Clearly Al-Shabab has learned nothing from the Taliban's example in Afghanistan....
Militants’ Worst Foe May Be Somalians on StreetBy JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: March 23, 2010MOGADISHU, Somalia — For the past three years, the Shabab, one of Africa’s most fearsome militant Islamist groups, have been terrorizing the Somali public, chopping off hands, stoning people to death and banning TV, music and even bras in their quest to turn Somalia into a seventh-century-style Islamic state.
At the same time, they have drawn increasingly close to Al Qaeda, deploying suicide bombers, attracting jihadists from around the world and prompting American concerns that they may be spreading into Kenya, Yemen and beyond.
But could Somalia finally be reaching a tipping point against the Shabab?
Not only is Somalia’s transitional government gearing up for a major offensive against the Shabab — with the American military providing intelligence and logistical support — but Mogadishu’s beleaguered population, sensing a change in the salt-sticky air, is beginning to turn against them.
Women who have been whipped and humiliated by morality police for not veiling their faces are now whispering valuable secrets about the Shabab’s movements into the ears of government soldiers. Teenage students outraged that Shabab-allied fighters hoisted a black flag in front of their school recently pelted the fighters with stones. Defectors are leaving the Shabab in droves, including one 13-year-old who said that he was routinely drugged before being handed a machine gun and shoved into combat.
Since 1991, when Somalia’s central government collapsed, the people here have endured one violent struggle after another, which has reduced the capital, Mogadishu, to ruins and this nation to the archetypal failed state. But never before has the Somali public had such a vested interest in who wins as they do in the coming showdown against the Shabab.
“They are like rabid dogs,” said Dahir Mohamed, a shopkeeper, who still has puffy, oddly circular scars on his face from where he says young Shabab fighters bit him.
The Shabab have defied expectations in the past and proved resilient, determined and formidable. Some Somalia analysts fear that even if the government dislodges the Shabab and ends their ability to operate in the open, they can still wreak havoc with suicide bombs and other guerrilla tactics.
“They will pull out and leave people behind the lines,” said Mark Bowden, head of United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia.
But if Somalis, who possess considerable firepower of their own, decisively turn against the Shabab, and the government provides people with an alternative to rally behind, it could be difficult for the militants to reconstitute themselves, even as a guerrilla army.
