MOGADISHU, June 25 — The basketball court was never just a place for jump shots. On the ground in Somalia’s capital, residents describe the Islamic Courts Union as something far more complicated than a militant group — an alternative system of order that, for a time, brought a kind of rough justice to a city that had known none. 2026 brings a seminal anniversary to the history of Somalia.
The Islamic Courts Union, a coalition of sharia courts that rose to power in Mogadishu in the mid-2000s, remains a defining chapter in the country’s long struggle for stability. For residents who lived through those years, the memory is visceral: checkpoints manned by young men in white robes, the sudden quiet of a city where clan militias had once traded fire daily, and the public punishments that came with a new, unforgiving order.
Hassan Aweys, the second-in-command of the Islamic Courts, was a longstanding target of the United States. His name appears in declassified cables and counterterrorism briefings stretching back years. By the time the Courts took Mogadishu, Aweys was already a figure Washington watched closely — a hardliner within a movement that included both pragmatists and ideologues.
The Courts’ rise was swift. They swept into the capital promising to end the chaos of warlord rule.
And for a stretch, they delivered. Markets reopened. Roads became passable.
The airport ran flights. But the same courts that settled land disputes also enforced strict social codes. The same commanders who disarmed militias also sheltered men the U.S. labeled terrorists.
By nightfall, the balance tipped. Ethiopian troops, backed by Washington, rolled into Mogadishu in late 2006 and scattered the Courts’ leadership.
But the occupation that followed was brutal, and the insurgency it spawned — led by the Courts’ most radical offshoot, al-Shabaab — proved far deadlier than the original movement had ever been. The anniversary arrives at a moment when Somalia is again at a crossroads. The federal government in Mogadishu controls little beyond the capital’s perimeters.
Al-Shabaab still levies taxes, runs courts, and ambushes convoys. And the memory of the Islamic Courts Union — of a time when a single authority actually governed the city — haunts the conversation about what comes next.
Residents describe the scene back then with a mix of relief and unease. Yes, the Courts stopped the clan fighting. Yes, they made the streets safe enough for women to walk to market.
But they also stoned adulterers and amputated the hands of thieves. For many Somalis, the question was never whether the Courts were better than the warlords — it was whether order could come without cruelty. Hassan Aweys, now in his seventies, has long since faded from public view.
But the model he helped build — a fusion of Islamic law and armed governance — has not. Across the Horn of Africa, from the rural strongholds of al-Shabaab to the fragile districts of the federal government, the shadow of the Islamic Courts Union still falls long across the sand.
