Civilians Trapped in the Middle: Violations of International Humanitarian Law

We heard the Ethiopians were leaving and we were hopeful there would be peace in the city. But this has become even worse. This is not based on clan. This is not two governments fighting. This is fighting based on new names and ideologies. We do not know where the head or the tail of it is. In Mogadishu you can find within two kilometers two factions wearing the same thing but [with] different ideas. That confuses us—who should you go to and who should you fear?

—Somali refugee who fled Mogadishu in mid-2009[94]

Somali civilians have borne the brunt of loss of life and property from the fighting of the past three years. This is especially true in Mogadishu, where the major parties to the conflict have carried out numerous indiscriminate attacks and other violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) with terrible consequences for the civilian population. Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam forces have also frequently threatened civilians or conducted targeted killings. All sides have recruited children into their ranks. The often unrestrained violence has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in the hopes of finding safety elsewhere in Somalia or abroad.

 

Indiscriminate and Other Unlawful Attacks

Mogadishu has been the primary theater of open warfare in Somalia, though fighting has also exacted a heavy toll on civilians in other conflict areas in south/central Somalia. In early 2009 tens of thousands of Somalis who had been displaced by fighting began returning to their homes in Mogadishu, hopeful of the possibility of peace. But after a brief lull, fighting began anew and has continued ever since. Violations of the laws of war, which apply to both national armed forces and non-state armed groups, have persisted in the Somali capital since 2007 and continue through the present. The following pages describe the patterns of these violations.[95]

Indiscriminate Attacks

All parties to the conflict in Somalia have conducted numerous mortar attacks against enemy forces in densely populated areas of Mogadishu without regard for the civilian population, causing a high loss of civilian life and property. The laws of war prohibit attacks that are indiscriminate; that is, attacks that are not directed—or use a method or means of attack that cannot be directed—at a specific military target, and are likely to strike military targets and civilians without distinction. Indiscriminate attacks include bombardments that treat as a single military target a number of clearly separated and distinct military targets in a populated area.[96]

While mortars can be highly accurate weapons if guided to their targets by spotters or guidance systems, none of the warring parties in Mogadishu have employed such methods. Opposition armed groups have indiscriminately fired mortar rounds in the general direction of TFG or AMISOM installations in southern Mogadishu. TFG and AMISOM forces sometimes respond in kind, directing mortar rounds towards the general area they take fire from or simply bombarding areas such as Bakara Market that are opposition strongholds. Such attacks, while of limited military value, cause considerable loss of civilian life and property damage—and have done so for the past three years.

During fierce fighting early in 2010 a Médecins Sans Frontières-supported hospital in Mogadishu’s opposition-controlled Daynile neighborhood treated 89 people for blast injuries from indiscriminate shelling in just five days—including 52 women and children.[97]

In late 2009 Human Rights Watch interviewed about 15 civilians from Mogadishu who were victims of or witnesses to indiscriminate mortar attacks during the year. Their accounts echo others previously gathered by Human Rights Watch from people who suffered similar attacks in 2007 and 2008. One 14-year-old boy from Mogadishu’s Medina neighborhood told Human Rights Watch that he fled the city with strangers after his family was killed by a mortar shell in late September 2009:

One day when I came home from duksi [Quranic school] I found our house had been hit by a [mortar shell]. The house was pulverized. My mother and father were killed. I think my four brothers were killed as well—I saw pieces of their hands and legs near the part of the house that we used for resting. I am in such shock I barely know who I am.[98]

The same boy had been injured by another mortar strike that killed three of his friends just a month earlier.[99]

A 36-year-old man told Human Rights Watch that his parents died in front of him when mortar fire hit his house one evening in early 2009. The house was near Villa Baidoa, which is Somalia’s former presidential residence and an important TFG military installation that has been repeatedly attacked in recent years.[100] Days earlier his neighborhood had been covered in leaflets attributed to al-Shabaab that warned residents to relocate or risk being caught in a forthcoming attack.[101] In addition to the death of his parents from the attack, he lost his left leg below the knee:

At around six-thirty one night our house was hit with one of these weapons. We were seated outside on a mat and it fell just some meters from us. My mother and father were closer to it. They were immediately cut to pieces [and killed]. I rushed to help and a second one fell into the compound. It hit the wall and injured me. Half of my leg was in pieces. Neighbors rushed into the compound and I was rushed to Medina hospital in a wheelbarrow.[102]

Like many longtime residents of Mogadishu interviewed by Human Rights Watch, he was able to identify the weapon that destroyed his home as a mortar round because of his long experience living in a war zone. “I have been living in Mogadishu for 20 years and this is an everyday occurrence for us,” he said. “I know they were mortars because of how they look and how they sound.” He went on to correctly describe the telltale signs that distinguish mortar from rocket or artillery fire. “It goes up and then it falls down. It has no sound as it moves but you can see it in the air at night. There is no sound until it falls and then it hits with a very loud bang and shakes the entire area.”[103]

Deploying in Densely Populated Areas and “Human Shielding”

Mortar attacks by al-Shabaab and other opposition armed groups often follow a common pattern. Fighters drive to a firing location, hastily assemble the weapons and then lob one or more rounds in the vague direction of TFG and AMISOM installations.[104] They then immediately pack their weapons and flee. While the mortar attacks appear to rarely strike their target, they subject the civilians in the firing location to a counter-attack.[105] In many cases it appears that part of the reason opposition forces launched attacks from civilian areas was to attract indiscriminate counter-attacks from the other side that would kill civilians and thereby generate useful propaganda.[106]

The laws of war require parties to a conflict to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians under their control against the effects of attacks.[107] This includes avoiding locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas.[108] Warring parties must endeavor to remove civilians from the vicinity of military objectives.[109]

In those instances where forces deliberately use civilians to render military targets immune from attack, they are committing shielding, a serious violation of the laws of war.[110] Human Rights Watch has previously reported on shielding by armed groups in Somalia.[111] Hassan Dahir Aweys, a prominent leader of Hizbul Islam, acknowledged his fighters’ use of civilians to protect their forces from attack in a September 2009 interview with the Voice of America. “The muhajid [holy warrior] is like a fish ... the population is his water,” Aweys said. “The population acts like a shield and we operate out of them.”[112]

Human Rights Watch interviewed a young woman from Mogadishu’s livestock market area who said that al-Shabaab fighters fired mortar rounds from her family’s compound several times, forcing her and her relatives into two back rooms while they fired. “They would come, fire, and move on,” she recalled. “When the return fire [from AMISOM or TFG forces] came, the Al-Shabaab had already left. We would run [outside] in case our house got hit. I was terrified.”[113]

Indiscriminate Attacks by TFG and AMISOM Forces

Unlawful deployments of opposition forces within civilian areas do not permit TFG and AMISOM forces free rein to conduct retaliatory attacks. The obligation to respect international humanitarian law does not depend on reciprocity by belligerent forces.[114]

TFG and AMISOM officials deny that their forces have conducted mortar attacks that do not discriminate between civilians and military targets but eyewitness accounts belie those claims.[115] While residents of areas subject to bombardment usually lack direct evidence as to which side fired, attacks on neighborhoods in northern Mogadishu typically followed mortar attacks fired by opposition forces from those very areas against TFG and AMISOM strongholds in the south of the city. One AMISOM official insisted to Human Rights Watch that al-Shabaab itself conducts the indiscriminate mortar attacks on al-Shabaab-controlled areas to discredit AMISOM forces, but offered no evidence to support this implausible assertion.[116]

Residents of TFG-held areas of southern Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that following attacks from opposition-controlled areas they often saw mortar rounds being fired towards northern Mogadishu from TFG or AMISOM installations, including Villa Somalia and the AMISOM base near the airport.[117] Both TFG and AMISOM forces are deployed around these locations. But mortar fire coming from the AMISOM base by the Mogadishu airport could only originate with AMISOM forces as no other armed groups are based there.

A resident from an al-Shabaab-controlled area in northern Mogadishu was of the opinion that, “The government and AMISOM do not recklessly fire unless they are attacked or suspect there is an attacker in the neighborhood. But when attacked they hit back and then civilians are injured.”[118] A woman who lived in Mogadishu’s opposition-controlled Gubta neighborhood until mid-2009 described the pattern of events that led to many deaths in her neighborhood in 2008 and 2009:

They [al-Shabaab] use mortars. They sit at a specific place, and launch one, five or even 10 mortar rounds. Then they pack and go immediately. We have no way to complain to them [and tell them to stop]. Even if you look at them you can be killed. Now a counterattack comes, without discrimination. One day some of my relatives were buried in their house after a mortar hit a nearby house—three people died there. My house was blocked by the rubble of that house. We had to dig them out.[119]

While denying that their forces fire mortars indiscriminately, neither AMISOM nor TFG officials have explained any measures their forces take to verify that they are shelling military targets and acting to minimize civilian harm. When Human Rights Watch formally requested that AMISOM indicate whether any such measures were being employed, AMISOM’s response was limited to vague assurances that its forces “are not engaged in such act[s].” AMISOM then noted that “It is a well known fact that the insurgents deliberately launch attacks against AMISOM from densely populated civilian neighborhoods using the civilian population as human shields.” But as noted, laws-of-war violations by one party to a conflict do not justify abuses by the other side.

AMISOM also stated that the training and rules of engagement it employs are designed to minimize harm to civilians. But this, too, says nothing about what specific measures AMISOM has taken, such as using ground-spotters or other means of targeting.[120] In August 2009 a journalist with the Los Angeles Times reported seeing AMISOM troops using sticks and old cigarette packets to direct mortar fire towards opposition strongholds in northern Mogadishu.[121]

Counter-battery attacks by AMISOM or TFG forces that are provoked by indiscriminate opposition mortar attacks can be devastating to civilians as well. In December 2008 a private radio station in northern Mogadishu’s opposition-controlled Suq Bacad neighborhood was destroyed by a mortar shell just after opposition forces fired a barrage of mortar shells towards the south of the city from that area. Ten civilians were killed in the initial attack by opposition forces. The apparent retaliatory attack that hit the radio station killed one journalist and wounded two others in addition to destroying the station.[122] The African Union has not provided payments to civilians who are killed, injured, or suffer property damage as a result of AMISOM actions, whether lawful or unlawful. While an armed force is only required to provide redress for the loss or injury caused by a violation of international humanitarian law,[123] international military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan provide “condolence” payments to civilian victims of attacks without reference to fault.[124]Although those civilian compensation systems are flawed, they provide concrete assistance and some measure of emotional redress.[125] Such a program instituted in Somalia might help to reduce public animosity in the event of AMISOM attacks that cause civilian loss of life and property.

Al-Shabaab Suicide Bombings

On September 18, 2006, Somalia passed a grim milestone with the country’s first suicide bomb attack, a failed attempt on the life of then-TFG President Abdullahi Yusuf that reportedly killed six people.[126] Since then opposition forces have carried out at least a dozen more suicide attacks including five in 2009.

While suicide attacks are not an unlawful method of attack under international humanitarian law, those in Somalia have almost invariably been unlawful. The bombers frequently target civilians, or do not discriminate between civilians and military targets, or cause disproportionate civilian harm compared to the expected military gain. Even suicide attacks that are directed at military targets are likely to be unlawful because they are carried out by resorting to perfidy: the attacker feigns civilian or other non-combatant status in order to carry out an attack.[127]

 Al-Shabaab leaders have claimed responsibility for many of the suicide attacks, which have generally targeted AMISOM personnel or TFG officials but have also killed scores of civilians.[128]

Suicide attacks in 2009 proved highly disruptive to AMISOM and TFG operations, and greatly contributed to the climate of fear in the capital. On February 22, 2009, a suicide bombing killed 11 Burundian soldiers in Mogadishu and wounded 15 more.[129] On June 18, 2009, a suicide attack on a hotel in the central Somali town of Beletweyne killed TFG Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden along with at least 20 others.[130] And on September 17, 2009, two vehicles carrying suicide bombers and disguised with UN insignia bypassed security at AMISOM’s main base in Mogadishu.[131] Twenty-one people died in that attack including 17 AMISOM personnel, among them the deputy force commander, Burundian Major General Juvenal Niyoyunguruza.[132]

In an especially horrifying attack on December 3, 2009, a bomber disguised as a woman blew himself up at the graduation ceremony of Benadir University’s first-ever class of medical students. The attack, at Mogadishu’s Shamo Hotel, killed at least 22 people including students, two journalists, and three TFG cabinet ministers.[133] An al-Shabaab spokesperson subsequently denied that the group was responsible and suggested that the TFG might have staged the attack itself for propaganda purposes. Few international and Somali political observers found the denial credible, not least because it came only after the carnage provoked an unusual public outpouring of anger against al-Shabaab.[134]

 

Other Unlawful Uses of Force

Civilian death from fighting and general lawlessness remains common in Mogadishu and has spread to areas such as Kismayo and Beletweyne. Many of these deaths occur from crossfire, panic, or the absence of command control by poorly trained fighters. Accounts of eyewitnesses stress that none of the warring factions makes a genuine effort to minimize civilian casualties during clashes. As a middle-aged refugee who fled Mogadishu in early October 2009 told Human Rights Watch, “Neither group has mercy for the common man.”[135]

A former TFG soldier told Human Rights Watch that he knew of several occasions where civilians were indiscriminately gunned down by TFG forces who panicked under fire. “Usually if you approach them [at night], because of fear they will just shoot at you,” he said. “This has caused many youth in the area to be killed.”[136] He witnessed such a killing one evening in September 2009, of a man who came too close to a TFG checkpoint.

[He] was a mad man, famous and known to everyone in the area. He was ordered to stop. As usual with a mad person he did not follow instructions, and walked towards the soldier.... The soldier immediately shot him. They left his corpse there.[137]

Soon after, the former soldier deserted and left Mogadishu. He told Human Rights Watch that he left because, “All the forces were indiscriminately killing and maiming residents, I was not earning any money and my life was under threat.”[138]

In February 2009 an AMISOM patrol struck and exploded a roadside bomb. Witnesses allege that the troops then opened fire into crowds of panicked civilians. At least 13 people died and at least another 15 were wounded; most were cut down by gunfire—not the explosion.[139]

The indiscriminate violence has forced people to make grim calculations in the interest of self-preservation. One man told Human Rights Watch that he fled Mogadishu during heavy fighting in his neighborhood in September 2009. As he and other passengers were leaving in a car, they saw several people lying by the roadside, wounded by stray gunfire, and calling for help. “We could not stop and help them,” he said. “If you make the mistake of stopping in such a place the same bullets that killed the man will also find you.”[140]

A woman told Human Rights Watch that she was too scared to stop to bury her husband after masked men opened fire on the truck they were using to flee Mogadishu in July 2009, killing him instantly. “Five men came running toward us with guns,” she said. “I heard the sound of bullets from so many places.... A bullet hit my husband in the forehead.... The truck did not stop. We left the bodies in the keep of some people outside Mogadishu to bury and kept on going.” When Human Rights Watch interviewed her three months later she was fending for herself in the Dadaab refugee camps, pregnant with her late husband’s child.[141]

 

Death Threats and Targeted Killings of Civilians

Al-Shabaab has regularly threatened or killed civilians it accuses of links to the TFG or rival armed groups. In 2009 its fighters publicly executed several people they branded as spies for the TFG or foreign powers.[142] Many of these killings have attracted considerable media attention. However al-Shabaab has also issued numerous death threats and carried out many other killings that have received scant publicity.

Human Rights Watch gathered a dozen detailed accounts from Somalis who said they had witnessed extrajudicial executions by al-Shabaab or who saw al-Shabaab fighters take relatives, neighbors, or associates who either never resurfaced or were found murdered.

Two brothers in the southern town of Ras Kamboni allegedly bled to death after al-Shabaab members slit their throats for carrying a camera in 2008. Al-Shabaab fighters often accuse people carrying cameras of attempting to spy on them. The brothers’ nephew told Human Rights Watch that they were fishermen who intended to photograph their catch to advertise it at the market.[143]

Several refugees said they had last seen their relatives forcibly taken by al-Shabaab members and assumed they were jailed or dead. That was the assumption of a pregnant woman who described al-Shabaab grabbing her husband and the other three able-bodied men from a Kenya-bound passenger van at the border town of Dhobley in September 2009:

Al-Shabaab said, “You are supporters of the government. You want to denounce us to the infidels and Kenyan government so come out of the van.” That was the last time I saw my husband. I wanted to get out of the van and follow him. But I was in pain, heavy with pregnancy and frightened.[144]

Human Rights Watch interviewed one woman whose brother was killed at home in Kismayo by an al-Shabaab gunman just after the group fought with Hizbul Islam forces for control of the city in October 2009. The gunman came to detain the woman’s brother on suspicion of being a Hizbul Islam fighter and demanded that he come before local al-Shabaab authorities for “questioning.” The woman’s brother refused. She said:

My brother said, “I am not following you, I don’t know who you are or where you are taking me, please leave me and leave my home.” [The gunman] took my brother by the right hand and started shouting at him. He tried to pull him out of the house and my brother pulled against him and freed his hand. The man immediately drew his gun and shot him. As my brother was turning towards us he shot him in the head and neck and ear. I threw myself on the ground. Immediately my brother fell down. I started wailing and crying.

The family fled the city shortly thereafter.[145]

Human Rights Watch also interviewed 11 people who received death threats in 2009 from individuals who claimed to be members of al-Shabaab. These threats often adhere to a familiar pattern—one that Human Rights Watch has documented in past reporting.[146] Most of the people told Human Rights Watch that they received three or more phone calls from blocked numbers. In some cases all three calls came from the same person, in other cases from different people. In many cases the callers initially sought to persuade their target to renounce their alleged ties to enemies of al-Shabaab. Then, if the response was not favorable, the callers turned to explicit death threats.[147]

One young man told Human Rights Watch that he received several anonymous phone calls in mid-2009 from people who said they were members of al-Shabaab while he was working as an assistant to a TFG official in Mogadishu. “They said, ‘We know the type of job you are doing. We are your brothers and we would advise you to seek a better path,’” he recalled. But when he did not agree to leave his job, the callers changed tone and repeatedly threatened to kill him. The calls became so frequent and disturbing that he threw away his phone, then quit his job and ultimately fled the city.[148]

Many people have been targeted for death threats on the basis of pretexts that are seemingly absurd. One young father of three who worked as a porter in Mogadishu’s Bakara Market began receiving death threats on his cell phone in mid-2009. The callers accused him of being a TFG sympathizer and threatened to kill him. He told Human Rights Watch that at first he could not imagine why anyone would see him as a supporter of any party to the conflict. Then finally one of the callers explained that they often saw him flee to TFG-controlled neighborhoods in southern Mogadishu when TFG or AMISOM forces fired mortar shells towards the Bakara Market area. In the eyes of the people calling him, this was convincing proof that he was working as a TFG spy. In fact, he said, he had merely assumed that it would be safer to be in the area mortar fire was coming from than in the area being attacked.[149]

People also come under suspicion of being TFG sympathizers simply because they live or work in or near the few areas of southern Mogadishu that the Transitional Federal Government controls. As one man who lived in the TFG-controlled Sobe neighborhood before fleeing in the latter half of 2009 put it to Human Rights Watch:

Even if you are living in the same neighborhood as AMISOM you will be forced to go to other neighborhoods like Bakara [market] for shopping and business. Or you may wish to go seek help from relatives or visit friends in other parts of the city. And on your way there, coming from your area, you will be associated with AMISOM forces and termed an infidel. But it is not your choice which part of the city you live in. As a result most of the people choose to leave altogether.[150]

A prosperous merchant said that he was kidnapped in Mogadishu in late 2009 by several al-Shabaab gunmen. The men said they had orders to kill him because he had been seen greeting people who worked for the TFG when he passed them each day en route to work in southern Mogadishu. He managed to buy his way out of the killing by giving his assailants his shop and its contents—almost everything he owned—and leaving Mogadishu so they could pretend they had killed him.[151]

Threats and Attacks on Journalists and Humanitarian Workers

Targeted violence against journalists and aid workers in Somalia over the past few years has forced many to flee the country.

Journalists in particular continue to be targeted for death threats and killings. At least 19 journalists have been killed in Somalia since 2007, and at least nine of those deaths occurred in 2009. Some were targeted because of their work and others were victims of general violence.[152] In addition to those who were killed, other journalists have been wounded in assassination attempts or were caught in crossfire. Many more have been forced to flee the country because of death threats related to their work or attacks on their colleagues. All of this violence has taken a terrible toll on what was once one of Somalia’s most vibrant social institutions, killing or driving away many of its best journalists.

A woman who worked as a technician for a radio station in Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that she fled to Kenya after receiving anonymous phone calls in mid-2009 from people who claimed to be members of al-Shabaab. “They said, ‘If you do not leave the job, we will kill you,’” she recalled. “They said, ‘You are not entitled to work there.’ Everyone at the station was under threat.”[153] The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists received dozens of communications from Somali journalists who said that their lives were under threat in 2009; many were looking for help to flee the country.[154]

Humanitarian workers have also been targeted on such a scale that many aid agencies consider Somalia the most dangerous country in the world to work in.[155] According to the office of the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, 47 aid workers were killed in Somalia in 2008 and 2009.[156] Humanitarian workers face a variety of other threats as well, from the broader trend of indiscriminate violence in conflict areas to al-Shabaab accusations of spying on behalf of western powers.[157] In early 2009 the World Food Program suspended delivery of food aid to a vast swath of southern Somalia controlled largely by al-Shabaab, citing the group’s escalating attacks and harassment against its staff and “unacceptable demands” for payments.

On January 15, 2010, al-Shabaab fighters in Mogadishu kidnapped Nur Hassan Bare (“Boolis”), an employee of a nongovernmental organization called SAACID, which runs a feeding program in the capital. His body was found the next morning; he had been shot dead and his hands were tied behind his back.[158]

Forced and Unlawful Recruitment

Parties to the conflict in Somalia gain new fighters through the use or threat of force and by unlawfully seeking recruits among children and refugees. Opposition forces, especially but not exclusively al-Shabaab, are expanding their ranks by threatening those who resist with death and at times carrying out their threats. Both insurgent groups and government forces are recruiting and using child soldiers to varying degrees, and have entered refugee camps—ostensibly demilitarized areas—in Kenya to enlist additional fighters.

Coercion, Threats, and Murder

Al-Shabaab has kidnapped and killed young men who refuse their offers to join the group as fighters. International humanitarian law prohibits all parties to armed conflicts from arbitrarily depriving any person of their liberty, including through abductions and forced recruitment. Parties must treat all civilians humanely—the arbitrary deprivation of liberty is incompatible with this requirement.[159]

A 17-year-old girl from Kismayo described al-Shabaab recruiters repeatedly trying to enlist her two brothers. In May 2009 the recruiters dragged them out of their home as their mother pleaded for mercy. About three weeks later, the mother received a telephone call from a man saying al-Shabaab had killed one of the sons for refusing to join them. He said, “Come bury your son. We are doing you a favor by telling you where his body is. If your other son does not accept our orders, the same thing will happen to him.” The dead brother’s head had been half-severed from his neck with a wire and his body had been repeatedly stabbed, the girl said. She added that the family does not know if the other brother is dead or alive.[160]

Human Rights Watch also interviewed several young men who fled Mogadishu because al-Shabaab or Hizbul Islam threatened to kill them for refusing to join their forces. All were initially approached by men who sought to persuade them to join by promising money and the chance to fight for what they described as a “just and holy cause.” But when they rebuffed these offers they found that persuasion quickly gave way to threats.[161]

Human Rights Watch interviewed a 20-year-old man who hoped to become a teacher. One morning in late 2009 three members of Hizbul Islam approached him at his home in Mogadishu to propose a different line of work. He told Human Rights Watch:

They started offering me this position. “You will be a soldier, you look healthy and able. You will take part in fighting [our] enemies.” I refused. I said I am not interested in going to fight.... They said, “We do not accept that. You have three days to decide whether to join us or not.” I said, “Whether you give me one or three or ten days I have made my decision. I will not fight for you.” For 30 minutes they were trying to persuade me. Then they left. It really confused me. But even being unemployed I could not take such an offer. Before the end of the three days I left.[162]

An 18-year-old fled to Kenya with his mother after he and his friends faced similar coercion from a group of al-Shabaab fighters in Mogadishu in September 2009.

I was with a group of boys—we were all idle and unemployed. We were at the soccer field. They approached us and said we should stop playing soccer, that it is a waste of time and that instead we should fight for Islam. At that moment we said we accepted and are ready to join—because at that moment if you tell them anything different you are risking your life. But afterwards I realized that I could no longer play football or even live in that area. So the next morning I shifted my whole family to the government side of Mogadishu. We moved from Wardigley to Sobe, where my stepmother was living.

They [the al-Shabaab members] called me to ask why I had I done this. I received three phone calls. They were persuasive the first two times, trying to encourage me to join them as a Muslim because the government is supported by infidels. But I was threatened the third time. They said, “You are a sympathizer of the infidels. We see your position and if we find you, expect the worst.”

I am a Muslim. I am not interested in blowing myself up or killing people. My freedom was denied—I could not even move [around the city] without risking being arrested or kidnapped or attacked.[163]

Recruitment of Children

All parties to the conflict in Somalia have recruited children as soldiers. Many Somali human rights activists and other observers allege that al-Shabaab has recruited children in a more deliberate and systematic manner than have the TFG or other armed groups.[164] The recruitment of children—and the fear of it—are widespread in many areas controlled by al-Shabaab.

International humanitarian law prohibits any recruitment of children under the age of 15 or their participation in hostilities by national armed forces and non-state armed groups.[165] Somalia has signed, but has yet to ratify, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict. The Optional Protocol prohibits any recruitment by non-state armed groups of children under the age of 18; any forced recruitment or conscription of children under 18 by government forces; and the participation of children under 18 in active hostilities by any party.[166]

Human Rights Watch interviewed several refugees who said they knew boys who had been recruited by al-Shabaab.[167] One young man from Kismayo said al-Shabaab recruited his 15-year-old brother in late 2008 and that the boy’s subsequent desertion cost their uncle his life. The younger brother was initially ecstatic after joining al-Shabaab, convinced he would be fighting for a good cause. But several months later, after being wounded in one hand during a firefight in Mogadishu, he sold the AK-47 he had been given by his commander and deserted.

“After he was recruited, my brother told me, ‘You are wasting your time with education. Come join the cause,’” the older brother recalled. “But when he came back injured he was so remorseful. He said, ‘I have lost the use of my hand and if I tell them I am going to leave, they will kill me.’”

Al-Shabaab fighters came to the boys’ house in Kismayo and demanded that their uncle—who had raised them since their father died—turn over either the boy or the gun. When the uncle could produce neither, they shot him dead.[168]

One mother said al-Shabaab took her 12-year-old son and 14-year-old nephew from the madrasa (Islamic school) they attended in from the southern border town of Dhobley in April 2009 and killed her uncle for trying to find them. She told Human Rights Watch:

One day he did not come home from the madrasa. I went to the school and asked for him. Then my son called me. He said, “Mom, I am in Kismayo. I was taken by al-Shabaab to be recruited to fight. Please pray for my release.” I have not heard from him since. I do not know if he is alive or dead. My brother’s young son was taken as well. My brother went to find them. I was told al-Shabaab hanged him because he was looking for the boys. I became mentally confused. For two months, I went randomly from neighborhood to neighborhood [in Kismayo], searching for them. I feared for my own life. They text messaged me many times, saying, “If we see you looking for your boy we will kill you.” Finally I turned back.[169]

Two women from Bardheere said that they knew of several 14- and 15-year-old boys from the town whom al-Shabaab recruited with promises that they could earn up to US$200 a month. “When they hear of money they feel they must join,” one of the women said.[170]

Several parents from Mogadishu and southern Somalia said they confined their sons—some as young as 13 and others in their 20s—to the home to shield them from forced recruitment. A mother from a farm outside the town of Jilib said that she had forbidden her 15-year-old son from leaving the family farm for fear that he might be press-ganged into service. “Once you go to town from the farm with your son it may be that you will not come back with him,” she said.[171]

Girls as well as young women were also forcibly recruited to support roles in violation of international law. One woman living in the sprawling camps for internally displaced people along the road to Afgooye was 16 years old when she, along with several other teenage girls and young women, was coerced into “volunteering” to cook and clean for a group of al-Shabaab fighters. “In the camps a girl is very vulnerable,” she said. “When they ask you to volunteer your services, you can’t say no, you can’t ask for money, and you can’t even talk to your father if they think he worked for the government.” In mid-2009 she fled to Kenya.[172]

TFG forces have also recruited underage fighters, though this appears to reflect a failure to discriminate between adults and children rather than a deliberate targeting of children. When the French government brought a group of several hundred TFG recruits for training in Djibouti in 2009, the trainers sent some of them back to Somalia because they were demonstrably underage.[173]

Recruitment from Refugee Camps

The TFG and al-Shabaab have both recruited Somali refugees living in Kenya to return home and fight on their behalf. Some of the recruitment has occurred inside of northeast Kenya’s sprawling Dadaab refugee camps. International law does not prohibit recruitment of refugees per se, but recruiting from within the confines of a refugee camp contravenes the principle recognized in international law that such camps should be “exclusively civilian and humanitarian in character.” This principle is derived from international humanitarian, human rights, and refugee law and is embodied in the guidelines of the UN refugee agency and UN Security Council resolutions.[174]

Officials working in the camps and many refugees themselves confirmed to Human Rights Watch that al-Shabaab was recruiting young men but these efforts were clandestine and impossible to quantify.[175]

One mother said al-Shabaab had recruited two of her sons from the camps in late 2008 and re-enlisted the younger one, who was 17 years old, days after relatives returned him to Kenya in late 2009 after a months-long search.[176]

Recruiters working on behalf of the TFG openly conducted a massive drive inside the Dadaab camps in late 2009 for conscripts to fight al-Shabaab. This was done openly and with the direct cooperation of Kenyan authorities, despite denials from ranking Kenyan government officials. The recruiters gave false information to potential conscripts about their wages and mission, told youths who appeared younger than 15 to falsely state they were adults, and—to keep them from fleeing—confiscated their cell phones and identity cards, according to deserters, parents of conscripts, recruiters, and others who spoke with Human Rights Watch. The recruiters also refused to help distraught parents locate their children.[177] The father of one 17-year-old recruit described the condition of his son after he deserted:

His phone was shut off immediately after he disappeared. Finally after some days he escaped and called me on a borrowed phone. He was still many kilometers away. I found him lying under a tree. He was tired and starving and traumatized. Who are these people who would take my underage boy? These boys [in the camps] are vulnerable and it is easy for anyone to overcome them psychologically.[178]

Human Rights Watch documented the Kenyan-backed recruitment effort in detail and called for Kenyan authorities to end it immediately. Our findings were verified in a March 2010 report by the UN Monitoring Committee on Somalia.[179] Subsequently, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees intensified an information campaign warning refugees that involvement in recruitment by any side to the conflict in Somalia could threaten both their own chances of resettlement and the chances of others in the camps, because resettlement countries might look unfavorably on Dadaab refugees as a whole.[180]

At the time of writing, Kenyan security forces had reportedly trained the recruits as part of a 2,500-member militia of Kenyan Somalis and refugees for a possible TFG assault on al-Shabaab-controlled areas in southern Somalia including the city of Kismayo.[181]