The force marriage of Somali females to foreign fighters

[Coeus]

Girls Forced to Marry al-Shabaab's Foreign Fighters in Somalia

Fartun Aden Ali*, 18, looks like a nocturnal animal caught in the headlights. She is irrevocably grim and unwilling to come out of her shell. Fartun, who stays with her mother and four younger brothers, has reason to be wary of strangers. In October 2010, she was abducted from her home by militant Islamist group al-Shabaab and forced to marry a foreign fighter for the al-Qaeda elements in Somalia. Somalia Report’s investigative reporter Muhyadin Ahmed Roble writes about Fartun’s painful story.

It was a steaming hot day in Somalia's capital. I was on my way to meet 18-year-old Fartun Aden Ali in her village of Via Roma in the heart of Mogadishu — a city destroyed by civil war. Nobody knew I had arranged to meet a young woman who escaped from a forced marriage with an al-Qaeda fighter.

Fartun’s harrowing ordeal is even a secret from her young brothers. She doesn't want anyone to know where she is because she fears the militants will find her. Three other young ladies who were forced into marriage with al-Shabaab's foreign fighters refused to speak with me, but Fartun agreed to tell her story.

She was emphatic about why she wanted her story told.

“I’m not telling you this because I need you to marry me or to get a man for me, but because I wish to let the world hear about our suffering,” she said.

She asked me to promise I would not disclose her identity. I agreed, and Fartun began to recount her story through a veil of tears. “My future is really dark. I don’t know what to do. I think I have no future now. It’s been sealed. I'm pregnant and I can barely recognize the father of my coming child. I don't even know his identity or real name,” she began.

Fartun was raised in a family of six children and both parents. She is the second child born to an uneducated, poor family. Her father was a builder, while her mother ran a small tea shop in Suuqa Holaha, an al-Shabaab stronghold.

Her father died of a heart attack in 2004 and her family was desperate for money. She then found a job as a cook for a middle class family in the same area. Her salary plus her mother’s income let them save some money, which enabled them to open a small kiosk to sell food and cosmetics. Her kiosk was located near an al-Shabaab center in Suuqa Holaha and the fighters used to buy items from her. Unfortunately, this is also what led to her nightmare of forced marriage after another woman saw her at the kiosk.

A neighboring woman who works with al-Shabaab told Fartun that a muhajir (immigrant) wanted her as a wife.

“He is a good man and Islamic scholar. He can provide whatever you want. And your mother will be given money,” the pro-Islamist woman told Fartun.

Fartun said she thought that this was only a suggestion and told the woman that she was not interested, but the woman insisted.

“Take the man for the good of God. He ... arrived here miles away for the jihad,” the woman told Fartun.

The woman left, but Fartun's ordeal was only beginning. It was a rainy evening when armed militias from al-Shabaab knocked on her door and asked Fartun to come with them, saying that the emir needed her.

“My mother was not around: it was just me and my young brothers. I asked them to wait until my mother came, but they refused and forcibly took me in the Toyota Land Cruiser,” she recalled.

Her elder brother had already been recruited by al-Shabaab, one of many boys who were seduced by promises of money. That left only her younger brothers, all under the age of 16, but they were unprepared to defend Fartun from the armed men.

The car immediately moved to an al-Shabaab military camp in the village. Two women, including the woman who suggested she marry the fighter, held her hand as she was getting out of the Land Cruiser. They lead her to a room to explain she was to ready herself for marriage.

“I was shocked. I said this is impossible. My family does not know and I do not want to marry,” she yelled.

Five men, three who covered their faces, sat in a room waiting for her, but as her pleas continued, she was accused of attempting to escape from a Muslim brother.

“I resisted for a while, but finally consented under duress because they could have accused me of adultery and stoned me to death if I defied them,” she said.

Her request for them to at least allow her mother and uncles to attend was denied.

Anyone who dares to defy al-Shabaab is jailed or killed, often in public. For example, a 13- year old girl named Asha Ibrahim Duhulow was raped by three al-Shabaab fighters and when she went to the group’s court, they accused her of adultery and stoned her to death.

Since learning of her daughter's abduction, Fartun’s mother Kutubo Ahmed Roble (not related to the reporter) asked anyone with al-Shabaab contacts to help. Many thought she was suspected of being a spy for the government so they refused to help. She then went to the al-Shabaab office in the village, asking to know why her daughter had been detained, but the office did not have any records about Fartun and did not know whereabouts.

She became more worried and went back the office for days until she gave up on finding her daughter alive and started looking for her body.

Fartun found she had married a foreign fighter – an Arab man called Mohamed Hassan in his thirties, with a bushy beard and a hairy body - with whom she could not communicate due to language differences.

When the ceremony was over, the two women took her a room prepared for her, and later the man entered. He tried to attract her a few words of Somali language mixed with Arabic. The man told his new wife to feel happy and thank God for giving her to him, but she never opened her mouth. He left telling her he would be back.

“There were beds and mattress in the room near Maslah camp. All around the house, there were also many armed men,” Fartun recounted.

Maslah, which is located on the outskirts of Suuqa Holaha, was a military camp for Somalia’s government but recently turned a center to train al-Shabaab fighters.

“I never thought that such a thing would happen to me,” she said. “It was very scary. It was just a prison.”

She was alone for most of the night and she never put down her head, fearing what would happen to her.

“In the dead of night someone knocked at the door,” she said. “I was shocked that he was back. I asked who it was and a person replied in Somali language for me to open the door for my husband.”

“He entered and sat by my side. He never showed any mercy for me. I rarely saw his face. He used to come late at night and leave before morning prayers,” she said.

She said that the man used to come with a pistol and a group of armed guards. For almost six months she never left the house, and other women did her shopping. Her husband never had dinner or lunch with her, and she used to cook only for herself.

Being a wife of the fighter for a while meant she built up trust, and began to out on her own to check if anyone was following her. She began to visit her mother.

“It was a sudden surprise to see her alive, and it seemed like a dream,” said Fartun’s mother. “When she explained what happened to her, I really felt that I already lost my daughter, and that I would next lose my boys.”

But Fartun told her mother not let anyone know she was alive and was thinking about escaping from the camp.

“I called my nephew who used to live in a government-controlled area of Mogadishu. She offered to look for a rented house in the area and two months later I and all my children escaped from al-Shabaab,” the mother said.

The mother and her four boys left just a few hours before Fartun departed the camp, saying she was going to shop at the market. She met her mother and together they crossed into the government area.

“I was so worried, fearing the militants would get me before I crossed their border,” said Fartun, who now lives in a two-room home. She rarely goes out, fearing the militants will assassinate her, and unborn child she is carrying.

“No man will marry me because of the unknown identity of the father, so I will remain lonely forever,” she said.

Fartun’s story is far from unique. The hidden nature of the forced marriage make statistics extremely difficult to compile, but a local human rights organization says that hundreds of school girls in al-Shabaab areas have simply disappeared, suspected to have been kidnapped by militants to marry foreigners. Many of these men have never spoken the Somali language, and often are twice their brides’ age, according to Ali Sheikh Yasin, the former deputy chairman of Mogadishu-based human rights agency of Elman. It is small wonder then that many girls try to flee. However, most attempts have been foiled, and many of the marriages have culminated in honor killings, Ali said.

“Often they do not keep the young girls they marry, but replace them other young girls,” said Ali “The number of divorced young girls had been increasing since 2008 because of this, and many of them were pregnant when divorced.”

Ayan Sheikh Abdi, 16, is one of those who were forced to marry a foreign fighter and then divorced five months later. She was a secondary schoolgirl lived in Elasha Biyaha. In January, a group armed men came to her father asking him to give his daughter.

“None of them showed their faces, although they were all Somalis working for their foreign boss,” said elder Jama Sheikh.

When Sheikh Abdi asked to see the man who wanted to marry his daughter, the armed men refused but told him he was a non-Somali Muslim brother.

Sheikh Abdi refused, but the militia took the father and daughter by force. The father was released two days’ later after witnessing the marriage.

“The man speaks broken Arabic. He is either Afghani or Pakistan, aged around 40,” said Ayan Sheikh. “I am happy to be free again, no matter whether I am a divorcee or not, but I afraid they may bring to me another fighter.”

In Elasha Biyaha alone, more than ten young girls have been forced to marry militants since the beginning of the year, according to a local activist.

“Many more than that number disappeared. Some of them may have been taken to other areas for marriage purposes, while some may have been killed,” he said on condition of anonymity.

Sudi Mohamed Ali, director of financial management of Somalia’s women affairs minister, said the practice was despicable.

“We cannot say this is marriage: it is a choice between death and marriage, so why not call it rape?” he said. “Such marriages are an inhumane violation and rob the girls of their rights.”

Sheikh Abdirahman Sheikh Mohamed, a Sufi Imam, says every marriage needs the approval of both parties.

“Islam condemns rape and forced marriage to the highest degree,” he said. “If the two parties didn’t agree, it would be invalid and would therefore need to be cancelled.” *Names have been changed for security reasons. Fartun refused to be photographed for this report.

[BlackVelvet]

Despicable spineless men who deserve to be stoned.

[Coeus]

Indeed

[Advo]

Seems kind of fake to me, I was reading an article where they (non-black ajnabis) were encouraging each other to join alshabaab based on them being preferred for marriage above all. I wouldn't be surprised if she went looking for the hairy arab mentioned in her story, dude probably got get and she traded sides when the tides were turning.

[BlackVelvet]

Advo, it is easy to be skeptical especially if she is pregnant it is easy to cry Shabab if someone's been fooling around. But it actually happened to people la ya qaano so any allegation is impossible to dismiss. These pigs called Shabab terrorised people to no end and many a women were forcefully taken.

[shiniile9]

Those sick and brainwashed Shababs will do anything to please their whoever Masters.

[Colonel]

Coeus where's the link saxiib? it would be interesting to find out where this story comes from...
Some shocking stories indeed but it must be considered fake until a link has been posted and the info verified.

[Beenaale_No1]

Didnt read it. Will get back to it later.

But what nationality are these foreigners?

[tightrope]

FOCK AL-SHAYDAN!
THIS STORY REMINDS ME OF THE FOREIGN EUROPEANS RAPING INDIGENOUS AMERICAN GIRLS AND TAKING OVER THE COUNTRY CENTURIES AGO! TO THIS DAY, MOST NATIVE NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICANS HAVE A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF EUROPEAN DNA!
WE CANNOT LET THAT HAPPEN TO SOMALIA!

[Coeus]

Didnt read it. Will get back to it later.

But what nationality are these foreigners?

Pakistani,arab,indians, chechenians,Uzbekis etc.

[Colonel]

Didnt read it. Will get back to it later.

But what nationality are these foreigners?

Pakistani,arab,indians, chechenians,Uzbekis etc.

where's the link then?

[SahanGalbeed]

It is always the same stories from Iraq , to Afghanistan to Chechnia to now Somalia .Either these madafakin terrorists are really dumb or it's some kinda propaganda ,Allah knows best .

[grandpakhalif]

I would give my daughter willingly, it was the practice of the sahaba, this is false news and an attack on Islam.

[Colonel]

It is always the same stories from Iraq , to Afghanistan to Chechnia to now Somalia .Either these madafakin terrorists are really dumb or it's some kinda propaganda ,Allah knows best .

so far it seems like propaganda, i've asked for the source twice but Coeus is ignoring. maybe there is no link or he knows it won't hold water if he discloses it.

[Colonel]

so still no link from our friend Coeus? i'll take it that it was a fake story after all.
indeed making up great lies is a serious sin.