Somalia’s al-Shabab militia bans Internet
Sudarsan Raghavan ("The Washington Post," January 9, 2014)
Nairobi — In recent years, Somalia’s al-Shabab militia has banned smoking,
playing soccer, watching movies, wearing bras, anything it deemed Western.
Now, the al-Qaeda-linked group has targeted something else common in most
of the rest of the world: the Internet.
In a statement — published on the Internet, of course — the militia said
it has disallowed the use of the Internet in areas it controls and gave 15
days for telecommunications operations to comply. To those who refuse, the
militia vowed retaliatory measures.
“Services known as mobile internet and fibre optics must be stopped in
Somalia,” the militia said in a statement issued on the Facebook page of its
al-Andalus radio station, according to a translation by the BBC. “Any firm or
individual who does not comply will be seen to be working with the enemy
and will be dealt with in accordance with Islamic law.”
For the past seven years, al-Shabab has sought to overthrow Somalia’s
Western-backed government, imposing strict interpretations of sharia, or
Islamic
law, in areas it controls. Today, the militia has lost control of the
Somali capital, Mogadishu, and other key cities but remains a potent threat
and
still controls large swaths of the countryside. It continues to wage an
insurgency, marked by suicide attacks and car bombings. In September,
al-Shabab asserted responsibility for the siege of the Westgate Premier
Shopping
Mall in Nairobi, killing and injuring scores.
The Internet ban could very well hurt the militia’s ability to address its
followers and spread propaganda. The militia frequently uses Facebook,
YouTube and Twitter to disseminate its views, including during the assault on
the Westgate, where it used Twitter to provide real-time commentary on the
militants and the situation inside the mall.
Somalia, a country of about 10 million people that has been besieged by war
and famine for more than two decades, has more than 126,000 Internet
users, according to Internet World Stats, a Web site that provides data on
Internet usage around the world. That figure is expected to grow, as
fiber-optic
cables are set to be introduced in the country and sizable numbers of the
Somali diaspora have returned to seek economic opportunities.
Previous efforts to ban Somalis from using fundamental products of modern
life, such as music, cellphone ring tones and money transfer services, have
failed. Still, al-Shabab has attacked those who refused to comply with its
decrees. In 2010, the militia staged bombings in the Ugandan capital,
Kampala, that killed scores of people watching the soccer World Cup.
More recently, the militia set off a bomb outside Somalia’s largest bank
last year after it refused to stop its operations in areas under the militia’
s control.
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