Al Shabab is not smart when it comes to politics

[SOMALIKNIGHT]

If they accepted government rule and party elections and democracy, they would win every single election and form every government. Somalis will vote for an Islamic government. This move will end the stalemate and they will become victors in the civil war.

 

[Crow]

If they accepted government rule and party elections and democracy, they would win every single election and form every government. Somalis will vote for an Islamic government. This move will end the stalemate and they will become victors in the civil war.

They are not interested in Islam. They are interested only in money. They make so much money from extorting every business and NGO in Xamar that they actually have slaves.


The Business of Fear in Boomtown Mogadishu

The story he tells goes like this: He used to be a farmer and the chief of a village in the region of Lower Shebelle, where he owned plantations by the river and sold his fruits as far afield as Mogadishu. Then came the drought in 2006 and the melons shriveled, followed by the bananas, the mangos and the beans. One day, al-Shabaab men appeared at his door. Come to us, he claims they told him, we pay well. He says he hesitated, but they said come to us and we will pay you well. Or we will shoot you.

They made him the head of finance for the region and he quickly noticed that money was more important than God. "Al-Shabaab is a giant business," the Emir says. He says they collected taxes and blackmailed businesspeople in addition to politicians in Mogadishu. Most politicians and all businesses, he says, pay protection money. Even telecommunications giant Hormuud, he says, pays $1,000 per day per branch. There are 17 branches in Mogadishu alone.

"They spread fear because fear is the foundation for their business model."

In order to calculate the revenue of hotels and restaurants, al-Shabaab sends in spies and, depending on what they find, charge a few hundred dollars per month for smaller establishments and up to $50,000 for large hotels. Those who don't pay, he says, are kidnapped and then given a choice: pay or be decapitated. They usually chose the latter.

"Al-Shabaab is making money across the whole country," the emir says. "They are collecting tolls on the streets they control and some routes take in more than $50,000 per day." On top of this, according to the U.N., they also control the million-dollar smuggling trade in charcoal and sugar in the south of the country together with the Kenyan army. They are also involved in smuggling ivory and rhinoceros horns.

But profit isn't just being generated inside the country, he says. He maintains that al-Shabaab receives financial support from outside the country, mainly from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He speaks of Qatari sheikhs having flown in $20 million to his region last year, though he has no proof. He says the money went into the bosses' pockets, who used it to buy weapons, pay their fighters and fill their safes. He claims their families live in Europe and the U.S. and that their children attend the best universities.

He himself, he says, used to live in an eight-room villa on the seaside southwest of Mogadishu, drove two new all-terrain vehicles, had three slaves and 12 security guards.

Two U.N. helicopters climb into the sky over the airport. The emir follows them with his eyes.

He then says that humanitarian aid is a blessing. For al-Shabaab, at least. Especially this year, since more than 800,000 people have had to leave their villages because of famine. The terror group demanded 5 percent of the aid organizations' budgets.

But that is a low estimate. According to a high-ranking employee of the U.N. in Nairobi who is responsible for Somalia, the U.N. sets aside as much as 10 percent of its budget - officially for "capacity building," or something similar, but unofficially to pay al-Shabaab so that local U.N. partners can distribute aid supplies.

But because the U.N. cannot control the work of the local NGOs in the south, the employee says, nobody knows if the aid is actually reaching the people who need it. Another employee, who also wants to remain anonymous, estimates that it's a good result if just 10 percent of the aid ends up in the right place. Even hunger, he says, is a business in Somalia.

 

[Shushue]

It’s a suicidal brainless killing machine

 

[SOMALIKNIGHT]

They are not interested in Islam. They are interested only in money. They make so much money from extorting every business and NGO in Xamar that they actually have slaves.


The Business of Fear in Boomtown Mogadishu

Is that all of Al Shabab