Militia groups motivated by idealism – and cash

Not every senior member of Somalia’s al-Shabaab Islamic militia is a paid-up adherent to al-Qaeda’s uncompromising ideology – but enough are to cause genuine fear for the safety of Judith Tebbutt.

The two poles of al-Shabaab are those members – many of whom have fought in Afghanistan or Iraq and are indeed foreigners themselves – for whom anything other than ultimate victory and domination over the country is failure. That they may never succeed in this is irrelevant.

The two decades of chaos in Somalia that is currently the cause of so many deaths in the ongoing famine there is a situation that suits them: the hard-core jihadist is defined only by conflict and fades in peace. Somalia is Afghanistan without the threat of western airpower.

This group is also the most active recruiter of foreign-born Somalis returning to fight from countries such as Sweden, Canada or Britain, with other non-Somali young radical Muslims joining them.

For this hard-core group, Mrs Tebbutt is scarcely a person, more a commodity, to be bargained away at best for a prisoner release.

The other pole of al-Shabaab consists of members – almost all Somali – whose main motivation is the memory of the clan-driven, warlord-ruled hell the country was driven into following the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Islamic rule, with its harsh but efficient legal system and robust attitude towards corruption is to them an attractive ideal.

It was the split between these factions that caused the movement’s recent withdrawal from Mogadishu.

The debate over the future strategy of al-Shabaab is still in play, and could see new groups emerge, as al-Shabaab (meaning “The Youth”) emerged from the Islamic Courts Union movement following its removal from power by invading Ethiopean troops in 2006.

Between these two poles sits your average ethnic Somali al-Shabaab fighter, who is at least guaranteed a wage and food by the group, and will have a mixture of national, tribal and religious allegiances.

Then there is the possibility Mrs Tebbutt has been taken by a group linked to pirates, or any of the freelance militias that operate in the border area. Her value to them is purely monetary, and at least in the case of the pirates, she is likely to be treated fairly well.

However, it is entirely possible such groups could turn over hostages they hold to other more powerful groups, either for money or under threat of violence.