The death of a Somalia intelligence officer laid bare a rift within the nation's executive, and could increase instability in the nation ahead of crucial elections.
24-year-old Ikran Tahlil Farah, who worked in NISA’s cybersecurity department was abducted June 26 near her home in Mogadishu’s Abdulaziz district, which is close to the agency’s headquarters.
Opposition leaders have staged a protest pressuring Somalia’s spy agency and Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble for information about the disappearance of the intelligence agency employee.
Somali analysts believe Ikran’s murder fit a pattern of NISA murdering its own employees to cover up the agency’s crimes and those of Mohamed Farmaajo, the Somali president who took Somalia to the brink by seeking to extend his term illegally.
Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble dismissed the chief of Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) Fahad Yasin who had at his disposal Qatari cash which he used to place Farmaajo in office.
Farmaajo and Yasin owe their careers to each other. Rather than crackdown al-Shabaab, they focused their ire on attacking political opposition.
Somalis suggest the motive for Ikran’s murder was her knowledge of Farmaajo’s illegal transfer of Somali recruits for training in Eritrea from where Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki deployed them into Tigray in support of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s genocidal campaign against the province.
Former NISA Director-General Abdullahi Ali Sanbalolshe said that “some people” told him Ikran had records about a program that secretly sent Somali military recruits to Eritrea to train.
Al Shabaab, meanwhile, which often claims credit for killing Somali security officials, explicitly denied any involvement in the Ikran case.
Allegations surfaced in June that those recruits have been fighting and dying in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict.
The circumstances of the missing Somalis remains a lightning rod in Somali society; many Somali parents have received no word about their sons for more than a year. The belief that Yasin murdered Ikran to cover up the case caused anger to boil over.
Somalis deserve to learn the truth not only about their missing sons but also to see that no figure, Yasin and Farmaajo included, can forever stand above the law.
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