The Somali government does not want media houses to continue referring the the Al-Shabaab militant group by their name, Al-Shabaab.
Instead it wants the group to be called ‘Ugus’ which means “the Group that Massacres the Somali People”.
According to BBC the groups has respond by saying that the government of Somalia should also be referred to as ‘Ugus.
In this case, Ugus means “the Group that Subjects the Somali People to Humiliation”.
The head of Somalia’s Intelligence and Security Services Gen Abdirahman Mohamud Turyare told journalists that Al-Shabab, which means the youth in Arabic, was “a good name”.
“We should not allow this good name to be dirtied. This enemy we are fighting is called Ugus.”
Gen Turyare was speaking at the headquarters of information ministry in front of journalists and information ministry officials.
Al-Shabaab which controls most parts of Southern Somalia, is an off-shoot of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which splintered into several smaller factions after its defeat in 2006 by Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the TFG’s Ethiopian military allies.
The group describes itself as waging jihad against “enemies of Islam”, and is engaged in combat against the Federal Government of Somalia and the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).
Al-Shabaab has been designated as a terrorist organization by Australia, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. As of June 2012, the US State Department has open bounties on several of the group’s senior commanders.
