Al Shabab produces Battle of Mogadishu documentary: interview with Chris Anzalone
In this instalment I interviewed Christopher Anzalone a leading expert on Al Shabab and similar organisations across Africa and the Middle East
Less is known about The Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 than the event which serialised it and eventually became the basis for a Hollywood blockbuster. That moment on October 3, 1993 when Somali militiamen armed with rocket-propelled grenades downed two American Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. The incident would eventually find its place in cinematic history in the eponymously named movie Black Hawk Down, a title that captured the desperate efforts of American soldiers trying to communicate the plight of their descending helicopter, shrouded in a plume of smoke, into the urban sprawl below. CBS’s 60 Minutes managed to obtain footage which you can access in the site version of this article.
Just under 100 US Rangers and Delta Force soldiers went to rescue their fallen colleagues from the tawny, dust strewn streets of the Somali capital. They were initially tasked with capturing Somali warlord Farah Aideed in what was expected to be a smooth raid; but militiamen from the Hawiye sub-clan called Habr Gidir confronted them when the copter crashed, triggering an 18-hour gunfight which left 18 Americans and hundreds of Somalis dead. The US military would later describe the battle as the “costliest and longest sustained firefight since the Vietnam War.” It was this episode which would later be remembered at the Battle of Mogadishu. The nature of the conflict and the fury it generated among Somalis was captured in a photo which shook American audiences who saw one of their soldiers being dragged through Mogadishu’s streets like morbid trophy of war. Bill Clinton decided enough was enough and ordered a withdrawal of US troops within 6 months.
The battle, Michael R. Gordon and Thomas Friedman wrote for the New York Times in 1993, “may well be one of those searing battlefield experiences whose memory shapes public opinion and sharply influences what the United States will and will not do in the world.”
For Somalis, the debacle carries a dual significance; many see the American retreat as a victory over an invading force that violently tore through the city and their lives with humanitarian pretensions that masked a desire to obtain licenses for Somali energy. But it also marks the moment the world turned its back on Somalia, disabusing itself of what would become an intractable, violent and stubborn conflict. Somali rapper K’naan captured the mood among Somalis in his breakout song Soobax (Come Out in English): “Left alone, all alone, settle your issues on your own, what to do? Where to go? I got to be a refugee damn, soobax.”
A recent documentary released by al-Shabab’s media arm, al-Kata’ib Foundation, revisited this conflict, marking its 30th anniversary titled They Attained No Good: 1993 Battle for Mogadishu. Contrary to the way many Somalis understood the conflict as one between US forces and members of the Habr Gidir clan, They Attained No Good claims that Islamists in Mogadishu at the time played a crucial role in the battle and the eventual ejection of US troops from Somalia. Their account of the battle places al-Qaeda at the heart of the conflict with the Americans. Much isn’t clear about those events but one thing is. In their book Inside Al Shabab, journalists Harun Maruf and Dan Joseph report that Ahmed Abdi Godane, a former al-Shabab leader said that those battles were the beginning of the war between al-Qaeda and the United States. “Sheikh Osama [bin Laden] mentioned this in one of his speeches, saying ‘That is when we found out the weakness of [the] American military,’” Godane said.
To get our heads around al-Shabab’s revisionist account of those events I’ve decided to interview Christopher Anzalone, a leading expert on jihadist movements around the world, with a particular focus on al-Shabab and its media. Below is my Q/A with him.
Faisal Ali: The documentary described the Battle for Mogadishu as the "biggest" American defeat since Vietnam. But the Battle for Mogadishu is broadly seen as a conflict in which Somalia's Islamists played a very marginal role. Are they attempting to stake a claim to this battle and its outcome purely for propaganda or is there some substance to their claims?
Christopher Anzalone: The short answer is yes, though it is important to note that it is very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to determine exactly which groups did what with any certainty. In other words, it would be difficult to prove claims about the battle made by al-Shabaab figures, such as Mahad Warsame, are untrue except, perhaps, with counter-claims made by other individuals who claim to have participated.
In the new al-Shabab film, most of the claims made by Warsame and other Al-Shabab commanders who claimed to have participated in the 1993 battle weren’t new, though there were some details that weren’t made public before. The late al-Shabab amir, Ahmed Godane, claimed on multiple occasions – including in audio interviews broadcast by al-Shabab radio in 2011 – that Al-Qaeda figures were present in Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia in the 1990s. The late American foreign fighter-turned-al-Shabab defector Omar Hammami made similar claims, though he seems to have been, without naming him, repeating Godane’s earlier claims.
Two of the al-Qaeda figures mentioned by Godane were Yusuf al-Uyayri and Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin, who would both go on to co-found the original AQAP (often called al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia). Other al-Qaeda figures reportedly in Somalia in the 1990s include Sayf al-Adl, Abu Muhammad al-Masri (accused of playing key planning roles in the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya), Abu al-Hasan al-Sa’idi, Talha al-Sudani, and Fadil Harun (Fazul Abdullah Muhammad).
It’s interesting that Mahad Warsame and other al-Shabab commanders featured in the new film on 1993 claim to have been at the very heart of the action, so to speak, placing themselves at the center of a battle that they and other militant Islamists were on the periphery of, far outgunned and overshadowed by Mohamed Farah Aidid’s militiamen. The al-Shabaab narrative in the film also seems to paint the collaboration between the “mujahideen” and Aidid’s men as one simply of convenience and overlapping interests in fighting the United Nations force. It’s difficult, and probably impossible, to verify their claims with a high degree of certainty.
Faisal Ali: Can you help us with a bit of context on the ideological landscape for different religiously motivated actors in Somalia after the Barre regime collapsed?
Christopher Anzalone: The collapse of Siyad Barre’s government in the early 1990s and the rise of clan militias and warlords opened the door in two ways for Somali non-state Islamist actors.
First, the absence of a functioning central government and the breakdown of state and society along localized and regional lines, determined in part by whichever armed force was most dominant in a particular area, allowed for the rise of non-state armed Islamist groups. The best example of this was Al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI), which set up, in cooperation with local clan forces, a statelet (“emirate”) in Luuq in the Gedo region.
Second, mass abuses by clan warlords and militias created an environment that the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) umbrella and, later, al-Shabab were able to use to build early grassroots support or acquiescence for their territorial control and governance among local civilians, some of whom saw it as being preferable to live under the rule of a single organization rather than having to contend with – and pay – multiple groups.
AIAI drew upon a mix of Somali Islamists including those attracted to Muslim Brotherhood-type movements as well as others attracted to Salafism, which began to spread in Somalia – as it did in other countries – in the 1970s and 1980s. Groups like AIAI and al-Shabab combine elements of multiple methodologies and ideologies, such as the most revolutionary parts of Muslim Brotherhood thought (for example, that of Sayyid Qutb) and Salafism and subsets of it like Wahhabism (particularly its iconoclasm and views on takfir/heavy focus on the supposed “apostasy” or “heretical innovations” of other Muslims). The result of this mix is a hybrid ideology, neither fully “Muslim Brotherhood” nor “Salafi” but a mix of selected elements of both.
Faisal Ali: Why did it take until the middle of the following decade for these individuals and groups to cohere into a solid movement which could control territory in the way that al-Shabab does today?
Christopher Anzalone: A lot isn’t clear still about the specifics of al-Shabab’s founding, though many members of its core founding cadre were connected by 2005-2006. It was really through the conflict environment that existed post-Ethiopian invasion (December 2006) and collapse of the ICU (January 2007) that the ground was fertile for al-Shabab to grow its numbers. As al-Shabab captured territory, like the port city of Kismayo, it was better able to attract new key Somali armed Islamist figures, some of whom would go on to play key roles – for example, Mohamed Mohamud Ali “Dulyadeyn,” who defected from Mu’askar Ras Kamboni.
The AIAI experiment in the early 1990s with its Luuq “emirate” demonstrated the need for armed Islamists to partner or collaborate with local clan forces for longevity. The ICU was so successful because it brought together local Islamists with clan backing and the support of a large number of local civilians as well as members of the large Somali diaspora.
al-Shabab benefited in its early years (2007-2009) from the Ethiopian military occupation of Mogadishu and other parts of southern and western Somalia for several reasons. First, al-Shabab was not well known initially since it had previously been only a very small segment of the armed wing of the ICU. There were some mentions of a small cadre led by the late Adan Hashi Farah “Ayro” in 2005-2006, but not a lot was known about it. This ambiguousness may have helped al-Shabab attract supporters early on who otherwise would not have backed it had they known more about its organizational ideology. Second, the Ethiopian invasion and military presence in Somalia enabled al-Shabab to tap into preexisting Somali nationalist sentiments, something it continues to do today, particularly with regard to notions of pan-Somali nationalism and a “Greater Somalia” unfairly divided by colonial powers (the UK) and regional hegemons (Abyssinia/Ethiopia). Support – details of which aren’t clear from open source information – provided to al-Shabab from al-Qaeda figures – for example by Saleh al-Nabhani and Fazul Abdullah Muhammad – also likely played a role in al-Shabab’s military capabilities, which then attracted new recruits in line with the well-known adage that “nothing succeeds like success.”
al-Shabab also proved itself to be politically and militarily adept at taking advantage of shifts on the ground, for example by sidelining its one-time partners and fellow armed Islamists and clan forces in Kismayo and taking advantage of power struggles within Mu’askar Ras Kamboni and the disunity between the groups that made up the Hizbul Islam umbrella nominally fronted by Hassan Dahir Aweys.
Faisal Ali: Al Shabab appears at times to blend Somali irredentist ideology with some ideas more common among jihadi circles (instituting sharia and global Islamic rule). Can you talk a bit about how they think about the era prior to their’s and what kind of Somalia al-Shabab aspire to see?
Christopher Anzalone: al-Shabab suffers from the same thing that many other Islamists do, including the vast majority of Islamists who are not militants and believe in changing their societies through grassroots missionary (daʿwa) work and political action, including elections: they assume that all problems will be solved simply by “implementing God’s law (shariʿa)” and forming an “Islamic state.” The exact contours of that “Islamic state” are left pretty ambiguous beyond the mantra of implementing “shariʿa,” or rather a simplistic version of it that centers heavily on implementing the hudud punishments. For al-Shabab, particularly as it was building its governing bureaucracy and apparatus, implementing the hudud, aside from its ideological and theological components, had a strategic aspect: it provided the organization’s administrators with an already formed set of rules and regulations through which to monopolize the use of force (coercion and violence) and with which to achieve, through targeted violence and coercion, a semblance of “law and order.” The stabilizing effects of the organization’s implementation of hudud ordinances was something that al-Shabab leaders emphasized early on, for example in 2009 as the group was making rapid territorial advances towards and into Mogadishu. Leaders including Mukhtar Robow and Ibrahim al-Afghani highlighted the benefits of what they essentially described as a rules-based social order in territory controlled by al-Shabab, which the insurgents juxtaposed with the multiple predatory warlords and other armed groups that preceded them – al-Shabab was, of course, also predatory, but the “benefit,” so to speak, for locals was that when the group came into power and defeated other armed groups, locals now only had to deal with one rather than multiple groups. In theory, al-Shabab’s constant invocation of “shariʿa” also meant that there were some built-in rules and guidelines for how it could operate because it needs to maintain at least the façade of its “Islamic” credentials and appeals to historical and religious “authenticity.”
al-Shabab’s precise vision for a future state is pretty ambiguous beyond the slogans of an “Islamic state” and “shariʿa rule;” it is not at all clear what the group’s ideal “Islamic state” will look like. One of the reasons for this, which is common to many Islamist VEOs [violent extremist organizations] and many rebel groups more broadly whether Muslim or not, is that political theorizing is often either entirely or mostly theoretical and therefore untested, or it is postponed until military victory is achieved. Some rebel groups, and there’s a growing scholarly literature on rebel governance, do begin planning and implementing territorial governance while still waging a rebellion/insurgency and the reasons why are often very local and organization specific.
For wl-Shabab, executing territorial governance was something the group’s leadership wanted to do from the start and this was probably influenced by the fact that so many al-Shabab leaders had administrative or other command roles within the ICU umbrella. Hypothetically, if the group was to capture control of the entire country – which it’s hard to see happening at this point in time – there would be a lot of painful internal discussions that would need to take place between al-Shabab’s leadership about the exact contours and organization of a functioning state. It’s very possible that al-Shabab leaders would find themselves adopting similar approaches to the Afghan Taliban, taking over preexisting state institutions and then “Islamizing” them through some procedural but, more so, terminological ways (for example by adopting “Islamic” terminology for some government functions, like adding mention of zakat alongside other forms of government revenue collection/generation).
Even Islamic State, despite its claim to reject all “Western” and “un-Islamic” politics and political systems, essentially organized its so-called “caliphate” very much like a modern nation-state and by simply “Islamizing” the language and terminology it used to describe its state structures and guiding principles. When it was still going by the name the Islamic State of Iraq, it even called its different organizational administrative bureaus and the heads of them “ministers,” before later (when it evolved into ISIS/ISIL and then Islamic State) adopting more “authentic” terms like “diwan” instead of “ministry” (even though the word is of Persian origin, it is deemed Islamically authentic because of its reported usage by the Rashidun caliphs).
al-Shabab’s long-running invocation of the idea of a “Greater Somalia” and pan-Somalism (the group wouldn’t use the term “nationalism,” even though that’s essentially what they’re invoking) alongside pan-Islamism highlights most clearly the group’s hybridity. It is the product of the combination of multiple ideas and not a single ideology. al-Shabab is also a product of its environment: the idea that Somalis were divided by external colonial and imperial powers – not unlike what happened with the Sykes-Picot agreement after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – enjoys support even amongst Somalis who are opposed to al-Shabab. In theory, al-Shabab figures should want a global, pan-Muslim super-state – a neo-caliphate – since, they say, shared Muslim identity should trump all other forms of identity. But that isn’t the reality, which al-Shabab’s leaders understand this and thus they combine appeals to supposedly shared “Muslim” identity and causes – for example, its support of Palestinians and, ironically, in effect Palestinian nationalism – with more ethno-nationalist appeals. An added layer of tension is the way that al-Shabab addresses its non-Somali Kenyan members and supporters, highlighting both the real and perceived abuses and persecution they may face as Kenyan Muslims (highlighting their alleged unfair treatment compared to other [Christian] Kenyans, i.e. unequal rights as Kenyans) as well as their non-country specific “Muslim-ness” (for example, by usually referring to parts of Kenya with Muslim majorities or large Muslim populations as “occupied Muslim lands in Kenya”).
Faisal Ali: I was quite surprised to find Malcolm X's 1963 speech at the end of the documentary from when he was a part of the Nation of Islam where he said: "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a head for a head, and a life for a life: That’s a good religion." Ahmed Deedat also featured. Are those kinds of references to popular figures common and how do they fit these people into their quite exclusionary theology?
Christopher Anzalone: Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) has long been a popular figure in the Muslim majority world for many decades and this has also been true for Sunni transnational jihadis and jihadi organizations including Al-Qaeda Central and its regional affiliates including al-Shabab. al-Qaeda Central’s media department, the Al-Sahab Media Foundation, has frequently used video and audio clips of Malcolm’s speeches. To highlight just one example: Ayman al-Zawahiri often invoked the symbol of Malcolm to discredit the United States by highlighting its internal divisions (racism, religious, socioeconomic, etc.). Al-Zawahiri invoked Malcolm directly, for example, right after the election of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency in 2008 as a way of juxtaposing the two and making it clear that, from al-Zawahiri’s perspective, President Obama’s minority identity would not make any real difference in U.S. policies from his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
al-Shabab has also previously invoked Malcolm using the same audio clip as it did in the recent pseudo-documentary style film marking the thirtieth anniversary of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (specifically its January 2021 film on its January 2020 attack on Camp Simba/Manda Bay) using a famous still image of him holding a rifle against a backdrop of video footage of the aftermath of the attack on the military base.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has also used racial tensions and racism in the U.S. as part of its media operations, seeking to discredit and undermine the U.S. government and as part of an attempt to link itself to broader segments of society looking for a sense of belonging and also upset with the status quo. Similar messaging has targeted Muslim communities in European countries including France and the UK.
It’s important to note that the image and symbol of Malcolm is also invoked by Shi’ites and even the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example here at “Quds Day” events in the city of Qum this year and here in a poster for a commemorative event for “martyrs of the Islamic world”.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, also has a long record of invoking the symbol of Malcolm:
Interestingly, this video clip is also taken from the same 1963 speech as al-Shabab used. Here are a few more examples of Khamenei (here, here and here).
To answer your second question:
al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda Central, AQAP, Islamic State, and other Sunni transnational jihadi organizations have generally been very adept at using selective quotations (written, audio, video) from a wide range of people, including people whose job was literally to target and dismantle violent extremist organizations (VEOs) like these groups (for example, former CIA intelligence officer Michael Scheuer) and even U.S. presidents and former presidents. Jihadi media operations also sometimes invoke, or seek to attach VEOs to, prominent and more mainstream Muslim religious figures like Deedat and, in the case of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP; the “Pakistani Taliban), certain Pakistani and Indian Sunni Muslim religious scholars (usually in the form of eulogies when they pass away).
Faisal Ali: Can you talk a bit about how the quality of their productions has increased, from the Camp Simba attack to this full documentary?
Christopher Anzalone: al-Shabab’s media operations have been very robust for many years. Starting from around 2009-2010, the group’s media production quality in its video and film productions rapidly and continuously improved both in technical and production areas such as cinematography and editing as well as in narrative construction. Beginning in 2012, the group’s media department has been producing highly polished documentary-style films that are on par with documentaries produced by mainstream news and media organizations, though obviously al-Shabab’s documentaries are heavily ideological. The new film on the Battle of Mogadishu is the latest such al-Shabab documentary-style film production.
Like AQC and AQAP, al-Shabab uses selections from documentaries and news programs produced by other, mainstream news and media organizations, including documentaries in English. al-Shabab’s media apparatus also regularly uses selected portions from TV news and radio broadcasts featuring Somali politicians and military and police officials in shorter videos on specific attacks the insurgents have carried out. In the latter, al-Shabab media producers often select an audio or video segment where a senior Somali politician, such as President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, or military or security forces official makes a claim that is then seemingly contradicted by al-Shabab footage.
al-Shabab media used the same messaging strategy in the aftermaths of its 2016 and 2017 attacks and captures of the Kenyan Defense Forces’ (KDF) bases at El Adde and Kulbiyow respectively – the insurgents juxtaposed Kenyan government claims that the bases didn’t fall to al-Shabab with footage of al-Shabab fighters inside both bases and clips from Kenyan news programs and publications confirming high KDF casualties. al-Shabab did the same thing in the aftermath of its June 2014 attacks in and around Mpeketoni in Kenya’s Lamu County, which Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta claimed as localized ethnic violence.
What’s most remarkable about al-Shabab’s media capabilities is how resilient they’ve been even during times when the organization is on the backfoot, for example between 2011 and 2014 when it withdrew under pressure from AMISOM, the Somali government, and allied local forces, from Mogadishu, Baidoa, Kismayo, Baraawe, Marka, and most of the major urban areas it controlled. There was a definite effect on al-Shabab media, such as a shift in how the group delivered its field reports, which went from daily to weekly to monthly to, now, the staggered release of collective field reports in small batches every several months or so instead of every month. However, the group’s media production capacity and capability remains high. There has been some personnel shifts, for example in Arabic language narrators (unverifiable claims by some dissidents a few years ago claimed this was because al-Shabab purged its original narrator), but the English language narrator seems to be the same seemingly (from his accent) British foreign fighter who was first revealed on insurgent video during the summer of 2010.