Islamist militias - Somalia Al-Shabaab, Hizb-Al-Islam

There is no sign of any respite for Somalia after 20 years of war. Islamist insurgents, previously united against Ethiopia’s troops and now embroiled in internal rivalry and conflicts, have contributed to the chaos by waging a war of harassment against the fragile transitional government. The bearers of a strict version of Islam, they ban cinema, video games and radio music. Al-Shabaab (The Youth) has emerged as the biggest and best organised of these groups. It wages a campaign of terror and targeted murders against leading members of Somali civil society who are, it says, guilty of serving the interests of the “Crusaders” of the West. Dozens of teachers, academics and politicians have been killed.Regarded almost by definition as enemies, journalists have also been killed. Nine of them were caught in crossfire or were directly targeted by the various militia factions in 2009. Radio Shabellepaid a heavy price, losing its director, Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe, and three of its reporters in the space of a few months. Other Radio Shabelle employees fled the country. Al-Shabaab controls a large part of the country, has its own prisons, carries out arrests and executes sentences. In May 2008, the group tried to murder Bisharo Mohammed Waeys, the last woman to openly work as a journalist in the northern autonomous territory of Puntland, who has an independent stance and does not wear a headscarf when she appears on TV...Reporters Without Borders USA