Somalia, rebels clash in air wars

NAIROBI, Kenya | Last year, Somalia’s Radio Warsan was a pro-government station that vilified al Qaeda-linked insurgents. Today, it is in the hands of the rebels as they battle the U.N.-backed government on the ground with guns and on the nation’s airwaves with pro-jihad messages.

As the propaganda war intensifies in the battered Horn of Africa nation, the government is using a newly modernized radio station to get its own message across to more Somalis, and the United Nations is financing a new radio station. When Somalis tune in to the government station in insurgent-controlled territory, they tend to do so in secret to avoid being punished by the al-Shabab rebels, who routinely execute suspected government collaborators.

Both the government and al-Shabab are tapping into a culture in which entire families across the sprawling, arid country huddle around radios for news and entertainment.

Radio Warsan’s director, Mohamed Moalin, says his station is open 15 hours per day and broadcasts Islamic lectures, Koran recitations and five news bulletins to convey one message: Islam is the solution.

The programs “are like the guns carried by our fighters,” Mr. Moalin said in a telephone interview from the southwestern Somali town of Baidoa.

“There is no neutrality in this world. We don’t believe in neutralism. … Either you are with us, or against us,” said Mr. Moalin, who worked at another station before joining Radio Warsan.

Before the Islamists took over the station in November, they banned the airing of music or women’s voices. When the station ignored the orders, al-Shabab took over. Some of the station’s staff joined the militants while others fled.

Al-Shabab has taken most of southern Somalia and most of the capital, Mogadishu. In the southern coastal town of Kismayo, al-Shabab runs a radio station called al-Andalus, the Arabic name given to lands that the Moors occupied in much of Spain for 700 years until the last of them were expelled in 1492. Mohamud Mohamed Qasim, an unemployed resident of Kismayo, is a fan.

“It teaches us our religion. Nothing is bigger than religion. I don’t give a hoot about anything else,” Mr. Qasim said. He added that he gets so stirred up by the station’s statements against neighboring Ethiopia, whose troops have fought al-Shabab, that he wants to fight Ethiopians.

Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the propaganda tactics used by al-Shabab look similar to those employed by al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“They are using the same mix of money, fear and protection, blended with moral cause, which combined can be very powerful,” Ms. Cooke said. Money buys loyalty and helps the militants recruit young men, she said.

Al-Shabab does not rely on radio alone. The Internet, a network of recruiters, and the promise of a regular income are part of its recruitment strategy, reaching out even to Somali communities in Minnesota and Sweden that have seen young men head to al-Shabab camps in Somalia.

Al-Shabab has shut down rival stations or banned people from listening to stations that depict them negatively or are deemed to be anti-Islamic. Last month, journalist Ali Yusuf Adan of Radio Somaliweyn was abducted by al-Shabab gunmen after he reported that militants had killed a man for being late to a prayer session.

In the city of Baidoa, al-Shabab recently closed the independent Juba Radio, which had carried programming from the U.S. government’s Voice of America and the United Nations.

For its part, the Somali government in October upgraded its Radio Mogadishu in the capital, changing antiquated equipment that had limited broadcast range. The station is now accessible worldwide via satellite or the Web.

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