have to make a plau­si­ble fake ver­sion of the doc­u­ment on pa­per, scan it into a com­puter, and write an Eng­lish trans­la­tion. This seems be­yond the TFG’s im­me­di­ate con­cerns in Oc­to­ber, as it strug­gled for its own ex­is­tence; but not be­yond that of its for­eign al­lies such as the US. It is not im­plau­si­ble, and not with­out prece­dent: US spooks have a long his­tory of leak fab­ri­ca­tion.

But if the doc­u­ment is a forgery, one large ques­tion re­mains: the aim be­ing to em­bar­rass Aweys and the UIC, why was it not spread more broadly and given a more im­me­di­ate date? If the au­di­ence were ex­ter­nal, it should have been leaked fur­ther and made more use of by the US. But there seems to be no ev­i­dence of this. was the TFG try­ing to pro­tect a UIC mole or pro­tect a forgery from pub­lic scrutiny? If US in­tel­li­gence was be­hind the forgery, was it wor­ried about be­ing caught out again in­flu­enc­ing US do­mes­tic po­lit­i­cal opin­ion with its fab­ri­ca­tions?

One can­not con­clude with cer­tainty that the doc­u­ment is gen­uine or oth­er­wise. But based on the above analy­sis, it seems that ei­ther the doc­u­ment is gen­uine, slightly mod­i­fied or is an ear­lier forgery re­cy­cled for the Chi­nese.

Conclusion

To­day, the UIC’s ul­ti­ma­tum against Ethiopian troops in Baidoa has ex­pired and fierce fight­ing rages. Ethiopian forces have be­come in­volved, and there is po­ten­tial for a wider re­gional war and great tragedy. If the UN con­tin­ues in its pre­sent role, blindly sup­port­ing the TFG as its le­git­i­macy erodes and its ‘seat of gov­ern­ment’ is over­run, it can­not im­prove the sit­u­a­tion. If the US con­tin­ues treat­ing the UIC as if it con­sists pri­mar­ily of ter­ror­ists, it will lose all cred­i­bil­ity (if it has not al­ready) among So­ma­lis who, what­ever their mis­giv­ings, ap­pre­ci­ate the sta­bil­ity pro­vided by the UIC. The sit­u­a­tion is far more com­pli­cated and in­ter­est­ing than any sim­plis­tic read­ing will im­ply.

If the leak is gen­uine, the se­cret or­der re­veals in­sights into Aweys’ think­ing and strat­egy. If fake, it still says some­thing about the in­trigues of So­mali and global pol­i­tics. But what­ever the case, So­ma­lis, to­gether with the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity, should seek to un­der­stand Aweys and the UIC, in or­der to clar­ify what they are deal­ing with, and es­tab­lish a last­ing peace and good gov­er­nance in So­ma­lia.