By Associated Press
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The withdrawal of Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked rebels from their bases in Mogadishu and severe food shortages in southern Somalia may be linked to the same problem familiar to politicians the world over: tax collections.
The abandonment of Mogadishu by al-Shabab puts Somalia’s U.N.-backed government in its strongest position in years in a country where anarchy has reigned for two decades.
( no / Associated Press ) - FILE - In this file photo of Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010, al-Shabaab fighters display weapons as they conduct military exercises in northern Mogadishu, Somalia. When Somalia’s al-Qaida linked rebels withdrew from their bases in the capital last month, a host of explanations were offered: being outgunned or out of cash, splits in the movement, a devastating famine in their strongholds. Added to those woes was a problem familiar to politicians the world over: tax collection.
Somali drought victims who lived in territory controlled by al-Shabab say there was little incentive to plant surplus crops because the militants demanded so much of the harvest as a form of tax payment. Families had nothing to fall back on after drought withered this year’s crops, so they were forced to flee to the government-controlled capital.
Meyrahow Hashi, a mother of seven who fled her farm in the Lower Shabelle region, said al-Shabab demanded half of a farm’s output.
“Al-Shabab enforced the condition that you give 50 percent or your farm will be taken over,” she said. “Tax men were always coming and threatening us. Then droughts turned the farm fields into ghost lands.”
Somalis who once supported — out of fear or conviction — al-Shabab say high taxes, harsh punishments that often involved amputations and denial of food aid to famine victims have drained much support for the insurgency.
“How can you farm if the profits will be theirs?” asked Ali Gocoso, a former farmer also living in a hunger refugee camp. “Our labor was only profiting al-Shabab. We got nothing, except a few sacks they left to us.”
Taxes were the insurgency’s main source of revenue, according to a U.N. report, but al-Shabab has lost control of Mogadishu’s biggest market — Bakara — and there is little left to tax in the famine-hit south. Al-Shabab’s second-largest source of revenue, from southern ports it controls, has been unavailable since May because seasonal monsoons create seas too rough for the small ships that come.
Revolts in Arab nations may also have disrupted foreign donations, although these payments are harder to measure.
Even as the insurgents ran low on cash, foreign donors began regularly paying their enemies, Somali government soldiers. About 8,000 have received $100 a month since December. Government troops are supported by 9,000 African Union peacekeepers, whose tanks and armored vehicles outgunned al-Shabab fighters in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.
The insurgency has been steadily losing ground in the capital since last year. The AU and the government now control all of Mogadishu. Allied militias control a strip of land along the Kenyan border, areas near Ethiopia and parts of northern Somalia near the semiautonomous region of Puntland. The rest of southern and central Somalia is held by al-Shabab.
But the AU and the government didn’t conquer the capital outright. The Islamists were still holding about a third of the city when they suddenly withdrew overnight. Al-Shabab said it was a “tactical withdrawal” and promised devastating suicide attacks. Those have not materialized, although car bombs have been found and defused or blown up before reaching their targets.
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