SUMMARY
ARS/UIC (Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia/Union of Islamic Courts) referred to as SICS (Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia) during 2006.
SICS (Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, Golaha Sare ee Makhamaddaha Islaamiga ee Soomaaliya) was an umbrella organisation formed by the Somali capital Mogadishu’s sharia (i.e. the body of Islamic religious law) courts. There are many variations of the Council’s name; it has been referred to as Islamic Courts Union, Joint Islamic Courts, Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC). In fact, the umbrella organisation did not officially become SICS until 21 July 2006 when the chairmanship shifted to the more militant leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys who launched the new name. The Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) was formed in October 2007. ARS brought together four groups the largest of them being SICS (UIC).
While SICS (then called the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts, SCIC) was established in 2004, the phenomenon of Islamic courts first appeared in Mogadishu in the early 1990s as a means to uphold law and order rather than imposing Islamic rule in the aftermath of the collapse of the Somali state in 1991. After gaining administrative control over Mogadishu and enjoined regions in June 2006, the SICS in effect dissolved itself in December 2006 when Ethiopian and Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces defeated SICS forces. However, the SICS militias continued to be active in 2007 when they joined the ARS alliance.
The rise of SICS in Somalia has been attributed to the country’s culturally resonant mix of Somali clan customs and traditional Islamic faith. Each court had jurisdiction over members of a given sub-clan, often living in the same Mogadishu neighbourhood and most courts also had an affiliated armed militia.
To create inter-court coordination a predecessor to SICS was established in 2000, the Shari’a Implementation Council. This council’s primary functions included prisoner exchanges as well as occasional joint militia operations - thus creating the first non-warlord-controlled and pan-Hawiye (Somalia’s largest clan) military force. The Shari’a Implementation Council was dismantled in 2003, but was soon replaced by SICS which brought about an unprecedented expansion of the Shari’a court system with its promises of security to the populace. SICS were quickly branded as ‘extremist’ by the Somali transitional government, but the position of the courts resounded with diverse segments of the population, adhering to the whole spectrum of political Islam (only two courts had been consistently associated with militancy, Ifka Halane and Shirkoola). Increasingly, the Courts began encroaching on the authority of the Hawiye warlords in Mogadishu and in the spring of 2006 the SICS forces and the war lords clashed violently. By early June 2006, SICS had complete control over Mogadishu. Further, SICS expanded beyond Mogadishu to Kismayo and Lower Juba Valley.
SICS consisted mainly of three components. The most visible part of the Courts was the de facto regional authority in much of central and southern Somalia, anchored in the Hawiye clan. The supreme organs of the courts – the executive committee and the shura (legislative council) – were almost exclusively Hawiye. For this segment of the courts, the objective was to restore a governing administration to Hawiye-inhabited areas and to provide cohesive political platform for Hawiye interests (the Hawiye perceived themselves as politically disenfranchised at the time as the Darod clan dominated the TFG). The second part was SICS militant wing, Shabaab (Hisb’ul Shabaab, The Young) which was an elite, cross-clan militia group with links to al-Qaida. This group’s aims were broader than the regional authority’s; framing the conflict as pan-Somali and pan-Islamic. The last element of SICS was made up of the former leaders of an originally Salafi religious movement that evolved into a prominent militant Islamist group in the 1990s, AIAI (Al-Itihaad Al-Islaami). This core has held SICS political centre between the Islamist jihadis of the Shabaab and the more clan-oriented, religious traditionalists.
In October 2007 the Union of Islamic Court militias were brought under a new political organisation as they joined the ARS. In May 2008 the political front of ARS split into two rival wings over the UN-sponsored Djibouti peace process, with a group led by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (the ARS-Djibouti) engaging in peace talks with the TFG and the other group led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys (the ARS-Asmara) rejecting the Djibouti process. The UIC, who made up most of the ground forces, decided to not let the political leadership-struggle affect the armed struggle on the ground and keep the organisation united. The ARS Djibouti eventually signed peace agreements with the government, which led to the creation of a TFG-ARS unity government in January 2009. ARS-Asmara rejected the agreements and joined Hibul Islam in who continued to fight the government of Somalia, in February 2009. On 20 January 2009 The ARS-Djibouti and TFG formed a Unity government ,from this date the ARS/UIC actor is seen as dissolved.
There are alleged links between SICS and ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front) as well as with UWSLF (United Western Somali Liberation Front), both fighting for self-determination for the Somali region of Ethiopia. Moreover, SICS have been cooperating with Ethiopian rebel group OLF (Oromo Liberation Front). In fact, hundreds of Oromo fighters reportedly arrived in Somalia between June and December 2006 to buttress SICS forces. SICS alliance with above groups was underpinned by Eritrean military assistance. Ethiopia and Eritrea, in a dispute over their common border, have been waging proxy conflicts in Southern Somalia by bolstering different sides in the Somali intra-state conflict.
The first elected chairman of SICS was Sheikh Hussein Sherif Ahmed, a school teacher and previously a cleric associated with a traditional Sufist association. A more radical wing of SICS was led by the ‘Salafist’ Chairman of the Courts’ shura, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Awyes. Awyes has a past with the AIAI. Senior Shabaab leaders include Aden Hashi ‘Ayro (a protégé of Awyes) and Mukhtar Roobow.
SICS (ARS/UIC) has been involved in the intra-state, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organised violence.
