Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Many Faces of Al-Shabaab

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Subscribe to the IWI monthly newsletter by going to www.irregularwarfare.org! Somalia’s security landscape is complex, making the challenge of understanding the terrorist group al-Shabaab especially challenging. The group uses intricate methods to maintain its foothold in East Africa, complicating both international and indigenous efforts to counter the threat it poses. To examine al-Shabaab and the critical contextual influences unique to Somalia, this episode features a conversation with two guests. Mary Harper is the Africa editor at BBC World Service News and author of Everything You Have Told Me is True: The Many Faces of Al Shabaab. Sam Wilkins is an Army Special Forces officer with operational experience in Somalia. Together, their insights and expert perspectives help to paint a picture of the Somalia-based terrorist organization and its effects on security and stability in the region. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

So Al-Shabaab conducts strategic withdrawals, but then it carries out a lot of asymmetric warfare. So when the time is more suitable for Al-Shabaab to revert to that kind of force, it will do it and it can do it overnight. And then that's just a whole different ball game in terms of however sophisticated your force is that tries to fight it. It's going to really, really struggle. A stable Somalia is definitely an asset. You have over 15% of global trade flows through the Gulf of Aden. You have important partners in Kenya, previously strong relationships

with the Ethiopian government. So we do have an interest in the overall stability of the country. We know that what happens in failed states does not stay there. Welcome to Episode 71 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jebb, and I'm proud to announce that I will be joined by Matt Mullering, who has recently joined the Irregular Warfare Podcast as a permanent co-host. Today's episode exams the often misunderstood security dynamics of Somalia and Al-Shabaab. Our guests begin by describing the complex security landscape of Somalia. They then examine Al-Shabaab in depth and analyze the intricate methods it leverages to

maintain a foothold in East Africa. Finally, the show concludes with a discussion on international and indigenous attempts to eradicate Al-Shabaab and restore peace to Somalia. Mary Harper is the Africa editor at BBC World Service News. She has reported on Africa for the BBC for over two decades and specializes on Somalia, where she spends much of her time. In 2019, she authored Everything You Have Told Me Is True, The Many Faces of Al-Shabaab, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation. Sam Wilkins is an Army Special Forces officer with deployments to Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Somalia, and currently serves in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point.

Sam holds an MA in International Affairs from John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a 2021 Next Generation National Security Fellow at the Center for New American Security. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Mary Harper and Sam Wilkins. Sam, Mary, it's great to have you on the show today.

Thanks, Ben, Matt. It's great to be here and excited for the conversation. Thank you very much for having me. I am also very excited about this conversation. So thank you very much and welcome to the listeners as well. So Mary, in 2019, you authored a book called Everything You've Told Me Is True, The Many Faces of Al-Shabaab. What sparked your interest in Somalia and Al-Shabaab? And why did you decide to write about this subject? My interest in Somalia goes back a very, very long way, probably almost to when before you were born. It was about 30 years ago when I first started working at the BBC.

I was brought up in Kenya and I've lived in lots of African countries. And when I joined the BBC, I immediately went to the BBC African service. So I had amazing access to the country. I worked very closely with the BBC Somali service. And then in the early 90s, my second ever trip that I was sent on for the BBC was to Somalia. And I developed a great fascination for the place that has never left me to this day. So that's kind of how my interest in Somalia started. And I travel there regularly because I cover it in such detail for the BBC. I have a pretty kind of intimate, well-rounded knowledge of the place and its people. So when Al-Shabaab kind of came into existence in the mid-2000s, when at least we became aware of its existence, pretty soon after

that, Al-Shabaab contacted me while I was actually walking through a rather nice shopping center in London. They'd got my phone number from somebody. So I developed a relationship with al-Shabaab, which was very important for my work, obviously, even though it was an uncomfortable situation to be in. And it was through those conversations and the many conversations I have with other people and my reporting trips that eventually I decided that I can't put all my knowledge about al-Shabaab into my BBC reports. And so I decided to write this book, which in a way was a bit like a catharsis for me as well, because it was pretty heavy duty having these endless conversations with al-Shabaab and them telling me how many people they'd killed, etc, etc, all the time. And as well as trying to impart

information about the group, I actually found it quite helpful for myself to kind of get it all out there on paper. Sam and Mary, could you describe Somalia's contemporary security situation? My knowledge of the country is basically limited to some media coverage of Al-Shabaab and dramatized movies like Black Hawk Down. But why does it seem like Somalia is locked in a cycle of perpetual intrastate violence? I think that's an important question, and I think that's a popular misconception, which is the focus of Mary's first book about sort of popular Western misconceptions about the country. But I think it is important, as we discussed, policy solutions, current actions to

keep the Somali-centered and really their tragic experience of 30-plus years of warfare and what that's done and what it's continued to do. I think, though, the narrative that everything in Somalia is terrible and it's awful everywhere all the time, 100% of the time, is one of those misconceptions. However, the time, 100% of the time, is one of those misconceptions. However, the Somali people are incredibly resilient and there is an incredible amount of just everyday life of people trying to make do amongst this incredibly difficult situation. And it is really a patchwork situation that challenged the listeners to try to go beyond just the doom and gloom narrative of everything is terrible and it will always be

terrible. I was happy to hear Sam give that impression of Somalia because when Matt mentioned Black Hawk Down and all of that, I got very cross because as Sam said, that was what prompted me to write my first book about Somalia, which was called Getting Somalia Wrong, was because the media of which I'm a part and which I became very frustrated with, they just have certain stereotypes about Somalia, all of which are there. There is conflict, there is drought, there has been famine, including the first famine of the 21st century in 2011. There were pirates. They might come back at any stage, etc., etc. But from my experience, spending so much time on the ground or with Somalis in the diaspora,

that was absolutely not the Somalia that I saw. Number one, you have whole territories of Somalia, in particular the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, but other parts of Somalia, in particular, the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, but other parts of Somalia as well, where it's peaceful and where people are getting on with their lives. And they've devised political systems that perhaps the West might not recognize, but they're highly effective in that environment. Plus the extraordinary business dynamism of Somalis, they're risk takers. They're incredibly creative. And I expect some of that is because of, number one, that they have been living in a situation

of conflict and insecurity for so long, but also they live in a harsh environment anyway. They're nomads. And if you go to the Somali landscape, you'll see it's pretty hostile in itself. It's not the easiest place to exist. So they've always had a clan structure that has used violence, well, quite often to sort out disputes. So it's not really as though I sort of feel that this apocalyptic image of Somalia, it's not fair on Somalis, but also it's led to some pretty stupid foreign policy approaches towards the country as well. So I'm very much with Sam in terms of, you know, you have to look at it with nuance. And I would say above all, you have to look at it

with fairness and be honest about it. No, that's a great point. And it does seem like Somalia is highly misunderstood by the media and various pundits. But something we wanted to do here today is just touch on specifically, what is the relationship between al-Shabaab and Somalia? So Mary, could you give us just a quick primer on the group? Who are they? What do they do? And what are their goals? What do they do and what are their goals? The first thing to say about al-Shabaab is it didn't come out of the blue. Somalia has had conservative Islamist movements, many of them violent, for decades.

So it had predecessors. And al-Shabaab itself, it sort of rose to prominence, in fact, at a time when conservative Islam, there was something called the Union of Islamic Courts after the terrible civil war of the 1990s. And these Islamic courts basically formed a loose alliance and they created a significant amount of security in many parts of Somalia. Like, I remember you speaking to people at that time, and women would say, you know, we can actually leave our houses and go to the market. And we know we'll be coming back afterwards, we're not going to get blown up on the way, or we can go out at night and nobody's going to bother us. So there was security there.

And the group that was kind of attached to these courts providing the security was called al-Shabaab, which means the youth in Arabic. Then a US-led or US-encouraged invasion of Somalia to get rid of what some in the US saw was an al-Qaeda linked group. Ethiopia came and bombed that union of Islamic courts out of existence. And in fact, that, I mean, this is a bit oversimplistic, but this did give rise to a far more radicalized, hardened militia of Islamist extremists who became al-Shabaab and who took over most of the country, at least most of the south and center of the country.

In terms of its ambitions and its ideology, al-Shabaab itself is quite a disparate movement. And what it wants is also quite a fractured, depending on who's in charge of the group and which part of the group you speak to. I mean, you had one emir of al-Shabaab, one leader, One emir of al-Shabaab, one leader, Godane, he was called, he believed in taking the jihad all the way to Alaska. That's what he said. So he was basically wanting global jihad. You have other groups of al-Shabaab who talk about having a caliphate in the Arabian Peninsula, which includes Yemen, the whole of the Horn of Africa. And then you have significant other groups of al-Shabaab

who want to have a caliphate that encompasses all Somali-speaking areas in the Horn of Africa, which includes parts of Djibouti, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. And then you have another group who purely are very nationalistic, and they kind of just want to caliphate within the borders of current day Somalia. So it's a confused picture and it has led to sometimes deadly splits within the group itself. I think Barry's highlighting that history and that trajectory is important. I think there's still a lot of popular memory of both the Civil War and the violence and destruction of clan warfare and the warlords and the memory of the stability or sort of the perception of the stability under the rule of the Islamic courts that Al being strands and factions within the movement that are very transnational in their associations, in their goals, in their methods. And then there are also those who were originally motivated to join the organization out of resistance to the Ethiopian invasion and potentially subsequent actions as well.

Yes. And in fact, that reminds me very much of one character who I wrote about in my book, who, whenever I speak to him, he's very purist and militant in terms of his Wahhabi, extreme Muslim interpretation of life. So I always assumed that he was somebody who was a member of the movement. He's a senior member of the movement. I always assumed that he was somebody who, you know, that was his primary motivation. And after we had spoken several times, so we developed a kind of more trusting relationship, I suppose. And one time I asked him during a more casual conversation, I was like, why did you join? Why did you join al-Shabaab? And his reply really surprised me. And he said, well, when he was young and he was at school, when he was a teenager, that was when Ethiopia

was bombarding Mokdishu and a shell landed through the roof of his school and it killed a lot of his classmates. And so he developed this huge anger and hatred towards Ethiopia. And he said, Al-Shabaab was the most effective fighting force in terms of a group that was fighting Ethiopia. And he said, I joined because of that. It was only later that the religion became something that mattered to me. So even people who you assume like him are kind of ideological fanatics, they've become that, but they did not join for that reason. There's been some history with al-Shabaab having relationships with al-Qaeda, but with that, would you say al-Shabaab is a true transnational organization with broad-based appeal or more of a local insurgent organization?

I think in reality, al-Shabaab is more of a local organization, but that does extend beyond the borders of Somalia because al-Shabaab is, in fact, at the moment, increasingly active in Kenya, particularly in the border areas, many of which have ethnic Somali population. And also last year, for the first time, al-Shabaab staged an effective invasion of Ethiopia. And it got about 150 kilometers inside Ethiopia, partly taking advantage of the fact that Ethiopia itself has imploded. But as al-Shabaab is suffering in terms of its military and physical presence in parts of Somalia, it's increased its activity in the regions. But I think in terms of al-Shabaab being a truly international movement, okay, it's an affiliate of al-Qaeda and it is described at the moment as al-Qaeda's most effective and successful and most wealthy affiliate. And of course,

it has sympathizers overseas, not just in the Somali diaspora, but during its heyday, it was attracting jihadists from all over the world, from Bangladesh, from Yemen, from the UK, from all over the place. But I think if you're going to be more frank about al-Shabaab and its reach and its power, frank about al-Shabaab and its reach and its power. I would say it's a kind of East slash born of Africa movement, mainly focused on Somalia, but with the ability to spread into Kenya, now Ethiopia, Somaliland if it wants to. I think that is important. The group's normally introduced as the Al-Qaeda affiliated organization known as al-Shabaab. And I think that's important.

That relationship matters. And that's been a major focus of U.S. efforts and U.S. policy and U.S. interests in the country. But at the same time, that's not the whole story. They do have transnational capabilities. I think we've seen that. The New York Times has reported on some of those plans, as well as Mary recounted some of the attacks and capabilities in the region that are important to keep in mind. But these things kind of overlay on that nationalistic resistance to outsiders that forms a huge portion of the group as well. These things exist at the same time, which makes the policy responses very difficult.

response is very difficult. Mary, earlier you discussed an individual you interviewed who sounds like they joined al-Shabaab or a militant organization because he was motivated by attacks from Ethiopia, which got me interested in talking about how al-Shabaab actually recruits. I'm always really interested in how insurgencies actually recruit soldiers and develop manpower. So is it just that al-Shabaab is able to effectively employ propaganda? Or do they coerce members into joining? Do they provide protection? Or maybe there are just kind of basic economic reasons that make membership attractive? I guess I'm mostly interested in why people decide to take up with al-Shabaab in the first place. Yes, you've actually outlined very clearly the multiple reasons why people join Al-Shabaab. Sometimes they are forcibly recruited.

Al-Shabaab will go to local clans and say, we need this many young boys to train. So you have that. You have Al-Shabaab threatening individuals and forcing them to join. threatening individuals and forcing them to join. When I've spoken to al-Shabaab defectors, I would say most of them, the sort of lower level foot soldiers of al-Shabaab or people who work as mechanics and other things for al-Shabaab, they generally join for economic reasons because al-Shabaab pays better than anyone else. There was a lot of theorizing that people from less powerful clans in Somalia who were brutalized by the stronger clans during the civil war, that they rushed into the arms of al-Shabaab in order to get weapons and the ability to wreak vengeance on these larger

clans. But over time, it's become evident that in fact, those weaker clans in al-Shabaab are horribly exploited by al-Shabaab itself. So I think that was a bit of a misconception that it's a perfect way to join if you're weak and you want to get back at your more powerful enemies. And then of course, you do have the people who joined for ideological reasons, both within Somalia and surrounding countries and internationally. So the motivation for people to join is very, very varied. And I think that's one reason why it's so difficult to have a campaign to try to prevent people from joining Al-Shabaab. I think Mary highlighted the interesting aspect of what former members of the group are saying. And I think portions of at times of Somali central government, as well as some of the member states have done effective messaging, you know, highlighting

these defector stories and sort of what they thought when they were going to join the group, or they got conscripted into the group, and then what actually transpired in reality. You know, we know that motivations for joining the group are very diverse. There is a fair amount of, you conscription. As Perry described, we need this many on the front lines. We're fighting day to day. Our commanders are in the rear. They have multiple wives. They have a vehicle. They're very comfortable. And we are the ones that are sort of, you know, being exploited potentially at a young age, soldiers, you know, younger than 15, 16 years old, sometimes, you know, being put

into these awful positions through force and coercion. So I think there's portions of the Somali government that are doing a really good job highlighting those stories of folks who have had firsthand experience with the group to sort of dissuade others from doing the same. That reminds me of, there was one defector who I interviewed, and he was a nomadic person. He'd never even been to a town. He was literally somebody who his whole life had been in the bush with his livestock. And he said, oh, that a friend of his told him about this group that you went and you joined and you fought for Allah, and it was the best thing you could do. And so he was like, of course, I went and joined them because this is the purest form of activity that you can pursue. And so he fought with Al-Shabaab

as a foot soldier for, I think, about seven years. And then he said one time Al-Shabaab told him to kill this old blind man who was disabled. He couldn't walk either because they said he was a spy. And then this former nomad, he said he realized it was like he had a revelation that no group that says it's fighting for the almighty God would ask somebody to kill a helpless, blind, old man. And so he said, I realized that they were not fighting for religion and God. They were really bad people. And he said, I just literally abandoned. I just walked away. And I walked and walked and walked for days until I got out of their territory. So he had this realization that they were not representing

the most pure form of religion. Wow. That's such a powerful story. And I think a lot of Somalis have similar experiences, you know, as civilians, you know, with over the past five, six years with the car bombs, you know, attacking hotels in Mogadishu. It's been very clear to a lot of people that this is not Islam, right?madug in central Somalia, you're seeing this at the local level. Local leaders, clan leaders frustrated with al-Shabaab's rule, conscription. And I think that's very patchwork. That's not across the board. That's not to say that there's going to be this popular upswing or tribal rebellion across the country. But you do see pockets of real resentment at al-Shabaab's attacks against civilians and treatment of certain populations under their control. Not that the government is

extremely popular either, you know, in many of these areas, but there is, I think, a genuine resentment against the group in many spaces. Sam, what interest does Washington have in Somalia, and why do we maintain a consistent presence in East Africa? I think the interest starts with the group's affiliation with Al-Qaeda, frankly, right? If our interest in the country is not purely humanitarian or out of a need for stability, it's because there is a genuine concern about attacks against Americans in the region and beyond. So I think that's the starting point for our interest. But I think also within the broader region, a stable Somalia is definitely an asset. You have over 15% of global trade flows

through the Gulf of Aden. You have important partners in Kenya. The situation in Ethiopia, as Mary mentioned, very troublesome at the moment, but previously strong relationships with the Ethiopian government. So we do have an interest in the overall stability of the country. We know that what happens in failed states does not stay there from refugees, terrorism, other problems, piracy, as Mary mentioned, which has subsided in Somalia. But we do have a broader interest in the stability of the area and our interest of our partners in supporting our partners, particularly, you think think to the kenyans and their participation and you know we may talk about great power competition you know later but i think one of the important things to consider is that the

governments in the region they care about al-shabaab they are concerned about the stability of somalia and so helping them achieve their goals you know is also helpful towards our other priorities. I was going to ask Sam a question. Given that there has been a scramble for the Red Sea area and the Horn of Africa in recent years with Gulf states, with Turkey, you have Russia showing some kind of interest in places like Sudan, you have Djibouti becoming completely overcrowded, in places like Sudan, you have Djibouti becoming completely overcrowded, with China having a base there, the Americans now seem to be moving, or at least having an alternative base in Berbera Port in Somaliland, or at least they're thinking about that. And so, is the US also interested and focusing on that region because it doesn't want other world powers to dominate. It's an area that seems to me anyway that's becoming more geopolitically and economically important. Yeah, I think that's a real key part of

the story of Somalia is it's more than the war against al-Shabaab. And this isn't even talking about U.S. interests in policy. You have the Emirati-Qatari rivalry playing out on the ground in Somalia. You have the Turkish involvement, which is very extensive, military, economic, diplomatic efforts with the federal government, as well as many of the member states. And as you said, other international actors are in the region. So there's a lot more going on, frankly, right? It's not just a sort of like, you have this side and then this side. There's a lot of sides. And I think for success in the campaign against al-Shabaab, those items, they're going to be present. I think that the distraction of them, you know, needs to be contained, right? And I think for meaningful progress in the military front,

you need regional diplomatic cooperation, international diplomatic cooperation around the issue, just as you need Somali national reconciliation, national unity. You need local and clan alignment. In the same breath, I think you need a measure of international cooperation. If regional players and international actors are working at cross-purposes in the region, the greatest benefactor from that, I think, is al-Shabaab, who can take advantage of those divergent interests. Sam, I'm just curious, because you spoke to this earlier in the show, but you did mention, you know, great power considerations. And as the US and its allies begin to gravitate towards an era of enhanced strategic competition, I just assume that Somalia and al-Shabaab would be

largely disconnected from those considerations. But it sounds like that may not really be the case. Is there some sort of connection between terrorism in East Africa and great power competition that I'm missing? In General Townsend, the previous AFRICOM commander, I thought he did a pretty good job in his posture statement to Congress of laying out some of the linkage is that we want to be a partner of choice for governments in the region at solving the actual problems that they have and that they care about. And terrorism

is one of those across the continent and in East Africa in particular. So I think being there for them in that respect is something that will carry over potentially in those relationships to other areas. But I think the Biden administration's new Africa strategy does a really good job of highlighting that our Africa strategy is not about competition with China. Our Africa strategy is about our partnerships with Africans and their role in shaping the global order and their role in solving these tough transnational problems like terrorism, like climate change. But I think we need to meet them where they are with their interests and their concerns and not impose our sort of grand strategic problems as sort of the centerpiece

of our engagement. So something I'd like to talk about is al-Shabaab's resilience. And I realize that every thread and organization is distinct, but it seems like despite deployments of special operations forces or air missions and bombing campaigns aimed at wiping out al-Shabaab, they've had staying power in Somalia. So Sam, Mary, open-ended question to either of you, but any thoughts on why they've been able to remain resilient in the face of pressure campaigns? I would say Al-Shabaab does have the advantage of being quite a small organization and quite decentralized in terms of the way it operates, even though it does have an emir and some senior leaders. But in different parts of Somalia and in different parts of the region, al-Shabaab is

kind of left to doing things in a way that's appropriate for each particular setting. So it's very adaptable. It's very nimble. It knows the ground incredibly well. And you see that when you get the Somali government or allied forces announcing massive victories. But what happens in those cases is that al-Shabaab just leaves those areas, just leaves those towns. And then the same thing happened in Mogadishu in 2011. So al-Shabaab conducts strategic withdrawals, but then it often blockades those towns so that they can't function that well anyway, or it carries out a lot of asymmetric warfare. So when the time is more suitable for al-Shabaab to revert to that kind of force, it will do it and it can do it overnight.

And then that's just a whole different ballgame in terms of however sophisticated your force is that tries to fight it, it's going to really, really struggle. So in terms of al-Shabaab being something that's going to be defeated completely, I don't think that's going to be possible. Maybe eventually there'll probably be some kind of negotiation with them. But in terms of their longevity, al-Shabaab or an incarnation of al-Shabaab, I predict will be here for decades and decades to come. Yeah, I'd point to three things when we think about the resilience of the group. The first would be their unified nature and sort of in comparison, right, while they do

have significant fractures and disagreements, in comparison to internal Somali politics, in comparison to the sort of kaleidoscope sometimes of international military interventions, they're relatively unified, right, where we do see significant infighting in the national level in Somalia. Fortunately, that was recently resolved in the pre-election period with the election of Hassan Sheikh. But at times, right, the whole Somali political system can be consumed with internal infighting at the federal level. I think you see, you know, infighting between the federal government and the member states, right? And sometimes you see international interests in the country diverge, right, within AMISOM as well as with international partners. So that'd be the first factor.

The second one would be governance, I think has been a strength while there've been frustrations with Al-Shabaab's taxation apparatus. In a lot of areas, it is perceived as fair. At least you get a receipt, you get taxed, you're driving your goods to market. Maybe that's in a government-controlled area. Maybe it's in another country, right? You hit a tax checkpoint, you get one receipt. You hit the next checkpoint, you show them the receipt and you move out. And that's in contrast, I think, to some of the areas under the various security forces or clan forces. So I think that's a real source of strength, the governance piece. And the third is geography. As Mary mentioned, you know, this drifting into empty spaces, the country is

enormous. You know, there's advantages from a counterinsurgent perspective to the geographic situation in Somalia. Obviously, the coastline, there's a lack of external sanctuary, which is very fortunate, but there's a massive amount of internal sanctuary and the infrastructure of the country is badly degraded, predates the civil war. So very limited connectivity between areas is difficult for government forces to sort of, you know, bring to bear the kind of mass that they would like, you know, sort of to take advantage of all the things that we know a counterinsurgent would like to do. It's very difficult to do that and to sustain that across the vast geography of the country. Sam, could you expound on some of the lessons learned from working with local security forces in East Africa?

Yeah, you know, I was actually talking about in sort of a different campaign in different contexts, a similar question. And I think some of these takeaways are transnational. I think for land warfare professionals who are working with partners, I think putting the partner first, you know, that really needs to be centered. Like your long-term understanding, relationships, trust, development over time is really key. And that's not something that's, you know, generated rapidly. You know, that's something that comes over time. But I think going, you know, maybe a little bit slower of a speed, right, or a pace or tempo than you would if you were just going alone, you know, with your fellow countrymen, be that Americans, British, what have you, right, is really putting them and their effort at the center, as well as their insight and their

knowledge, right, of the people, of the terrain, of the enemy. You know, a lot of the Somali forces have been fighting for a very long time, and they have a lot of expertise. They have a very unique way of fighting as well, and a very unique military culture that's somewhat different, right, than ours in the West. I think recognizing those things and trying to take advantage of those things versus entirely doing things the way you might independently of your partner. So, Mary, I'm kind of curious about other efforts besides just U.S.-led missions that have been put into place to try to disrupt al-Shabaab's influence in Somalia. So do you know of any indigenous-based or multinational efforts to counter this organization?

And if so, what lessons do you think we can take away from them? I would say the current strategy, the joined-up strategy against al-Shabaab, is probably the most effective one I've seen. And the fact that that is a combination of very, very local groups who've been living under al-Shabaab for years, so they really understand the group and they have now decided that there must be a better option, and they've turned on them. I think that whole wave that has arisen in recent months has really, really gripped the imagination and belief systems of many, many Somalis because they can identify with that. And so if they see these clan militias known as

the Mawis is a sarong that Somali men wear. And if a Somali living in another part of the country sees somebody who looks like him wearing a mawis or a sarong that looks like him and carries his gun, he's more likely to be encouraged to emulate that. So I think that in terms of sort of fashion of fighting, a source of inspiration, is something that is really fascinating. And we mustn't kind of over-glorify its success, but it does seem to have really changed the nature of the war against al-Shabaab and also people's mentality. I also think that something that I've noticed as being a long-term observer of Somalia is that in the 1990s, the time of Black Hawk Down, that was kind of catastrophic in terms of public relations

and in terms of Somali's attitudes towards the US. But I've noticed in recent years, or in the last few years, number one, the African Union forces have shown that they can be effective. They've learned a lot about how to fight in Somalia. And the Somalis have more respect for them now than they did before. And I think this training that the US and Turkey and some other countries are spearheading of special forces, for example, the US training this special force called the Danab or lightning force.

The Danab and other forces like the Turkish trained force, which is called Gogur, they're very, very effective in terms of going after al-Shabaab. They have changed the nature of the war. And so I think, as Sam was saying, this kind of more intelligent approach towards working with the Somali security forces and showing Somalis that actually the US and some other countries can do something that is genuinely effective and not as arrogant as it might have been before. I think those kinds of approaches, more nuanced, more disparate, more varied, I do kind of feel like the approach, the foreign approach towards Somalia, because there's more mutual appreciation, I think it is being more effective now. Somalis will never look very

kindly on foreigners and foreign powers. But I do get the feeling that the hatred and the mirth that Somalis were looking at the foreign forces before foreigners in general, perhaps especially the US, I feel that that has diminished in the last few years. Mary, in your book, you discuss the lucrative political economy of insecurity that come from persistent conflict. And it seems like you make the case that there are several stakeholders in Somalia and East Africa who stand to gain from permanent conflict. Could you dig into that and explain the underlying logic behind your assertion? local and regional and international, who have any power, in some ways have more to win from war than peace. They're benefiting in lots of different ways. The people who aren't are the bulk of the population of Somalia who live in pretty unspeakable conditions. If you go

to any of the displaced people's camps, mainly around the cities, I mean, people are living in igloo-shaped structures made out of sticks, bits of old cloth, bits of plastic. You go inside, if you can even fit inside, and half the time they're living on the bare earth or with a bit of cloth on the ground. They are living in the most unspeakable conditions, and they're certainly not benefiting from insecurity. But when you look at the politicians, some members of the business community, not all, when you look at, for example, private security outfits, whether they're Somali or foreign, when you look at even some of the big NGOs, I mean, lots of people have jobs, well-paid

jobs in Somalia. And if Somalia became peaceful, they would lose all of that danger, money and opportunity. So I think you do have this whole bulk of people who some benefit materially, others, it raises their profile, etc., who are benefiting from the status quo. And so that creates an inertia and a resistance to Somalia becoming a genuinely peaceful place. And I always look at Somaliland, which without foreign involvement in the early 90s declared itself independent. It did win a war against the federal government of Siad Barre, the former head of state. But these people, they literally got together, had a conference that

went on for ages and ages. They devised a political system that functions in that territory. And they're so invested in rebuilding and in not returning to that violence that now Somaliland definitely has more to gain from peace than war. And therefore, it's going to be much more difficult for Somalia to continue to be unstable that for it to become a genuinely peaceful place, for it to build that from the grassroots up, it's going to meet with a lot of resistance from powerful people. Yeah, I thought that was one of the most compelling portions of Mary's book and kind of go into the Mogadishu airport complex, you know, this sort of like green zone mentality and area. And all these things I think that we're

talking about in terms of this political economy of, you know, security, private security that's come about is all like very reasonable, right? Like if you're trying to deliver a project, you want to be sure you're safe, right? If you're a journalist, you want to be sure you're safe. Are you going to be able to do the kind of oversight that you normally would at delivering these kind of things? No, you're not, right? This is all very reasonable and driven by, you know, the very real violence that's there. But I think this has endured for so long that it has sort of come up with, you know, institutions and interests of its own that, yeah, that do make, you know, serious efforts towards peace very difficult. So we've covered a lot of ground today. We've discussed Somalia as a whole, the political economy of insecurity, outside intervention, and al-Shabaab's appeal and their surprising resilience. So based on that conversation, what are some recommendations you have for the policy practitioner and academic communities

interested in East Africa and VEOs in the region? And I'll direct that question to Mary first. As a BBC journalist, it's not really my job to make recommendations. It's my job to try to report what's happening on the ground and give some analysis of that based on facts. But if I was going to suggest anything, I used to think, as I wrote in my first book, that foreign policy should basically, the more distance it took from Somalia, the better. It should just leave Somalis to get on with their own system. It might not look like something that the Western world understands or thinks functions, but actually it functions perfectly well. And you do see that in Somaliland and several other parts of Somalia, Puntland and other places and a much

more micro level. But as I said earlier, in the recent times, when you do have this much more micro level. But as I said earlier, in the recent times, when you do have this much more nuanced approach, and Somali forces, for example, we've already spoken about are trained to become very sophisticated special forces, and they're trained by foreign militaries, such as the US. If you're going to have foreign involvement, that seems to be quite smart. As long as you are aware that if the situation on the ground changes significantly and al-Shabaab is driven out of territories, number one, as Sam said, the challenge is holding those territories. And also the other challenge is, is just another form of conflict going to erupt.

Are those clan militias that are united in fighting al-Shabaab just going to start fighting amongst themselves? It's perfectly possible. So I would say that you have to think about the future. You have to try to lay down some alternative in so-called liberated areas that people are going to be invested in. And they're going to think, yes, this is what we want. We actually want peace. We don't want al-Shabaab or any other militia. And that's going to require a huge amount of investment. And I would say ultimately, the strongest thing of all, probably in any society, but I see it in Somalia, in areas where you don't have so much violence, it's the community. In places like Somaliland or elsewhere, the reason why you don't

have al-Shabaab operating or other violent groups is because the community, they keep an eye on what's going on. They are the police force more than anybody else. And so if you equip the community and give the community the means to invest in their own security, then that is how you're going to eventually build a peaceful, functioning Somalia. I love that focus on humility. I think remembering that while we've had some successes with the light footprint approach in Somalia, I think need to have four factors in alignment. You know, the first is Somali national political unity. To have success against a group, you have to have a popular federal government with a clear legal mandate in place. I think you also have to have a measure of cooperation between the federal member states

and the central government. Third, I think you need to have regional support. I think a lot of the recent success in the offenses around Iran was the Ethiopians sort of realized how bad the situation had gotten with the incursions into their country. So regional support for the effort has been central to the campaign so far, and I think will continue to be key as an African Union mission transitions. And the final one is international support. America's participation in the conflict has ebbed and flowed, as well as other international actors. But I think if these four really political factors are in alignment, then the forces that are fighting against al-Shabaab have a legitimate chance of gaining the upper hand, whether that's

into negotiations or however the conflict terminates. Absent one or more of those factors, I think the situation becomes more and more difficult. But those are not things that are solved by raids or air power or drones. Those are broader political factors that need to be really set up for the course of the campaign to continue in a positive direction. Well, Sam, Mary, that was a fascinating conversation on Somalia and Al-Shabaab. And thank you so much for your time today. Ben, Matt, Mary, thanks. It was great to talk about such an important topic today. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot. Thank you very much.

Thank you again for joining us for episode 71 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Ben and Julia discuss the National Defense Strategy with Dr. Corey Shockey and Rear Admiral Keith Davids. Following that, Ben and Adam will discuss the impact of new technologies on modern combat with Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson and Mick Ryan. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We are a team of all volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. between scholars and practitioners to support the community

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