MOGADISHU, Somalia
Somalia Prime Minister Hamza Barre on Tuesday broke with tradition and named a former Al Shabaab leader in his Cabinet in what could signal a turn in counter-terrorism policy.
Mr Barre named Mukhtar Robow,
a former deputy leader of the militant group al-Shabaab, two years after he was
placed under house arrest.
Mr Robow will now be Minister
for Endowment, Religious Affairs and Counter-terrorism Ideology. He will mostly
be in charge of dissuading the youth from joining al-Shabaab based on religious
convictions.
“I have selected men and women
on the basis of their capacities, effective service delivery and integrity,”
said Mr Barre at a short ceremony in Mogadishu on Tuesday.
“I am looking forward to
Parliament endorsing my lineup,” he added.
His Council of Ministers
consists of 26 men and women, including politicians and former senior
government officials.
The list was read by the
government spokesperson Farhan Mohamed Jumale, and included Ahmed Moalim Fiqi
as Interior Minister, Abshir Omar Haruse to head the Foreign Affairs docket and
Mr Robow as Minister for Religious Affairs.
The former militant had
been under house arrest since early 2019 after attempting to run for the South
West state presidency, which was won by his opponent Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed
Laftagreen.
At the time, the Somalia spy
agency, NISA, said he had not met all the conditions set for defectors from the
group as the reason for his detention. According to a report by the UN Panel of
Experts on Somalia, his supporters protesting the arrest were crashed by
Ethiopian forces serving in Amisom.
Mr Robow had defected to the
government in 2017 after falling out with other Shabaab faction
leaders. Over a decade ago, he had told the media in Mogadishu that he was
lucky to have been one of the few Somalis trained in Al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan and that, on one occasion, he shook hands with Osama bin Laden, the
then leader of that group.
After his unanimous approval by Parliament as Prime Minister on
June 25, Mr Barre told the legislators that he would form an inclusive Cabinet.
He added that his policies comprised government priority issues such as
security, the justice system, the ongoing drought, reconciliation and talks
with the self-declared independent state of Somaliland.
Mr Robow’s inclusion is raising
mixed reactions over his past role in terrorism.
But he has extensive knowledge
of religion and is a prominent religious scholar in his home district, Hudur in
Bakol region, and in the capital Mogadishu. He studied Islamic law in the 1990s
at the University of Khartoum in Sudan.
He later became a leading
figure in the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), a network of Islamic groups that
challenged the secular leaders of Somalia in the mid-2000s, particularly
against the Transitional Federal Government led by Col Abdullahi Yusuf, whose
administration was constituted at the end of the Somali reconciliation
conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in 2004.
The UIC is often seen as the
precursor to Al-Shabaab as it is its extremist wing that broke off and formed
the militant group.
The emergence of the most
extremist group in Somalia saw it wage incessant war against the
internationally recognised and supported government, including attacks in
neighbouring Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Mr Robow had become the group’s
spokesman and later its deputy leader under Ahmed Abdi Godane (also referred to
as Mukhtar Ali Abu Zubayr).
In June 2013, he fell out with
Godane and retreated to Bakol, where he stayed for five years before
surrendering to the government in August 2017.
The United States consequently
removed him from its blacklist, Reward for Justice, where a $5 million bounty
had been placed on him in 2012.
His fortunes, however, changed
when he was barred from seeking public office in South West state. This led to his
capture in Baidoa town, the interim capital of South West, and subsequent
detention in Mogadishu.
On social media, some said
that Mr Robow’s appointment reflects Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s
promise that his government would fight terrorism on two fronts, the army and
religion.
A social media user summed up
Mr Robow’s rise as having come from terrorism to prison and from prison to
power.
Although religion is often
cited as the main influence for joining al-Shabaab, research has also shown that
marginalisation and lack of economic opportunities play a role. – The EastAfrican
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