SUMMARY

Aaro Aaro (the ”Spiders”, alternatively “Al-Shabaab – Mukthar Robow faction”) was an armed group active in Somalia. The group was comprised of fighters loyal to Mukthar Robow (“Abu Mansur”), who had splintered from the Somali extremist Islamist group Al-Shabaab in 2013. The group was created following a power struggle within Al-Shabaab between Robow and Al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane. The disagreement had been caused by Godane’s increasingly authoritarian leadership style, and his tendency to target and kill foreign jihadists. Robow was a proponent of Al-Shabaab’s original, collective leadership structure; he was also positive towards accepting foreign jihadists. Robow had also made an apparent attempt to negotiate with the Government of Somalia in 2009, which had enraged Godane.

Robow was one of Al-Shabaab’s co-founders and thus one of the group’s most central figures, serving both as its official spokesperson and a top military commander. Ideologically, Robow was a hardline Salafist who sought the full implementation of Sharia law in Somalia; he also had a very positive attitude towards al-Qaida. Like many of Al-Shabaab’s cadres, Robow hailed from the Rahanweyn clan; this meant that his splinter from Al-Shabaab deprived the group of many fighters, as clan loyalties can be highly persistent in Somalia.

Following the death of Ahmed Abdi Godane in 2014, the new Al-Shabaab leadership tried to convince Robow to rejoin the group; these efforts were not successful. In late 2017, information surfaced that Robow had surrendered to the Government of Somalia. However, it remained unclear whether this meant that Aaro Aaro had disbanded or joined the government forces, or if it remained an active non-state group.