ESCAPING FROM AL-SHABAAB’S CONSCRIPTION OFFICERS

[Deeq A.]

Dhadhaab Refugee Camp, North East Kenya ( PPM) — Al-shabaab, the Somalia-based extremist organisation, does not run out of recruits, so goes the story. Its failed attempt to launch a surprise attack against Puntland in 2016 betrayed its one-time secret recruitment strategies.

Almost 30% of Al-shabaab fighters taken prisoners by Puntland Defence Forces were children under 15 years of age. Some of the children interviewed shared harrowing experiences about how Al-shabaab persuaded them to join religiously justified punitive expedition against Puntland State. Children were recruited in Lower Shabelle, Upper Jubba, Middle Jubba, Bay and Bakool regions. Their parents reported them missing. An interrogator asked one emaciated child POW how he managed to carry an AK-47 assault rifle and walk more than 200 KM. 

Some parents who came to Puntland to have their “abducted” children reunited with them had expressed a wish to bring up their children in an environment where Al-shabaab conscription officers cannot breathe down on families’ necks.   Al-shabaab senior leaders are not young men in the conventional sense of the word. The use of the word youth in the organisation’s name conveys more than ideological commitment. It is a means to recruit young fighters regardless of their age.  In Lower Jubba,  where Al-shabaab controls Bu’aale, the administrative capital of the region, and Jilib, the group  has put in a place a policy that compelled many parents to cross the border between Somalia and Kenya and start life in refugee camps such as Dhadhaab and Dhagahley.

Al-shabaab obliges a family with three sons to send one to to Al-shabaab barracks (mu’askar) to train to become a fighter or an intelligence operarive (amniyat) after screening (tarshih).

Luqman (not his real name) told Puntland Post stringer in Dhadhaab that he “was forced to flee a hamlet in Middle Jubba after Al-shabaab gave me an ultimatum to allow  one of my sons to join the group.” Luqman said he would be accused of espionage had he not fled the hamlet to seek asylum in Kenya. “I told them that both my sons are adults and that it is their decision, not mine, to join Al-shabaab” Luqman told Puntland Post stringer.  If three sons are under 15 years of age, parents will have to give one of the sons up for adoption by Al-shabaab. “Al-shabaab has shed any pretense of good conduct towards families and children. Families in Al-shabaab-controlled areas live in constant fear of having their sons conscripted for suicide bombing, intelligence gathering or aiding and abetting  assassins” says  Mukhtar Dala’an, a former coordinator of Somali Red Crescent Office in Baidoa, who is now in Dhadhaab refugee camp.

Al-shabaab leaders worry about the dwindling population in  districts the group controls. It does not restrict travelling to and from districts under its control. Such a decision will limit its ability to launch suicide bombing missions in Mogadishu, Kismayo and Lower Shabelle. For parents fearing the gaze of conscription officers, relocating to another part of Somalia or seeking asylum in neighbouring Kenya are two appealing options.

© Puntland Post Monthly, 2020

Click here to download a full webzine

The post ESCAPING FROM AL-SHABAAB’S CONSCRIPTION OFFICERS appeared first on Puntland Post.