to Osama bin Laden. He became one of the men U.S. President George W. Bush liked to call the “evildoers.” The reclusive seventy-one-year-old former army commander was a well-known figure in Somalia. He was nicknamed “the Red Fox” because of his shrewd military career—but his red, scraggly beard and long face certainly didn’t hurt.
Aweys had been a powerful leader with Al Itihaad al Islaam, a group that was formed in the final years of Barre’s dictatorship, and fought against Somalia’s most powerful warlords in the early 1990s—General Mohamed Farah Aideed and Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. (Aideed, of Black Hawk Down fame, was the warlord U.S. Special Forces targeted during their disastrous 1993 mission. Ahmed became the unpopular president of the Transitional Federal Government. A month before we arrived, he survived an assassination attempt that killed his brother and several others; he publicly accused Aweys of orchestrating the attack.) Aweys and other former Al Itihaad leaders were some of the founders of the ICU and held sway in the various Islamic courts across the south.
On MSNBC’s Meet the Press, three months before our trip, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold criticized the war in Iraq and inaction in Somalia during an interview with host Tim Russert: “You know, Tim, today it was announced that a guy named Hassan Dahir Aweys is now the head of the government that has taken over in Mogadishu, in Somalia. He is on the State Department’s terrorist list. He is known as an al Qaeda operative or somebody that is connected with al Qaeda. While we are asleep at the switch; while we are bagged—bogged down in Iraq; while we are all focused on Iraq as if it is the be-all and end-all of our American foreign policy, we are losing the battle to al Qaeda because we’re not paying attention. I asked Ambassador (Henry) Crumpton at a hearing the other day how many people in our federal government are working full-time on the problem in Somalia. He said one full-time person. We spent two million dollars on Somalia in the last year, while we’re spending two billion dollars a week on Iraq. This is insanity, if you think about what the priorities are in terms of those who have attacked us and who are likely to attack us in the future.”
The day we met, Aweys had the flu and sat listlessly in a stuffed velvet chair with a blue-and-white crocheted doily on one of the armrests. He didn’t stand when we entered, but motioned to some chairs. His lethargy likely wasn’t helped by the fact that we were visiting during Ramadan, so he had not eaten or had water since dawn. Flies buzzed around the house, which was humid and dark, except for a narrow ray of sunlight slicing through heavy gold and green curtains.
“Ask me anything,” he began, peering through filmy round glasses.
But after more than an hour, it was clear that Aweys was happy to talk in circles. Many of our questions were met with questions. “Ties with Osama bin Laden? If I met Osama bin Laden, did I make a mistake?”
“We don’t care what they say,” he said eventually, about reports of the ICU’s formal allegiance to bin Laden. “We don’t have any links to al Qaeda.” Finally, exasperated, he almost pleaded: “Why don’t they give us a chance?”
I snapped shut my notebook, and we emerged squinting in the punishing sun, saying our final goodbyes. We wanted to be careful not to overstay our welcome. Aweys had undoubtedly agreed to an interview because he wanted us to tell the story of Mogadishu’s pacification. More than once, he mentioned the fact that he was meeting a Western woman as proof of his modernity. But despite this desire for good pr, Mogadishu was Mogadishu and not all of his followers appreciated our presence. The scowling faces of some of the youths lounging on soiled mattresses in Aweys’s courtyard were starting to unnerve us. We were keen to get back to the guarded walls of Horn-Afrik, or to the Peace Hotel, where we were staying—its name made us feel safe.
As we turned to leave, however, shouting began. Or it sounded like shouting. Aweys was speaking loudly. Quickly. Passionately. I tensed, wondering what we had done wrong, self-consciously touching the rim of my hijab. Thinking we had been set up, I turned slowly around, locking eyes with Duguf before looking at Aweys. The Red Fox had come out onto the porch and was staring at my feet, which I had just slipped into my boots. He was grinning. In the bright sunlight his age was more apparent and he looked frail, and, well, goofy, with his toothy white smile slicing through his red beard. My eyes went to my scuffed Blundstones, durable if not fashionable Australian footwear popular among journalists. (The company motto is “Because Life’s Tough.”)
Soon Duguf was grinning too. “He likes your boots,” he said. Aweys was nodding violently. The boys in the courtyard were snickering. For a second I contemplated slipping them off and giving them to the man the United States wanted dead—if for no other reason than I was so relieved. I started to laugh. Aweys laughed. Pete snapped a picture. I bowed my head and put my hand to my chest in an awkward goodbye, then quickly marched those Blundstones out of there.
WITH SHEIKH SHARIF SHEIKH AHMED, the soft-spoken teacher turned political leader of the ICU, agreeing to see us next, we managed to interview the leadership of the organization in less than twenty-four hours. Duguf would later call us the luckiest journalists he had ever worked with.
We met Sharif at Villa Somalia, the guarded presidential compound the ICU had commandeered. He sat in a room that looked as if a Saudi prince and California surfer had collaborated on the decor. The wood was polished, and burgundy drapes with gold stitching covered the windows. From the ceiling hung streamers, deflated balloons and beach balls bearing Fanta, Pepsi, 7Up and Coke logos. More than a dozen men lounged on cushions along the walls murmuring into their constantly ringing cellphones. Sharif nodded to me but did not offer his hand to shake.
Like Aweys, Sharif was happy to talk, but revealed little. He described the chaos that had reigned before the ICU took over and spoke of his newfound optimism for peace. “People were not anticipating there would be light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, with a grandiose sweep of his arms.
Sharif may have comported himself like a politician, but he was born into a family of Sufi scholars, not powerbrokers. Sharif left Somalia in his twenties to study civil and Sharia law in Libya and Sudan. But when he returned to southern Somalia in 2002 and tried to set up an Islamic court, he faced bitter disagreements with a warlord from his own clan. He accepted the setback and returned to Mogadishu, where he gave up law and became a primary school teacher. One of his twelve-year-old students was kidnapped for ransom in the crime-prone city, and Sharif, along with the school principal, managed to negotiate the boy’s rescue. That kidnapping became a defining moment in Sharif’s life. He had brought about change in this one case; he could do it for his country. Believing that Islamic law was the only way to overcome clan differences, this time he focused on Mogadishu, with a goal of eventually uniting all the existing courts in the country. He had no following of his own, but aligned himself with Aweys. Though diplomatic in nature, Sharif was no pacifist, and his first step was to get rid of what stood in his way—the embattled UN-endorsed government. He found support among Somalis fed up with the cruelty of the warlords, some of whom were reportedly backed by the CIA. This foreign support for marauding militias only made the Somali-run courts more attractive.
Sharif became frustrated when I mentioned comparisons between the ICU and the Taliban during our interview. He also denied claims that foreign fighters were training recruits at ICU camps and said he had nothing to do with the recent audio statements by al Qaeda leaders about their “brothers” in Somalia. It was what we expected him to say and it was clear he would offer little else.
As we left Sharif’s compound, Duguf suggested we see a remnant of one of the downed Black Hawk helicopters. Pete thought it could be a good photo and I was curious to see the site that Mark Bowden had described so vividly in his book Black Hawk Down, the scene that forever haunted my friend Paul Watson. As our convoy stopped on an empty street, a woman emerged from her home and a young girl with tassels hanging from her red hijab like a fringe of bangs stared at us. Duguf showed us an overgrown thorny bush decorated like a Christmas tree with bits of garbage. A piece of the wreck was supposed to be under there. But before
