August 5, 2009
Sadly but not surprisingly, the seriousness of the situation in Somalia gets lost among Americanized images of bandana-wearing buccaneers seeking plunder on the open seas.
After all, if Johnny Depp is your biggest problem, how bad can it be?
Piracy certainly adds to Somalia’s problems, but it is the savagery happening away from the water, especially toward Christians, that makes this east African nation one of the most brutal places on earth.
The reports are horrific. In one, Islamic extremists pulled three children from a mother and beheaded two of them. The third escaped, screaming all the way home.
“I watched my three boys dragged away helplessly. I knew they were going to be slaughtered,” said Batula Ali Arbow, whose husband, Musa Mohammed Yusuf, refused to provide the extremists with information about a Christian church leader.
Yusuf, himself a leader of an underground church, had already fled to a Kenyan refugee camp, where his wife and family later joined him. Even in the Kenyan camp, however, the persecution continues. The reach of the extremist group Al-Shabaab continues to expand far and wide.
Quite simply, Somalia is a mess. But enough of a mess for the U.S. to mess with? While Darfur attracts our sympathies, Somalia has attracted only indifference. And yet the pot continues to boil.
After 19 years of political unrest, the political and religious situation in Somalia is getting worse. Al-Shabaab militants are hammering away at the fragile government of Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. The militants already have power in the outlying regions, but now are focusing on the capital city of Mogadishu, where Islamic insurgents are seeking to establish strict sharia law. To prove their point, last month they recently sentenced four men each to amputation of a hand and a foot for robbery.
More recently, militants reportedly beheaded seven Somalis for being Christians and “spies,” according to Reuters News Agency.
Muslims dominate Somalia, which has a 99.95 percent Islamic following. The relative handful of Somali Christians – only a few hundred – have been forced underground, while others have sought refuge in neighboring countries.
Somalia is ranked No. 5 on this year’s Open Doors World Watch List, which ranks the top persecutors of Christians. The previous year Somalia was ranked No. 12, and next year it will likely jump closer to the top.
“Those who come to Christ in Somalia do so at a huge risk. Most of them are Muslim background believers who face unbelievable pressure and persecution, even death,” said Open Doors USA President/CEO Carl Moeller.
Paul Estabrooks, Open Doors Minister-At-Large, explained that while the majority of Somalis are moderate Muslims, they are drowned out by the militants who seek both religious and political rule. It’s not enough that the extremists want to influence what and how Somalis should believe. They also want to enforce it.
No wonder Al-Shabaab is being compared to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s network of terror.
“Certainly if not linked to al Qaeda economically or politically, they have the same agendas and are willing to use the same kinds of tactics,” Estabrooks said.
Similarly, Estabrooks supposes a working arrangement exists between Al-Shabaab and the Somali pirates, who continue to cause trouble along major shipping routes.
“The piracy is perceived as an economic issue – poor people just trying to make money,” Estabrooks said. “One press review even sided with the pirates ... that the country is so bad that people are simply taking things into their own hands.”
Estabrooks takes a different slant.
“I can’t prove it, but I suspect there is a connection (between pirates and Al-Shabaab). These (militant groups) don’t all depend on Osama’s millions.”
Al-Shabaab is not just a Somali problem, say those who follow the situation closely.
“Al-Shabaab is a threat to the whole world,” Somali Information Minister Farhan Ali Mohamoud told CNN last week. “Somalia’s problems are not for Somalia alone to solve. Not only for the African Union to solve. It is a global and regional issue.”
Regionally, there is deep concern that Al-Shabaab is not content to gain power only in Somalia. The group has threatened an attack on the Kenyan capital of Nairobi if Somalia does not cease asking for international help.
Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua told CNN his country does not fear direct attacks, but is alarmed about foreign jihadists imposing their ideas into the region. The danger appears to be Al-Shabaab linking with foreign terrorist networks.
“We do believe that Al-Shabaab poses a threat, not only to Kenya but to all neighboring countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea,” Mutua said.
Still, the immediate emergency is in Somalia, where kidnappings, militant recruitment drives and murder is becoming almost the norm.
So it is not actual piracy but the symbol of piracy – skull and crossbones – that strikes fear into Christian Somalis. They know the horror of headless skeletons.
