ADF STAFF
Women living under the yoke of al-Shabaab terrorists suffer from abuse, coercion and severe social isolation. But a new report shows that they also play key roles in many of the group’s deadly attacks.
Across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda, women are being recruited or forced to join the terror group, according to “Women Inside Al-Shabaab,” published by Wargelin Analytica, a think tank that studies the Horn of Africa.
The report shows the dual identity women have as victims and enablers of the group’s operations. It explains how women enter the group through marriage or family ties before becoming prisoners of a system that offers little protection from abuse.
The terrorist group is based in Somalia and has been described as the largest, wealthiest and most lethal al-Qaida affiliate in the world.
The report notes that women within al-Shabaab now serve as more than just wives and caretakers. The women have become “deeply embedded across almost every non-combat function within the organization,” according to Dawan Africa, a Horn of Africa news service.
The Wargelin report says the women recruit new members, organize ideological sessions, arrange marriages between young women and fighters, and provide religious instruction designed to reinforce loyalty. They also manage safe houses, transport weapons, gather intelligence, manage explosives and work in secret operations inside government-controlled territories.
The women, the report said, are used in intelligence operations because they attract less suspicion from security officers. And although they rarely are involved in actual combat, they have been deployed on suicide missions.
“Women are deeply involved in covert financial facilitation and money laundering activities, including cash transfers, concealment of operational funds, mobile money usage, bank
account registration, business facilitation, and financial concealment mechanisms,” the report said. They also are involved in retail businesses, import-export trade and gold transactions, allowing al-Shabaab to disguise the origin of its finances while blending them into ordinary commercial transactions.
Women and girls suffer disproportionately from decades of armed conflict in Somalia, accounting for 80% of the displaced population, according to the Yale Journal of International Affairs. The journal also notes that women cannot “meaningfully participate in the country’s security sector, which means that they are not fully, equally, and effectively involved in the decision-making processes affecting peace and security.”
Al-Shabaab recruits and traffics women and girls from Kenya, Uganda and Somalia, according to interview reports from Al Jazeera. Such women and girls typically are between the ages of 12 and 18, with some exceptions if they are educated. In contrast, the men generally are ages 30 to 60 and older. Widows needing support and protection often fully consent to work for the group.
Life for women within the organization is oppressive. They cannot go out without men accompanying them. They are not allowed to work outside to sustain their families. Mandatory dress codes require that they cover their faces, hands and feet. They must attend compulsory religion classes, “which teach them that al-Shabaab is the non-corrupted group and women have a great responsibility in teaching the future generation to abide and contribute to the group,” media organization The Migration News reported.
“Women are forced to serve the group through intimidation, torture and imprisonment,” The Migration News reported. “Under extreme laws, if women do not wear the mandated cloth, attend religion classes or go outside without men, then these women are canned on the spot, or brutally beaten, tortured and imprisoned.”
For many women, there is no turning back from al-Shabaab. The European Union Agency for Asylum reports that women who have left the group can face sexual exploitation and punishment in their new lives. Former female members can be “raided” by government security forces, stigmatized and excluded from communities, and become “highly vulnerable to extreme poverty,” the EU agency reports. If the women try to return to al-Shabaab, they “most probably face execution as traitors.”