Gorgor militia: Turkey and Qatar’s card to control Somalia

Ali Ragab

In light of the escalating political and security tension in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, state rulers and political and tribal forces have expressed their concern about militias and forces that Turkey is using as a stick to suppress the Somali people and keep the Brotherhood, Qatari and Turkish grip on the chains of affairs and power in Somalia.

Turkey trained the Gorgor forces to suppress the internal opposition in Somalia, but these forces did not play a significant role in fighting the Al-Shabaab terrorist movement, unlike the Somali special forces Danab Brigade that was trained by the United States and plays important roles in the fight against Al-Shabaab.

Somali observers consider the Gurgor forces to be loyal to the Turkish Brotherhood and funded and supported by Qatar. It is forming forces based on an ideological rather than a national structure, and it is closer to the Brotherhood’s ideology, threatening to form a special revolutionary guard for National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) Director Fahad Yasin, Doha’s man in Somalia.

The President of Puntland State in northeastern Somalia, Said Abdullahi Dani, expressed his fear and concern about the Gorgor forces suppressing the demonstrators and protests, describing them as fiercely cruel forces in dealing with the protests and the Somali people.

In a lengthy speech in which he dealt with the political and security developments in the country, Dani indicated that they had seen Gorgor fighting in Mogadishu, the Gedo region and Dhusamareb, the capital of Galmudug state, to suppress the demonstrators, but it did nothing to fight Al-Shabaab, which cut off the roads leading the nearest cities to the capital.

The doubts expressed by Dani about the aforementioned forces coincide with another controversy in the forces that the Somali government had secretly sent to Eritrea in the past two years to receive training, especially after the commander of the Somali army, General Odowaa Yusuf Rageh, denied to the People’s Assembly his knowledge of the troops sent to Eritrea.

Earlier, the Somali Guardian website highlighted that hundreds of Somali youths were deceived to join the mercenary army sent by Ankara to Libya, amid a major escalation of tensions between Turkey and Egypt and fears of a war in Sirte, Libya.

The website said that more than 2,000 Somalis, among the new forces fighting on behalf of Turkey and Qatar, have been deployed on the front lines of Libya to join the fight against the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

Some of the young men recruited to serve the Qatari army told the Somali Guardian that many of their colleagues in the country have already been deployed to confrontation areas in Libya and that they are waiting to be sent to the hostile region.

The website said that Qatar has recruited more than 5,000 Somali youths, who officially joined its army after the boycott by the Arab Quartet (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt).

NISA Director Fahad Yasin is one of Qatar’s most prominent men in Mogadishu and is implementing the Turkish-Qatari plan to control extremist groups in Somalia and place Somalia under Turkish and Qatari tutelage.

The Turkish company SADAT, which works in the field of military consultation and is headed by retired Turkish General Adnan Tanriverdi, is a member of the Security and Foreign Policy Authority, one of the bodies of the Turkish presidency that oversees terrorist militias in the region. It essentially acts as the new Ottoman Caliphate Army.

SADAT is the first and only company in Turkey that provides advisory services and military training in the field of international defense.

According to the company’s website, it specializes in military training of land, sea and air forces for countries requesting the service, starting from the individual and single weapon and up to the highest unit in the army, meaning that all the elements are trained. It also offers informal training, and it trains elements on ambush and raid activities, road closures, destruction, sabotage, rescue operations, kidnapping and counter operations for all of that, as well as training for special operations.

The company operates in several Islamic countries. Tanriverdi has said that the Turkish Armed Forces provide services in the field of education, advice and equipment to 22 Islamic countries, but they are not able to meet all the needs of the defense field in 60 Islamic countries, so we decided to meet these needs with the support of 64 officers that respect the Islamic principles followed in Islamic countries.

Reports by the Turkish opposition also revealed that SADAT provided military advice and training to Brotherhood militias in several Arab countries, including Yemen, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Sudan and Somalia, in addition to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Turkish opposition newspaper Zaman described SADAT as forming the hidden Revolutionary Guard of the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), stressing that “the name of the SADAT Company, which the opposition describes as the armed militia run by the ruling Justice and Development Party, was hesitated after the issuance of the amnesty decree. About non-military personnel involved in the killing of Turkish soldiers on the night of the coup attempt of prosecution ».

For its part, the Somali opposition Council of Presidential Candidates sent a letter to the UN Security Council on Sunday demanding that it intervene in the electoral impasse in Somalia and ensure that the parliamentary and presidential elections are held urgently.

The Council of Presidential Candidates accuses outgoing Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmaajo and his allies of refusing to facilitate work to hold free and fair elections, and they warned that Farmaajo would continue to obstruct democratic elections if the Security Council does not intervene.

The opposition council stated that the current political situation in Somalia poses a threat to the country’s stability, noting that Farmaajo has begun targeting regional states and politicians who disagree with him, in addition to his continuous postponement of the elections in search of an illegal extension or the seizure of power by force.

It asked the Security Council to pressure Farmaajo to stop his interference in the elections and to hand over power to a national transitional council that includes state presidents and the heads of both houses of the Federal Parliament.

The Council of Presidential Candidates indicated the collapse of the trust of the Somali people and made it clear that it has evidence that Farmaajo is seeking to eradicate democracy and use military force to remain in power illegally.

In its letter, the council accused Farmaajo of using government forces on February 18-19, 2021 to try to assassinate a number of opposition candidates and politicians, adding that those forces had fired on peaceful demonstrators calling for urgent elections in the country.

It pointed out that the aggressive and illegal acts undertaken by Farmaajo aim to suppress the Somali people and prevent them from demonstrating peacefully, as well as undermine the hopes of holding free and fair elections in the country.

The opposition council added that Farmaajo has gathered the Somali army, which was expected to fight Al-Shabaab in Mogadishu, to use it in attacking the homes of presidential candidates and other political leaders.

It asked the UN Security Council to take quick steps to investigate the massacres committed by the outgoing president, prosecute all those responsible for what happened, put an end to the attempt of the outgoing Somali administration to cling to power, and ensure free and fair elections in Somalia in the coming weeks.