His orange henna-dyed beard and attractive glasses made him easy to spot in a crowd, but Abdul Qadir Mumin still remains elusive.
The Somali leader of the Islamic State (IS) group has likely reached the position of the organization’s most powerful figure, analysts say, even though he does not have an official title.
While observers wonder who is behind IS-designated Caliph Abu Hafs al-Hachimi al-Kourachi – the future leader of all Muslims – or whether such a person actually exists, Abdul Qadir Mumin is already in power in IS’s provinces. Will be running the General Directorate of. From Somalia.
“He is the most important person, the most powerful person, he is the person controlling the global Islamic State network,” said Torey Hamming of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR).
In this opaque structure where leaders are killed one by one by the United States, Mumin is among the few “seniors” who managed to survive the entire time, which gives him some status within the group, ” Hamming told AFP. ,
A few months ago it was thought that he had died in the American attack. But since no evidence of his demise was ever found, he is considered to be alive and active.
“Somalia is important for financial reasons,” Hamming said. “We know they send money to Congo, Mozambique, South Africa, Yemen, Afghanistan. So they have a good business model.”
Transactions are so obscure that it is impossible to estimate the amounts – as well as to determine the route the money takes from one place to another.
Small area, big appeal
Born in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in Somalia’s north-east, Sheikh Mumin lived in Sweden before settling in England, where he acquired British nationality.
In London and Leicester, he built a reputation in the early 2000s as a fiery preacher in fundamentalist mosques, but also in online videos.
He is said to have burned his British passport upon arriving in Somalia, where he became a propagandist for the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab group, before announcing his intention to join IS in 2015.
“He controls a small area but has big appeal. He distributes volunteers and money,” said a European intelligence official, who declined to be named but claimed to have been involved in an IS attack in Mozambique in May. “Was carried out by Maghreb and African terrorists”.
Mumin also funds Ugandan rebels from the IS-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, “who now number between 1,000 and 1,500,” the official said. With Mumin’s help, “they have recently turned to jihad in search of “radicalisation, weapons and funding”.
Some observers have described him as the caliph of the jihadist command structure. However, such an official designation would signal an ideological reversal for the group with deep roots in the Levant, the region of the IS caliphate that lasted from 2014 to 2019 and extended into Iraq and Syria.
“This will create some kind of uproar within the community of IS supporters and sympathizers,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP) think tank.
migration to africa
In theory, the caliph should be an Arab from a tribe associated with the Prophet. “The supreme leader of a group so concerned about its ideological underpinnings cannot be a Somali with an orange beard,” Schindler told AFP.
Especially because leaders of actively operating IS affiliates, such as IS-K in Afghanistan or ISWAP in West Africa, can claim this designation.
Although the Somali does not meet traditional leadership criteria, his geographical location brings some advantages.
“The Horn of Africa may have offered welcome insulation from instability in the Levant and greater freedom of movement,” said CTC Sentinel, a publication on terrorism threats at the West Point Military Academy.
It added, “This profile of leadership is similar to that of another jihadist leader – Osama bin Laden – who saw that funding was most important to winning his war.”
Despite the small number of fighters under his command, Mumin’s rise to the top also reflects two internal dynamics within IS.
The first, Hamming said, is that “the caliph is no longer the most important figure in the Islamic State”.
And second is that IS is actually trying to make a gradual strategic shift towards Africa.
A European intelligence official said, “Ninety percent of the violent images used on jihad in Europe come from Africa.”
Nonetheless, the CTC Sentinel wrote, the organization’s leadership is centralized in the Middle East.
“In this sense, much is business as usual,” it said.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
