Lawless Somalia Turns to Islamic Courts for Order

For 10 of his 22 years, Farkan Barre’s life was ruled by the gun. He extorted money from travelers at illegal roadblocks, took part in raids on business establishments and helped abduct foreigners at the orders of the faction leaders he followed. Anyone who stood in his path of destruction was shot.

Distressed by the activities of their son, who had finished only one year of school, Barre’s parents decided that enough was enough. So they asked the militias of a recently created Islamic court system to arrest him.

Now languishing in a cramped jail with 40 other inmates, Barre spends his days being schooled in the teachings of Islam and learning the rules of obedience and good conduct, in an effort to be rehabilitated.

“I feel that I am recovering,” said Barre, who claims to have participated in the capture of U.S. serviceman Michael Durant during the failed humanitarian mission to this Horn of Africa nation in the early 1990s. “I am sure I will never go again with the faction leaders who have destroyed the country,” Barre said.

The former thug, who has spent the last year in jail, is one of about 100 onetime gunmen, petty criminals and unruly youths who have been arrested by militiamen working for four Islamic courts that are trying to impose law amid the chaos of this stateless capital.

The religious courts, set up in the southern part of Mogadishu, are trying to fill the void in a country that has been without a central government for nearly a decade. Armed with antiaircraft rockets, machine guns and rifles, the approximately 500 court militiamen--many of them rehabilitated thugs themselves--round up gunmen and gangsters for trial. Those who resist are killed.

Penalties for convicted criminals range from lashing and whipping to long-term confinement. Court officials say they have not yet imposed more severe traditional Islamic punishments, such as amputation for theft or stoning for adultery. But these measures have not been ruled out. Parents decide the fate of rebellious teenagers who have been detained.

“When there was a government, there was an entire justice system that took care of these cases,” said Ahmed Abdulahi, deputy commander of the city’s Ifka Halan Islamic Court militia. “For the time being, we can say this is the best while we don’t have public institutions.”

Islamic court officials insist that their presence has significantly reduced crime, at least in southern Mogadishu. They have fought intense battles in an effort to dismantle many of the illegal roadblocks that once served as traps for robbery and have cleaned up several former “no-go” neighborhoods, the officials say.

In some cases, the mere sight of the “law enforcers of Allah” has sent bandits scurrying, said Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, a former Somali army colonel who heads the Ifka Halan Islamic Court. “It’s one of the miracles of the religion.”

Abdirazak “Barbar” Yusuf, chief of security for a well-known Mogadishu hotel, considers the court enforcers to be born thugs.

“They come from upcountry to the town,” Yusuf said. “They don’t know how to do any different type of job. They don’t have education. They only know the gun.”

Although tension is still high, and foreigners and wealthy businesspeople need armed protection to travel around the city, an invisible “green line” that once divided north and south Mogadishu no longer exists.

The courts “have been instrumental in pacification,” said Mohammed Ahmed Jama, a spokesman for Somalia’s Peace and Human Rights Network. “Today, Somalis don’t need food or medicine--they need peace. We are happy with anything that helps create that.”

Financed by contributions from private businesspeople and other wealthy individuals, the courts have won the support of many ordinary Somalis. The courts, however, have been less popular among faction leaders, who control parts of the city like fiefdoms.

Hussein Mohammed Aidid, the son of the notorious late faction leader Mohammed Farah Aidid, accuses the Islamic courts of having a political agenda. He contends that the court leaders are fundamentalists who only pretend to care about security in an attempt to win popular support and grab power.

Such sentiments have led to the failure of the courts in the northern part of the city, where some residents also have started to question their motives. But in the south, the courts have become a force to be reckoned with.

Court officials say that their system works and that many young men have been saved from a life of banditry. Barre, for example, now aspires to join the court militia upon his release.

“When we compare the [security] situation today, compared to the pre-Islamic era, there has been a lot of achievements,” said Aweys, the court leader. “But there is still a long way to go.”