A View from the CT Foxhole: Harun Maruf Senior Editor, Voice of America Somali.

AuthorCruickshank, Paul

CTC: To learn about what is going on in Somalia, many of us covering counterterrorism issues have for years turned to your extraordinarily insightful reporting. Tell me about your journey into journalism.

Maruf: Early on, I wanted to become a footballer. But when I went into high school, obviously my priorities changed. I very much enjoyed writing and following media. I used to carry my own transistor radio, which my father bought for me, and I would listen to the BBC and write down the names of all the world leaders, all the capitals in the world, every major story in the world.

My parents are from the Somali Region in Ethiopia, but because my larger family were involved with efforts, by Somalia, to take back this Somali Region, my family could not live in that region for security reasons. So when I was very young, we moved to Somalia. I have been to most Somali regions, but Mogadishu is where I spent most of my life. That's where I studied, got my first job, where I got married, where my first child was born.

When the state collapsed in 1991, I was trying to go to university to study journalism. But that opportunity never came because of the state collapse. Nonetheless, I continued my interest in journalism, and I was one of the first journalists to establish the free press that emerged in the country after [President Mohamed] Siad Barre was gone. This was a very interesting period for journalism. We were exercising the freedom to write, to criticize for the first time. It was very exciting, but also a very dangerous time because at that time the country went into civil war. And it very quickly became very dangerous, really, to write critically about what was happening in the country. My first job in journalism was as a columnist. I was writing columns four days a week for our newspaper in Mogadishu. My columns were very critical, and I was threatened because of my take on things. My questions at press conferences to warlords and other politicians were always very pointed so I never had easy relations with politicians and warlords.

It goes without saying that there were a lot of security challenges working in Mogadishu as a young journalist. On one day, history was made in Somalia, and it would change the rest of my life. On December 9, 1992, President George H.W Bush sent troops to Somalia to deliver aid to people who were impacted by the famine the country was then suffering, and I went to the airport--that's where the United States troops landed; that's one of the first areas they took over--and I went there just to cover it as a young journalist. I had my own notebook and a pen, and I met an American journalist who was working for the Associated Press. He was talking to a group of Somalis, and they could not communicate. I was able to speak at that time basic English--not very good, but basic English--and he saw me taking notes and he said, "What do you do?" I said, "I'm a journalist," and he said, "Can you help me talk to these guys?" And so I translated for him, and then when we finished-up, he said, "Can you come with me? I'll introduce you to my boss." We went to the Sahafi hotel (the journalists' hotel) in Mogadishu where hundreds of Western journalists were staying, and he introduced me to his boss and the rest is history. Associated Press made me their stringer in Somalia. That's how I hit it off. That's how in 1995, I got a job with BBC Somali service; that was my dream job. I always was listening to BBC as a young media fan. It was a dream job come true.

I worked for BBC and Associated Press all the way until 1999; when I went to the United Kingdom to study. I got my master's in international journalism at City University of London, and then I worked briefly for the BBC World Service Trust, (a) as a consultant for a project that helped train many Somali journalists. Then I worked as a Human Rights Watch researcher for Somalia, and we covered the new conflict from the early period of the Ethiopia military intervention in Mogadishu from December 2006 into 2007 when the brutal counterinsurgency fighting broke out in the capital. In late 2007, while I was in the Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya interviewing Somali refugees who fled Ethiopian military operations in the Somali Region--my parents' home region--I was called by a gentleman who was the head of the Voice of America's [VOA] Somali Service, Fred Cooper, and he offered me a U.S.-based job. At that time, it was very dangerous in Somalia because of the fighting between Ethiopia and the Islamic Courts (b) and later on al-Shabaab, and my work was becoming known to the local and foreign human rights violators who were not happy to have their human rights violations in Somalia investigated. It became increasingly dangerous for me, and I was briefly detained because of the investigations in Somalia. So I decided to take the job offer and to go back to journalism, and that's how I ended up working for VOA.

CTC: When did you first start reporting on Islamist militancy in Somalia?

Maruf: In 1992, I witnessed as a journalist one of the first Islamic courts that emerged in Somalia. Many people don't know that Mogadishu had an Islamic court in 1992. At the time, there was civil war in Mogadishu, and one of the community leaders, who later became a warlord, called upon the scholars and said, "I don't want to see any looting, any disturbances in my neighborhood, and I want you to set up an Islamic court." So an Islamic court was set up in an area called Medina near the airport in Mogadishu. After that, a group of Islamic scholars tried to set up more courts in Mogadishu, but they were immediately disbanded by one of the most powerful warlords at the time, General [Mohamed Farah] Aideed.

In 1994, the Islamic courts properly emerged in Mogadishu. Mogadishu was divided into two parts at the time: north and south. The south was controlled by General Aideed who was a sworn enemy of militant Islamist organizations. But the north was controlled by another warlord called Ali Mahdi, and Islamic courts emerged in his area. And they succeeded in restoring relative stability, and they were carrying out adjudications--chopping [off] hands of thieves and lashing criminals. So I also covered that, and I witnessed myself Islamic courts levying punishments on criminals. But it's important to note these were not militant courts, and the motivation behind it was to fight criminals and keep peace. But these Islamic courts were, after maybe two years, immediately subdued and destroyed by the warlord because they were getting too powerful. But the Islamic courts reemerged in 1998, 1999, in the south this time, and they were supported by the business community who only wanted security in their area--businessmen and elders--and I witnessed that, too, as a journalist. So I had a very long history of covering Islamist organizations and Islamic courts, which have a very deep-rooted history in Somalia.

I co-authored probably one of the first papers (1) about the emergence of Islamic Courts and the little-known jihadist unit, al-Shabaab, that was embedded within the Islamic Courts Union. It was a much-circulated paper. That's how, early on, I developed my interest in writing about the Islamist militancy in Somalia.

CTC: In the past 15 years or so, for Voice of America, you've been mainly based in the United States, correct?

Maruf: Correct. Security-wise, because of the nature of my work, I not only cover Islamist organizations and military organizations, but I also do some investigative reporting of corruption, mismanagement, bad governance, and that has created a lot of animosity for me on the ground.

CTC: Take us inside the reporting enterprise for VOA Somalia. How do you collect information on the challenge posed by al-Shabaab and other jihadi groups?

Maruf: Voice of America's Somali service was initially launched in 1992 when U.S. forces were sent to Somalia by President Bush, but it did not last long. After a year or so, that program ceased to exist. VOA Somali was relaunched in 2007, so it's a relatively new service. Within that very short period, we have succeeded really to compete with media organizations that have been covering Somalia for decades like the BBC Somali Service. We have a vast network of reporters and a very rich network of contacts throughout the country and in the region including government sources and independent sources on the ground. News is breaking every minute, so you have to have the capabilities to cover it.

When it comes to covering al-Shabaab, given it is a group that seeks to push out propaganda, VOA has strong editorial standards in place.

We used to interview al-Shabaab leaders when they were in Mogadishu in 2009, 2010, but since they left Mogadishu, they have largely stopped speaking and giving interviews to most media. They still give interviews to some of the media, but they are very selective on which media outlets they speak to. On occasions in which there are major developments involving al-Shabaab, we have made efforts to make contact to try to interview members of the group for legitimate news reasons to get their point of view, but it has not been successful so far. The last al-Shabaab figure we interviewed was the American jihadist Omar Hammami, just days before he was killed by the group. (2)

In covering al-Shabaab, we monitor their media platforms and websites. We also monitor their official radio station, Andalus, and another radio station called al-Furqaan, which portrays itself as a more independent radio station but nonetheless is located in al-Shabaab territory and defends and takes the line of the group, and so is essentially an al-Shabaab radio station. These two radio stations propagate and air al-Shabaab stories and speeches of their leaders.

And we also monitor al-Shabaab social media activity. A few years ago, Twitter tried to shut down al-Shabaab accounts, (3) but there are still accounts that are...

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