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Somali defector: Why I left al-Shabab

By Andrew Harding

BBC News

One of the most senior figures to defect from Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab has urged his former colleagues to stop targeting civilians and to begin negotiations with the Somali government.

In his first interview with a foreign journalist, Zakariya Ahmed Ismail Hersi – who once had a $3m (£1.9m; €2.7m) bounty from the US government on his head – condemned al-Shabab’s attack on Garissa University College in Kenya in April, where 148 students were killed.

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Despite his former life, Mr Hersi intends to run for political office one day

Speaking at a government safe-house in Mogadishu, he described it as “wrong and unlawful” and offered his condolences to the victims and their families.

Inside his heavily guarded residence he tells me the story of his rise through the ranks of the jihadists until the group’s policy of extreme attacks on civilians forced him to flee for his life.

Mr Hersi’s defection – a lengthy process that appears to have begun in 2013, if not before – is now the centrepiece of a new government amnesty initiative designed to convince other militant leaders to follow suit.
“The path became wrong… and I had a tipping point,” he said in fluent English.

They’re trying to kill me’

Mr Hersi – widely known as Zaki – is a youthful, slim 33-year-old with a neatly trimmed beard and moustache.
Wearing a new, Western-style checked shirt he struck me as proud, thoughtful, and extremely careful in the way he sought to present himself as a devout Somali patriot, who had been trapped inside a militant group that had lost its way.

“Now they’re trying to kill me,” he said of his former colleagues in al-Shabab, which explains the tight security at the safe house where a soldier manned a makeshift watchtower and two more guarded the gate.
After months of debriefing, Mr Hersi is now technically a free man, with access to a mobile phone. “I’m on social media, Twitter and Facebook,” he volunteered.

Aiding defectors

I asked him if he had been in touch with people in al-Shabab, and indeed whether it was a condition of his defection that he try to persuade others to swap sides.

“It’s not a condition. But if I got a [phone] connection I will try to encourage them definitely,” he said, praising his treatment at the hands of Somalia’s intelligence services.

“They treated me very nice. Welcomed me in a very good way and I thank the government for that welcome.”
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud says Mr Hersi’s defection – the third of its kind in recent times – is the result of growing military pressure on al-Shabab.

“There was no defection two or even one year back. They were not fighting among themselves or killing some of their own leaders. The reason we have some high value targets defecting today is because of pressure… from the Somali National Army and Amisom (the African Union peacekeeping force) and in the air by our international partners,” President Mohamud told me.

He was referring to the US drone strikes which he praised for their “minimal collateral effect – surgically targeted to al-Shabab’s high level leadership”.

Read more: Somali defector: Why I left al-Shabab

Source: BBC News

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