al-Qa’ida

The 'They are the Enemy, so Beware of Them' film series began with the release of the first video instalment in January 2012 during a period when Al-Shabaab was facing severe political, financial, and military pressures due to a renewed series of offensives by AMISOM, SFG, and allied Somali militia forces. However, the first video instalment included footage of the confession of an accused spy, Ahmed Kisi, which was originally broadcast in early February 2011 in a trial run of Al-Shabaab's terrestrial television station, the Al-Kataib News Channel, which stopped broadcasting after the group's withdrawal from Mogadishu in August 2011. In the footage, Kisi confessed to working for the CIA. He was later publicly executed by Al-Shabaab in the Huriwa district in northeastern Mogadishu. In a 2 February 2011 statement from Al-Shabaab, Kisi, a former member of the Somali Salafist Al-I'tisaam group that eventually became critical of Al-Shabaab, was accused of working for the CIA since 2004. Later video instalments included lengthy narrative confessions from other Somalis arrested by the Amniyyat and accused of spying for the group's enemies, including the CIA and the French intelligence services, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE). In the third instalment, for example, a young Somali man, Muhammad Gele Abdullah, "confessed" to guiding French commando forces to the town of Buulo-Mareer in a failed attempt in January 2013 to rescue Denis Allex, who the DGSE had sent in 2009 to train Somali government forces and who was captured by Al-Shabaab in July of that year.

The purpose of the film series and other videotaped 'confessions' and written and photographic
reports from Al-Shabaab's media apparatus about alleged spies is to both warn current or potential spies working against the group and to broadcast an image to the group's enemies of an organisation that, although having suffered significant urban territorial losses, remains a both formidable and capable force, especially in terms of internal security and intelligence. Although reports and the production of written, audio, and audio-visual media focusing on spies has
increased since Spring 2011 as Al-Shabaab began to suffer major battlefield setbacks, the militant group has long been concerned about the dangers posed by domestic spies, particularly during periods of territorial upheaval.

http://www.janes.com/

A new report from Hate Speech International examines the history and evolution of al-Shabab’s media operations capabilities and narrative messaging. The report, written by Christopher Anzalone – a Research Fellow with the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs – gives particular attention to their strategic use and position within the insurgents’ broader strategy of territorial control, survival, and rule in light of shifts on the ground inside Somalia and, since 2012, increasingly in neighboring countries such as Kenya.

Also analyzed are the multiple target audiences of Al-Shabab’s multi-faceted media campaign; the importance of on-the-ground organizaiton and performance of political rituals and events as an integral part of insurgent propaganda; the growing battle between the group and Islamic State and its domestic and regional sympathizers in Somalia and East Africa; and the construction of specific media operations narratives designed to attract particular target audiences – domestic, regional and international.

Understanding the ways in which AlShabab’s sophisticated media campaign operates and identifying this multimedia output’s multiple intended audiences and its ability to advance insurgent influence and power projection are key to reaching a fuller comprehension of the successes and failures of one of the most successful insurgent movements of the 21st century.

https://www.hate-speech.org/new-report-on-al-shabab-media/

For the past year and a half, al-Shabaab has continued to take advantage of the ongoing political and security turmoil between Somalia’s federal government, regional state administrations, and other powerful social groups, including the country’s clans and sub-clans and minority groups. Militarily, the jihadi-insurgent group retains significant capabilities to launch a range of attacks targeting both military and “soft” targets, including major suicide-vehicle bombings inside the most secure areas of the country such as central Mogadishu. In 2017, the group also overran a number of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali government military bases and forcefully reasserted itself in the northern Puntland region. Meanwhile, the Islamic State in Somalia, al-Shabaab’s main jihadi competitor, continues to lag behind it in terms of numbers, military capabilities, and media reach, though there are recent signs that the Islamic State-Somalia has been able to penetrate more deeply into the Afgooye area to the west of the capital and outside of its Puntland base.

On October 14, a terrorist bombing shook Somalia, one of the deadliest since its civil war in 1991. Hundreds were killed and wounded after a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden truck along a main road between Mogadishu’s K4 and K5 districts.  Two weeks later, a second major attack rocked the capital on October 28, targeting the popular Naso-Hablod Hotel and killing several senior government and military officials. The gunmen who carried out the attack used uniforms and identity cards from the country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency to infiltrate the building.

After the first attack, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmajo” Mohamed called for three days of national mourning and thousands of Mogadishu residents rallied to condemn al Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate presumed to have carried out the bombing. (It has yet to admit or deny responsibility most likely because it does not want to be seen as having killed civilians.) The group did claim the second attack, however, and it continues to wage a bitter insurgency against the federal government, regional Somali state administrations, and the 22,000-strong African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Despite the new signs of public unity across Somalia’s divided society, the question remains: Is this violent episode a signal of a resurgent al Shabaab or will it finally trigger a fundamental and lasting change in the country’s ongoing insurgency and political situation?

Brown Bag Lecture at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center, http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=024c52ddc6ac7c38b0dc7af59&id=1de7fc0db6

Since it emerged fully independent from the ashes of the Islamic Courts Union coalition in 2007, Al-Shabab's leadership has been busy establishing a bureaucracy of power designed to exercise regional and local nodes of governing authority and control. As part of its broader strategy, Al-Shabab recognized the need for a sophisticated, multi-directional media operations apparatus capable of reaching multiple target audiences at the domestic, regional, and international/global levels. These media continue to form an integral part of Al-Shabab's overall strategy of governance, survival, and expansion as an ideologically-driven insurgent organization, despite mounting battlefield, territorial, and personnel losses. Al-Shabab has also utilized its media machine in tandem with its formidable internal security apparatus to crack down on internal dissent including, thus far successfully, on attempts by Islamic State to establish and expand a strong foothold in Somalia and East Africa. This talk will seek to discuss the history and evolution of Al-Shabab's media operations and narrative production capabilities and their integral role in the insurgents' broader strategy of territorial control and rule.