Dirty Wars (92 page)

In response to al Shabab's tactical shift and recent attacks, a Burundian-led AMISOM force
launched an offensive
to push al Shabab from Daynile, a crucial al Shabab stronghold north of Mogadishu. The offensive, while partially successful, resulted in scores of Burundian troops being killed—as many as seventy-six, by some estimates, which would have made it the greatest loss of AMISOM lives in a single battle ever. After what al Shabab dubbed the “
Battle of Daynile
,” its fighters piled up the bodies of Burundian soldiers onto trucks and paraded them through town. Dozens of people lined the roads cheering them on and chanting, “Allah u Akbar!” and shouting praise for al Shabab. The trucks eventually pulled into an open field, where they dumped the bodies. Some residents prostrated themselves before the fighters. Mukhtar Robow and other Somali al Shabab leaders examined the dead Burundians—still wearing their combat fatigues. In one of the uniformed corpses of an AMISOM soldier, an al Shabab fighter's machete remained driven into the chest.

“We want to tell the Muslim people to rejoice in the fact that the ones who have displaced you from your homes, caused you so much trouble and violated the honor of your women—today Allah has humiliated them too,” said al Shabab's Sheikh Rage. Holding up a crucifix and a Bible he said was seized from one of the soldiers, Rage continued. “We also want to let the Muslims know that this is a war between...Islam and Christianity....This is also a stern warning to the Kenyans who are entering our Muslim land: This will be the end that awaits your sons, by the will of Allah the Almighty. The disbelievers have sustained heavy losses, but we've only managed to carry seventy-six of their corpses. And these were the original disbelievers, particularly those from Burundi.”

“
Claims of al-Shabab's imminent collapse
,” observed Christopher Anzalone, a PhD candidate at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, whose work focused on al Shabab, “are exaggerated and belied by the movement's continued ability to launch major attacks inside Mogadishu as well as inflict significant numbers of casualties on AMISOM and [Somali government] forces.” Al Shabab was fighting for its survival—and not just on the battlefield. It appeared to realize that no matter how many military victories it achieved, it would ultimately need popular support—the kind that brought the Islamic Courts to power and chased out the CIA warlords—to survive. It needed its own version of the US counterinsurgency doctrine. Forced to relinquish military control of certain areas, al Shabab redoubled its political efforts.

Al Shabab organized a
series of meetings
with clan elders from various
regions in an effort to mend relations with them and negotiate agreements. A month after it killed the Burundian troops, al Shabab allowed reporters access to one of its own aid camps for internally displaced people, Ala-Yasir camp in southern Somalia. Although part of the point was to push back against claims that al Shabab was responsible for the humanitarian disaster and had prevented aid from reaching Somalia, a special guest was also there. Introduced as the al Qaeda envoy to the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, a white man with a keffiyeh wrapped around his face was identified as Abu Abdullah al Muhajir. Local al Shabab leaders said he was an American citizen. Journalists watched as Muhajir and his allies distributed food, Islamic books and clothes at the camp, which housed more than 4,000 people. The al Qaeda delegation also brought an ambulance. “
To our beloved brothers and sisters
in Somalia, we are following your situation on a daily basis,” Muhajir declared in English. “And, though we are separated by thousands of kilometers, you are consistently in our thoughts and prayers.” Journalists reported that the man handed out bags full of Somali shillings, equaling about $17,000.

Perhaps al Shabab was truly on the ropes, as the Somali government and AMISOM claimed. Or maybe the group had begun to implement Fazul's vision of a guerrilla terror campaign that gave up territory in favor of sowing fear throughout the country, while effectively exposing the Somali government's inability to bring stability. Al Shabab certainly faced an uphill battle in reasserting its control over territory it won as a result of the disastrous US-backed Ethiopian invasion and the overthrow of the Islamic Courts, but its future could well be determined—as so much of modern Somalia's has been—by foreign intervention.

The United States may have killed a slew of prominent al Qaeda and al Shabab figures, but in doing so it had simultaneously inspired successors to those militants—including US citizens—to rise up and continue the fight. Unlike AMISOM's forces or any other foreign troops, the members of al Shabab were largely Somali and could reintegrate into society or rebrand themselves and regroup. “
Whoever thinks today
that a government other than that of Islam will rule Somalia, he is indeed deluding himself and is not following the affairs of the world,” Ahmed Abdi Godane, the emir of al Shabab, declared in late 2011. “A time will come in the very near future, when the Shariah of Allah rules the entire country—from one corner to the other, and Somalia becomes the foundation of the Islamic Caliphate, upon the methodology of the Prophethood. And our Jihad will continue until we reach the objective that has been defined by Allah.”

AL SHABAB'S METEORIC RISE IN SOMALIA,
and the legacy of terror it wrought, was a direct response to a decade of disastrous US policy, which had strengthened the very threat it was intended to crush. The multipronged US operations in Somalia, in the end, may have given the greatest boost to warlords, including those who once counted al Shabab among their allies and friends. “
They are not fighting for a cause
,” Mohamed Ahmed Nur, the Mogadishu mayor, told me. “And the conflict will start tomorrow, when we defeat Shabab. These militias are based on clan and warlordism and all these things. They don't want a system. They want to keep that turf as a fixed post—then, whenever the government becomes weak, they want to say, ‘We control here.'”

Washington seemed to have cast history aside and, with it, the hard work of supporting indigenous Somali movements that could potentially stabilize their country, opting instead to wage a war of attrition. Under President Obama, the large-scale conventional military deployments of Iraq and Afghanistan were replaced by an expansion of drone strikes and Special Ops teams conducting targeted killings. President Obama seemed intent on a strategy that presumed peace would come by killing the bad guys. But, as happened in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, this strategy appeared to fuel the movements that created those “bad guys” in the first place. “
If you use the drone
, and the selected killings, and do nothing else on the other side, then you get rid of individuals. But the root causes are still there,” observed the former Somali foreign minister, Ismail Mahmoud “Buubaa” Hurre. “The root causes are not security. The root causes are political and economic.”

The history of Somalia has been marred by extreme violence and social division. But the country has also displayed a capacity to unite in the face of foreign intervention. Although al Shabab may have been a severely weakened movement, the conditions that turned it into a Frankenstein remained. The end result of US policy from 1991 through the first term of the Obama administration was to ensure that warlordism would continue and that Somalia would remain a breeding ground for violent jihadists and an enduring interest for al Qaeda. Together, the Bush and Obama administrations managed to rewind the clock of history to the time US troops withdrew from Somalia after Black Hawk Down and abandoned the country to gangsters and warlords. From there, the hellish realities of Somalia grew even worse. Nonetheless, by late 2011, the Obama administration had established a
new drone base in Ethiopia
in addition to the ones in the Seychelles and Saudi Arabia.

YEMEN,
2011—Abdulrahman Awlaki, the oldest son of Anwar Awlaki, was born in Denver, Colorado. Like his father, he spent the first seven years of his life in the United States, attending American schools. When he returned to Yemen, his grandparents—Anwar's mom and dad—played a huge role in his upbringing, particularly after Anwar went underground. Anwar “
always thought that it is best
for Abdulrahman to be with me,” Nasser told me. Anwar believed that his wife and children “should not be involved at all in his problems.” Nasser knew that Anwar would never return to the United States and that he was on a collision course with the US government. But still, he had hopes for his grandson. Nasser wanted Abdulrahman to excel in school and he had dreams of sending his grandson back to the United States for a college education.

Abdulrahman looked just like his father when he was a young boy, but with long wavy hair. “We were pressuring him to go to the mosque, and to perform the prayers on time, things like that,” recalled Nasser, adding that Abdulrahman was not particularly religious and preferred to hang out with his friends. “His hair was very long, and his mother wanted him to have a haircut. I mean, he was as normal as anybody. He was acting like other American” teens. “Anwar used to have adventures, do things like that. Abdulrahman was not that kind,” he added. “He was just from school, to the house, and then to go and play with his friends. And they go to the pizza parlors, to all kinds of places. I always tell him, ‘When you grow up, I want you to study in the United States.'”

It was difficult for Abdulrahman and his siblings to grow up without their father around, but as a teenager, Abdulrahman was old enough to understand why he couldn't see his father. And it was frightening. “Definitely, he was mad about the targeting, what is happening to his father,” Nasser added. “He was really concerned about his father.”

Abdulrahman's aunt, Abir—Anwar's younger sister—was extremely close to him. “Abdulrahman was
one of the closest people to my heart
. I loved him so much and everybody did because Abdulrahman made it very easy for all of us to just adore him,” she told me. “He had somehow filled
his father's vacuum for me and became a brother, a really dear one.” Abdulrahman admired his father and had even chosen as his Facebook username “
Ibn al Shaykh
,” Son of the Shaykh. But Abdulrahman was not his father.

Abdulrahman
loved hip-hop music
and Facebook and hanging out with his friends. They would take pictures of themselves posing as rappers, and when the Yemeni revolution began, Abdulrahman wanted to be a part of it. As massive protests shook Yemen, he would spend hours hanging out in Change Square with the young, nonviolent revolutionaries who had vowed to change their government through peaceful means. He would spend nights there with his friends, sharing his vision for the future and, at times, just goofing off. But as the revolution continued and the government was brought to the verge of collapse, Abdulrahman decided to follow his urge to see his father.

In early September,
Abdulrahman woke up
before the rest of the house. He tiptoed into his mother's bedroom, went into her purse, took 9,000 Yemeni rials—the equivalent of about $40—and left a note outside of her bedroom door. He then snuck out the kitchen window and into the courtyard. Shortly after 6:00 a.m., the family's guard saw the boy leave but didn't think anything of it at the time. It was Sunday, September 4, 2011, a few days after the Eid al-Fitr holiday marked the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Nine days before, Abdulrahman
had turned sixteen
.

A short while later, Abdulrahman's mother woke up. She started to rouse Abdulrahman's siblings for the morning prayers and then went to find Abdulrahman. He was not in his bedroom. She called for him, and while searching the house, she found the note. “
I am sorry for leaving
in this kind of way. I miss my father and want to see if I can go and talk to him,” the note read. “I will be back in a few days. I am sorry for taking the money. I will pay you back. Please forgive me. Love, Abdulrahman.” Nasser said they were all shocked. “He would talk sometimes about his father and he wanted to see him, but nothing really which would indicate that he one day will leave us like that. He never told his mother or me or his grandmother that he would like to go and look for his father,” Nasser recalled. “Because his father always thought that it is best for him to be with me. And that he should not be involved at all in his problems.”

When they searched Abdulrahman's room, they determined that he had only taken a backpack. He clearly was planning a short trip. “When his mother told me about the letter, it was just like a shock for me,” Abdulrahman's grandmother, Saleha, told me. “I said, ‘I think this will be just like bait for his father.'” The CIA, she feared, “might
find his father through him
.” The family called around to Abdulrahman's friends. Someone told Nasser that a teacher at the school had recently gotten close to Abdulrahman,
and Nasser believed the teacher had been encouraging Abdulrahman to find his father and to reconnect with him, that it would be good for the boy. “He had influence on him, and they used to go to a pizza parlor to eat pizza,” Nasser said. When Nasser tried to find the teacher to ask him if he had any information about Abdulrahman's whereabouts, the teacher had “vanished.”

Abdulrahman had already boarded a bus at Bab al Yemen, in the old city in Sana'a. His destination was Shabwah, the family's home province and the scene of repeated US air strikes aimed at killing his father.

WASHINGTON, DC, AND YEMEN,
2011—On September 6, 2011, General David Petraeus was sworn in as the director of the CIA. A decade after 9/11, the Agency had been transformed as a result of its behind-the-scenes turf war with JSOC. And for some veteran intelligence officials, Obama's selection of Petraeus was an ominous symbol. “
The CIA has become more militarized
, and is working very closely with JSOC, to the extent that they're even using CIA cover, which would have been unimaginable ten years ago,” former CIA case officer Phil Giraldi told me. “A considerable part of the CIA budget is now no longer spying. It's supporting paramilitaries who work closely with JSOC to kill terrorists, and to run the drone program.” The CIA, he added, “is a killing machine now.”