LEEGO, SOMALIA – The Somali National Army opened what the defence ministry calls Operation Banooda on Saturday 24 October, and its first reported fight came near Leego, on the Mogadishu to Baidoa road. Danab commandos clashed there with fighters the ministry says were al-Shabaab trying to block the movement of troops, killing seven of them and seizing weapons. The ministry said the operation is meant to eliminate al-Shabaab across South West State. The column that left Baledogle the same morning is bound for Buurhakaba, one of five Bay districts that forces loyal to former President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen held by 17 October, and the government had published no casualty figure of its own by Sunday morning.
Seven Dead Near Leego and a Name for the Campaign
The ministry’s statement, carried by the state broadcaster on Saturday evening, said the Danab unit met the fighters on the outskirts of Leego, that seven were killed and several wounded, that weapons of different kinds were captured, and that troops were still pursuing the men who had escaped. Defence officials congratulated the soldiers and said they had taught the Khawaarij, the government’s term for al-Shabaab, a hard lesson on the first day of an operation intended to clear the group from South West State and secure its districts. The statement named no commander, gave no figure for the army’s own dead or wounded, and did not say where the operation is meant to end.
Reports from the road near Leego describe a mine first: a federal vehicle struck a device buried in the carriageway, and a brief exchange of fire followed with fighters who had moved onto it and were reportedly waiting in ambush. Soldiers displayed bodies they identified as al-Shabaab fighters, and the government said it had detained other suspected members of the group, but it released neither the number of detainees nor the names of the dead, and no independent source has confirmed either side’s account of the clash.
Leego sits on the main road about 54 kilometres east of Buurhakaba and roughly a hundred kilometres from Mogadishu; the ministry placed Saturday’s fighting in Bay region, while other accounts of the same clash put Leego in Lower Shabelle. In June 2015 al-Shabaab overran an African Union base at Leego that was held by Burundian troops. Early on Saturday more than two hundred federal vehicles left the Baledogle area for Buurhakaba, with a Danab unit travelling ahead of the main body to check for mines, after a week in which bombs between Afgooye and Wanlaweyn killed soldiers of the 54th Battalion of the 7th Brigade.
By Saturday afternoon the fighting had reached the same road further west, at Leego. On Sunday morning one report said the column had halted at Leego over fears of mines on the road ahead and that the advance on Buurhakaba had paused, while posts on social media had federal units entering the town; no official confirmed either account.
Abdulle Isaaq and the Road to Awdiinle
The forces moving toward Buurhakaba were led by Abdulle Isaaq, commander of the 8th Brigade, and early reports had them making first for Awdiinle, the district about 30 kilometres from Baidoa that Laftagareen’s forces took on Saturday 17 October, while the Danab commandos fought at Leego. Lieutenant Colonel Abdulle Isaaq Ibrahim was named to the brigade, part of the 60th Division, on 19 May, after serving as police commander of Wanlaweyn district. His appointment followed a suicide attack near Baidoa in which al-Shabaab killed the division’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Yoonis Aadan, and the brigade’s previous commander, Cali Caddow.
Awdiinle is where the South West Darawish went after President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government removed Laftagareen from Baidoa by force in March. On 13 April federal officials promised those forces rights equal to the national army’s as they returned to their bases in the city, under an arrangement overseen by the intelligence director, Mahad Mohamed Salad, and the police commander, General Asad Osman Abdullahi. On 22 April some of the same fighters drove into Doolow in Gedo with their vehicles, and Somalia’s ambassador to Tanzania, Ilyaas Cali Xasan, said publicly that weapons bought with the taxes of South West residents were being taken out of the state.
A second device struck troops stationed on the road between Awdiinle and Baidoa on Saturday, near Mooshe, and there was no official word on casualties or on any connection to the fighting at Leego. The 60th Division is the formation that Laftagareen’s Darawish attacked inside Baidoa on 28 September, in fighting that spread through at least seven districts and up to the presidential compound. Ethiopian soldiers of the African Union mission had handed the base at Buurhakaba to the same division in August, two months before the town fell on 15 October, and an 8th Brigade commander is now taking troops back toward the ground the division lost.
The Khawaarij Label From Buurhakaba to Leego
On Sunday 18 October the information minister of President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe’s administration, Nuur Siidow Baaba, said the offensive to recover the districts would begin in Buurhakaba and called the forces holding them Khawaarij, the word the defence ministry used for the men killed at Leego. A former minister, Hassan Hussein Hassan Eelay, accused Laftagareen and his forces the same day of joining al-Shabaab, and on 13 October a federal anti-money-laundering committee had listed Laftagareen among ten people it accused of financing the group. Laftagareen said his forces had recaptured and liberated four districts.
President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe’s administration claimed on 16 October that al-Shabaab fought beside the Darawish when Buurhakaba fell, and reports this week placed al-Shabaab fighters around the town, where Laftagareen’s forces say they will meet the federal column on defensive lines dug outside it. Ethiopian commanders whose troops garrison towns in Bay have told Mogadishu that their mandate does not cover a political conflict between Somalis. A local official said rain, buried explosives and the defences built across the roads could all delay the government forces before they reach Buurhakaba. The ministry’s statement on Leego mentioned neither Laftagareen nor Buurhakaba nor Awdiinle.
Danab and Gorgor troops made the first federal push on Buurhakaba on Wednesday 21 October and ran into what residents described as an al-Shabaab ambush near Jamaada, which they first said cost it two armoured vehicles and a later account put at three. The government has disclosed neither its dead nor its wounded from that attack, nor the objectives of the second advance. Danab was raised and trained with American support to fight al-Shabaab, and on Saturday its commandos were clearing mines and fighting at Leego on the road to five districts the army lost to Laftagareen’s Darawish in October, under an operation whose only declared enemy is al-Shabaab.
