General Abdalla Abdalla, the former Director of the Somalia National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) of complicity in the costly bombing and assault on Hotel Sahafi on Friday which claimed the lives of more than 60 people with over a hundred injured, some critically.
In a bizarre development to the lamentable loss of life and property to al Shabaab fighters at Hotel Sahafi, General Abdalla accuses his former agency of involvement, saying NISA had virtually turned into a beehive of Al Shabaab infiltrators.
The General had both, directly and indirectly, accused the Intelligence agency of becoming a launching ground of the Islamist fighters. He accused NISA of not only providing the intelligence needed to monitor government personnel and MP movements but, also, of providing the necessary camouflage for operations which, perhaps, explained why fighters who physically engaged security personnel disappeared without a trace in minutes of an event.
The General’s words intimate that if NISA is involved, the Farmajo government is complicit, too.
President Farmajo’s government expelled the general from duty in late July 2018 and later stripped him of rank in mid-September wiping out all association and history with NISA. Farmajo replaced him with Fahad Yassin, a controversial ex-Director at the Presidency office, Villa Somalia. Fahad, himself, is often linked with covert operations which the government of Qatar finances to worm into the good offices of the Somalia government and the hearts of its public.
If General Abdalla can provide a lead into his accusation, this can turn the international community against the fumbling Villa Somalia government. This, if proven, too, can reset all operations concerning security in Somalia, including the viability of providing protection to a government that is fighting itself from the inside to keep international monetary assistance flowing in.
The NISA of today is part.of Somalia’s police force.
In a situation, such as the one General Abdalla is intimating, no one is safe.