Mukhtar Rubow Abu Mansur, a former Al Shabaab deputy leader. He had been barred from running for public office. FILE PHOTO | ABDULKADIR KHALIF | NMG
Somalia Prime Minister Hamza Barre on Tuesday broke with tradition and named a former Al Shabaab leader in his Cabinet in what could signal a turn in counter-terrorism policy.
Mr Barre named Mukhtar Rubow, a former deputy leader of the militant group al-Shabaab, two years after he was placed under house arrest.
Mr Rubow will now be Minister for Endowment, Religious Affairs and Counter-terrorism Ideology. He will mostly be in charge of dissuading the youth from joining al-Shabaab based on religious convictions.
He had been under house arrest since early 2019 after attempting to run for the South West state presidency, which was won by his opponent Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagreen.
Read: Somalia bars ex-Shabaab leader from public office
At the time, the Somalia spy agency, NISA, said he had not met all the conditions set for defectors from the group as the reason for his detention. According to a report by the UN Panel of Experts on Somalia, his supporters protesting the arrest were crashed by Ethiopian forces serving in Amisom.
Mr Rubow had defected to the government in 2017 after falling out with other Shabaab faction leaders. Over a decade ago, he had told the media in Mogadishu that he was lucky to have been one of the few Somalis trained in Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and that, on one occasion, he shook hands with Osama bin Laden, the then leader of that group.
Also read: US kills Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri
Cabinet selection
After his unanimous approval by Parliament as Prime Minister on June 25, Mr Barre told the legislators that he would form an inclusive Cabinet. He added that his policies comprised government priority issues such as security, the justice system, the ongoing drought, reconciliation and talks with the self-declared independent state of Somaliland.
Parliament will need to approve the new Cabinet.
Mr Rubow's nomination could be seen as controversial.
Although religion is often cited as the main influence for joining al-Shabaab, research has also shown that marginalisation and lack of economic opportunities play a role.
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