How an accountant with a fondness for poetry became head of Al-Shabab, one of world’s most-wanted terrorists

Al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane is rarely seen in public and communicates mostly through audio-recorded messages.

by Maria Assaf 

After assassinating several rivals in Al-Shabab this year, Ahmed Abdi Godane has emerged as undisputed leader of an organization that had lost support, funds and the little legitimacy it had enjoyed among clans in Somalia.

Now, with the Nairobi mall massacre, he is sending the world and his supporters a message: This is what my leadership will look like.

“Godane is completely uncompromising,” said Matt Bryden, director of Sahan Research, a group of Somali intellectuals based in Nairobi.

“He is not a pragmatist. He is not interested in negotiating. It is not even clear that Al-Shabab has a vision of national leadership, or that they aspire to become leaders.”

Rather, Mr. Godane’s agenda is “a very vague sort of nebulous commitment” to jihad and the caliphate, a global Islamic state.

“The expression of that agenda is nihilistic violence,” Mr. Bryden added.

The 36-year-old jihadi belongs to the Isaaq tribe from the northern region of Somaliland where he was born.

He reportedly sold charcoal in his home city of Hargiesa before winning a scholarship from a Saudi Arabian religious foundation to study economics in Pakistan. He is also believed to have managed a supermarket with long-time friend Ibrahim Afghani, who he would later have killed.

The slightly built extremist, who is said to have a fondness for poetry, worked as an accountant for a while for a firm that specialized in overseas remittances, a key part of terror-funding. He also received some military training in Afghanistan.

We will fight and the wars will not end until Islamic sharia is implemented in all continents in the world

According to unconfirmed reports from Somali media, Mr. Godane, who also goes by the name Mukhtar Abu Zubair, has a home in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, where his wife and children have lived since 2008. That same year he became Al-Shabab leader.

He is rarely seen in public and communicates mostly through audio-recorded messages. In one message — responding to a U.S. missile attack that killed fellow jihadist Adan Hashi Ayro — he vowed, “We will fight and the wars will not end until Islamic sharia is implemented in all continents in the world.”

Under his leadership, Al-Shabab has specialized in suicide bombings and large-scale terrorist attacks. These tactics earned him a rebuke from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who rejected Mr. Godane’s proposal to unite their organizations.

The expression of that agenda is nihilistic violence

Al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane

AFP/Getty Images

He also warned Mr. Godane against forcing sharia law on Somalis before they were ready, writing he should,”remain devout, patient and persistent in upholding high moral values … towards the community.”

The letter was dated Aug. 7, 2010, a month after Al-Shabab suicide bombers killed 74 people watching the soccer World Cup final in the Ugandan capital Kampala. After the attack, Washington placed a US$7-million bounty on Mr. Godane, making him one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists.

“[He is] from the extreme fringe of Al-Shabab,” said Mr. Bryden.

But after bin Laden’s death, his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, accepted Al-Shabab as part of the organization.

Mr. Godane is a takfiri, someone who believes apostates from Islam and even Muslims who do not share the same jihadist vision must die. Al-Shabab’s ideological principle, as a faction of al-Qaeda, is to turn Somalia into an Islamic state.

AP Photo/File

This April 1998 file photo shows then-exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

“And then possibly go beyond to merge with other jihadi groups in a global jihadi caliphate,” said Mr. Bryden.

Not all senior commanders have agreed.

“Within Al-Shabab’s upper echelon, there have been long-standing disputes and conflicts regarding goals, strategies, and tactics,” said a report this year from the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.

“Many of these appear to be moulded around the discourse concerning globalist versus nationalist agendas.”

Islamist fighters loyal to Somalia's Al-Qaeda inspired Al-Shebab group perform drills near Mogadishu in February 2011.Abdurashid Abdulle/AFP/Getty Images/Files

In June, Mr. Godane engineered the killings of his former friend, Ibrahim Afghani, former top commander Sheik Maalim Burhan and an American rival, Omar Hammami.

They had accused him of becoming tyrannical, neglecting the teachings of Islam and mistreating foreign fighters.

With his rivals out of the way, Mr. Godane was undisputed leader of Al-Shabab, an organization that once promised stability in Somalia, where failed governments have been the norm for the past 20 years.

But the group began losing support when it drove out foreign food aid agencies during the 2010-12 famine that killed almost 260,000 people, according the United Nations.

Al-Shabab also lost its stronghold in Mogadishu in 2011, when it was driven out by Kenyan troops. The following year, it was forced to leave the port of Kismayo, which used to provide welcome revenue from shipping levies and duties.

This month, about 160 of Somalia’s most distinguished religious scholars denounced Al-Shabab, declaring it was “a religious duty” to turn members over to the authorities.

A sort of meaner, leaner Al-Shabab

“This is unprecedented in Somalia’s history that a group of well-respected and internationally based and local scholars came together and declared a fatwa and denounced the organization, and said they were not speaking in the name of Islam,” said Yusuf Hassan Abdi, a member of Kenya’s parliament.

Cedric Barnes, regional director at the International Crisis Group, a think-tank devoted to preventing conflicts worldwide, said while Mr. Godane was not necessarily popular in Somalia, “he is popular amongst a certain group of people who believe in his values and the value that Al-Shabab is holding.”

And that could make Al-Shabab more dangerous.

“What he’s got left is a sort of meaner, leaner Al-Shabab,” said Mr. Bryden.

AP Photo/Khalil Senosi, File

A security guard, left, helps

a woman outside the Westgate Mall

in Nairobi, Kenya Saturday,

Sept. 21, 2013 following an

attack by armed Islamic extremist

group al-Shabab.

“He has consolidated a much-diminished Al-Shabab. So on the one hand it is a weaker Al-Shabab, but on the other, it is more cohesive, tightly knit, more secretive and more violent.”

“Everybody is very much loyal to him,” said Mr. Barnes. “He has set up an organization that is highly disciplined and well organized.”

Experts believe Al-Shabab carried out the Nairobi attack to show its closeness to al-Qaeda, to emphasize Mr. Godane’s leadership and revenge itself on the Kenyan government for invading Somalia.

“Godane and his group clearly like to see themselves as part of the al-Qaeda network. In reality, the ties are not very strong, structurally and organizationally. But ideologically they seem to be closer than they’ve been in the past,” said Mr. Bryden.

Arne Kislenko, adjunct professor of national security and terrorism at the University of Toronto, expects there will be more violence.

Low-cost attacks like the one on the Nairobi mall are “not terribly difficult to pull of and … have the tangible effect of causing people a great deal of anxiety and shutting folks out of their lives,” he said.

“You can bet that pretty quickly they are going to show that they can do something else. These are hard-core men.”

National Post, with files from news services

massaf@nationalpost.com