Ikhwanizing Somalia’s intelligence service: Qatar’s route to the Horn of Africa

Written by Ali Rajab

Somalia is a target country by the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the group’s supporters such as Qatar and Turkey.

This is due to several evidences because since Somali President Mohamed Abdullah Farmajo took office in February 2017 deputy head of the Somali intelligence service Fahd Yassin and the director of his presidential campaign who is also an Aljazeera correspondent have become the architects and masterminds of Qatar and the Brotherhood’s plans in the country of conflicts and multiple militias.

The head of the national intelligence and security agency in Somalia, Hussein Osman Hussein, on Saturday, resigned. The announced reason is his candidacy for elections in southwestern Somalia, scheduled for November, while the newspaper “New Somalia” hinted that the reason for resignation is to open the way for Yassin to take over the chairmanship of the intelligence agency.

The octopus

Yassin, who was born in 1978 in the eastern province of Mundira, worked for Somalitok which is a website of the Islamic Union. He worked as a correspondent for Al-Jazeera, then a director of its office, and then joined the group “Reform in the Horn of Africa – the Muslim Brotherhood in Somalia”. He then became a member of the dissolved group Islamic Union and participated in battles in Arari, Gedo and Psasso in the nineties of the last century.

Media reports said that Yassin had become the link between Qatar and armed groups in Somalia, including in the foremost the Al Shabaab terrorist group.

Ikhwanizing Somalia’s intelligence

Since the appointment of Yassin as deputy director of the Somali Agency for Intelligence and National Security on August 16, the agency saw several changes whether resignations or firings according to what the Reference as well as Arab newspapers have recorded.

Yassin started his term by overthrowing the former general Abdullah Abdullah, the former director of the Somali intelligence agency, and the opponent of Qatar and the al-Shabaab terrorist group from the agency on September 1. Abdullah accused Yassin and the resigned director of intelligence service Hussein Osman of complete coordination with al-Shabab terrorist group during the periods 2014-2015 and 2016-2017.

Following Abdullah’s remarks, Somali President Farmajo issued a decision to strip Yassin’s arch-enemy of his military rank.

On Sept. 19, the head of the state of Jubaland Ahmed Mohammed Islam revealed that al-Shabab movement obtained weapons from the Somali government, accusing Fahd Yassin and his aides of controlling the presidential decision and adapting the country to their interests.