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So­mali Of­fi­cials Vow to Re­take Punt­land Town


he pres­i­dent of the re­gion, Dr. Ab­di­weli Mo­hamed Ali, said his ad­min­is­tra­tion would push back against the mil­i­tants, who faced lit­tle op­po­si­tion when they took over Qan­dala.

Punt­land al­ways de­fended it­self, and is go­ing to de­fend it­self,” he said. “Daesh can­not hold on to Qan­dala; they will not main­tain con­trol. That is a pledge I make to you,” he said, us­ing an Ara­bic term (Daesh) to re­fer to the Is­lamic State group.

Mil­i­tary of­fi­cials in Punt­land, an au­tonomous re­gion in north­east­ern So­ma­lia, were caught by sur­prise when the mil­i­tants seized Qan­dala, a tra­di­tional sym­bol of staunch re­sis­tance to for­eign oc­cu­pa­tion. They are dis­cussing how to re­spond to the threat by the mil­i­tant group that ap­par­ently was taken lightly by So­mali ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Qan­dala is 90 kilo­me­ters east of Bosaso, Punt­land’s main port and the eco­nomic hub of Punt­land. Since it lies be­tween rugged moun­tains and the Gulf of Aden, it is seen more vul­ner­a­ble to at­tack from the sea.

Since Qan­dala was cap­tured, Punt­land se­cu­rity of­fi­cials have de­ployed gun­boats to the area to in­ter­cept any ship­ments by mil­i­tant groups in Yemen, mil­i­tary sources said.

Weapons from Yemen

A lead­ing se­cu­rity and in­tel­li­gence ex­pert says mil­i­tants al­lied with Is­lamic State chose Qan­dala be­cause the small fish­ing port is just a few hours from the coast of Yemen.

A for­mer di­rec­tor of the Punt­land In­tel­li­gence Agency, Abdi Has­san Hus­sein, says there was “strate­gic plan­ning be­hind the cap­ture.”
“They con­stantly re­ceive ex­perts or train­ers from Yemen, and ship­ments of weapons and other ma­teriel. This is why they se­lected that strate­gic area,” Hus­sein said.

“It’s tough to reach by land, it’s a moun­tain­ous area, and it’s not suit­able to drive there,” the in­tel­li­gence ex­pert added. “Sheikh Mu­min’s tribe lives in that area, and they may get more sup­port from the clan. Pro­claim­ing that he wants to es­tab­lish an Is­lamic re­gion in the whole of Africa may get him some sym­pa­thiz­ers or sup­port­ers.”

Sheikh Ab­dulka­dir Mu­min is the leader of the pro-IS group that cap­tured the town. Last month the United States des­ig­nated him as a global ter­ror­ist. A year ago Mu­min pledged al­le­giance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Bagh­dadi.

Mil­i­tancy grow­ing

Dur­ing the past year, Mu­min’s group has been busy evad­ing at­tacks by ri­val mil­i­tants from al-Shabab, while also seek­ing re­cruits and find­ing a space to grow. Hus­sein be­lieves that they have achieved that.

“One year is com­plete; they are mark­ing the an­niver­sary. They had very few num­bers but right now they have 200 to 300 fight­ers,” he said.

Mu­min de­fected from an al-Shabab camp that con­trols a small hide­out in a moun­tain­ous area known as Gal­gala, south­west of Bosaso. De­spite sev­eral mil­i­tary of­fen­sives and de­fec­tions, al-Shabab’s fight­ers are still in Gal­gala, so the emer­gence of pro-IS mil­i­tants on the other side of Bosaso in Qan­dala ex­pands the war and Punt­land’s front lines against mil­i­tancy.

“Fight­ing Daesh will be tougher than fight­ing al-Shabab,” Hus­sein said.

“Po­ten­tially there is more of a threat com­ing from this group [led by Mu­min]. They are more ac­tive than al-Shabab, and they may get more re­cruits and more funds than al-Shabab,” he added.

“As we learned from the al-Shabab units fight­ing in Gal­gala, they started with few num­bers and right now have in­creased. It’s very tough to de­feat these mil­i­tants, given the lim­ited re­sources avail­able to Punt­land.”
Qan­dala’s his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance

Qan­dala dates back to the 1850s, ac­cord­ing to So­mali his­to­ri­ans. It has a beau­ti­ful beach, 20 kilo­me­ters of sand dunes along the sea, and rich fish­ing grounds. The for­mer So­mali gov­ern­ment built one of its biggest fish fac­to­ries in the town.

The pro-IS mil­i­tants en­tered the town Wednes­day, forc­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and a small num­ber of forces to flee.

Video taken by the mil­i­tants pur­ported to show a fighter hoist­ing a black flag on top of a his­toric build­ing erected by Ital­ian colo­nial rulers early in the last cen­tury. The same build­ing served as a prison for a So­mali rebel who was ar­rested by Ital­ian sol­diers in 1914 for low­er­ing the Ital­ian flag and burn­ing it.

That free­dom fighter of the last cen­tury, Ali Fahiye Gedi, be­came known as “the flag-burner” and a sym­bol for other So­ma­lis who fought against Ital­ian colo­nial rule.

The mil­i­tants’ video of pro-IS fight­ers en­ter­ing Qan­dala Wednes­day showed them be­ing greeted by an el­derly, ob­vi­ously fright­ened man. The town’s schools closed the next day, and for the first time in Qan­dala’s his­tory, its res­i­dents fled, leav­ing the town on foot and by boat. It may take the emer­gence of an­other “flag-burner” to stop the threat of mil­i­tancy in So­mali