US embassy cable - 05DARESSALAAM1015

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DAR ES SALAAM 001015 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR AF/E AND INR/AA 
 
E.O. 12958: 5/25/15 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, SCUL, TZ 
SUBJECT:  Zanzibar's Imams Declare a Truce 
 
Classified by Pol-Econ Chief Judy Buelow for reason 
1.4(b) 
 
REF: A) Dar es Salaam 1001, B) Dar es Salaam 658, 
C) 04 Dar es Salaam 1036, D) 04 Dar es Salaam 691 
 
1. (C) Summary:  Religious tension on Zanzibar has 
declined in recent months, even as political tension 
has increased.  Only fourteen months ago, a series 
of small explosions rocked Stonetown.  Back then, 
government officials publicly blamed Uamsho, a 
fundamentalist Muslim NGO that had a history of 
staging confrontational demonstrations against 
Zanzibar's Office of the Mufti.  The Uamsho 
activists who were arrested were quickly released 
without charge, however, and the bombing episode 
opened a new era of understanding among Zanzibar's 
religious factions.  In the following year, Uamsho 
was invited into a dialogue with the Office of the 
Mufti about amending Zanzibar's Mufti Law.  Although 
no change to the law seems imminent, the Imams from 
the civil service are now friendly with their 
fundamentalist NGO counterparts; both sides seem to 
be making an effort to avoid provoking each other. 
Meanwhile, both the Office of the Mufti and Uamsho 
are focusing on Zanzibar's upcoming elections:  the 
Mufti's office, by planning a civic education 
campaign; Uamsho, by publicizing allegations of 
human rights abuses occurring during the voter 
registration.  End Summary. 
 
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A Vocal Fringe Group Draws Attention 
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2. (U) Uamsho, or "Islamic Awakening," is among the 
most vocal of Zanzibar's small fundamentalist 
organizations.  Registered as an NGO in 1999, Uamsho 
is active almost exclusively in Unguja Island's 
Stonetown, and consists of a few dozen relatively 
young clerics with a Saudi Wahabist orientation. 
Uamsho's membership overlaps with that of Answar 
Sunni, a sect that accepts religious authority only 
from the Saudi Mufti.  It is also worth mentioning 
that most Uamsho activists claim Arab ancestry and 
hail from Zanzibar's Pemba Island, since both 
characteristics are strongly associated with support 
for the opposition CUF party.  Uamsho is nonetheless 
careful to disassociate itself from any political 
party.  Uamsho's tiny membership is not typical of 
the vast majority of Zanzibari Muslims, who practice 
a tolerant, moderate form of Islam incorporating 
many local traditions.  It's likely that many 
Zanzibaris view Uamsho's youthful clerics as 
sanctimonious, foreign-influenced upstarts. 
 
3. (SBU) Uamsho vociferously rejects Zanzibar's 
Mufti, and objects to the 2001 Mufti Law.  This law 
established the Office of the Mufti as a branch of 
the Zanzibari government, and gave the Mufti 
considerable legal authority over Muslim religious 
affairs on Zanzibar.  Uamsho, and its members from 
the Answar Sunni sect, typically observe the major 
Muslim holidays on the day announced by Saudi Mufti, 
rather than the Zanzibari Mufti.  Uamsho typically 
refuses to obtain permits for its public 
demonstrations, because it objects to the law 
requiring Muslim NGOs to request the permit from the 
Mufti's office rather than from the Ministry of Home 
Affairs.  In years past, police have violently 
dispersed Uamsho's demonstrations and public 
religious observations; Uamsho tends to relish the 
confrontation and the resulting publicity. 
 
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Bizarre Attacks Put Spotlight on Uamsho 
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4. (U) Everything is politicized on Zanzibar and the 
Government, dominated by the ruling CCM party, views 
Uamsho as a stalking horse for the opposition CUF 
party.  Just over a year ago, when a series of small 
explosions rocked Zanzibar's Stonetown, several 
Zanzibari government officials publicly linked 
Uamsho and the CUF party, and blamed both for the 
attacks.  Dozens of activists from both the NGO and 
the political party were arrested, but all were 
eventually released without charge.  (For the 
record, during a three-week period in March, 2004, 
small charges of dynamite damaged a bus belonging to 
a Christian school, some electrical installations, 
and the houses of the Mufti and of other government 
officials; a dud grenade was also tossed into a 
crowded restaurant frequented by tourists.  There 
were no injuries and damages were minimal.) 
 
5. (C) The government's accusations against Uamsho 
are part of a longstanding pattern, in which the CCM 
attempts to portray CUF as the party of Islamic 
extremism and violence.  (Reftel B)  Uamsho itself 
might have provided the Zanzibari government with a 
convenient fundamentalist target:  just days before 
the bombings started in March 2004, Uamsho had held 
one of its trademark illegal demonstrations.  There 
was considerable publicity when police broke up 
Uamsho's demonstration and arrested some 
participants.  Having just raised their profile as 
Islamic rabble-rousers, Uamsho's activists became 
the obvious suspects when the bombings began.  The 
real perpetuators of the attacks have never been 
identified, much less convicted.  (Please see 
Reftels C and D for background on the 2004 attacks 
and their aftermath.) 
 
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Uamsho Uses its Visibility for Political Leverage 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
6. (C) Last year's bombings and the accusations 
catapulted Uamsho into national prominence, and 
briefly, into the international spotlight. 
Suddenly, the international press came calling on 
Uamsho's cramped offices in a quiet back alley of 
Stonetown.  So did foreign diplomats, including 
Embassy poloff and the DCM from the British High 
Commission.  The diplomats urged Uamsho's leaders 
and their rivals in the Mufti's office to open a 
dialogue about the issues they disputed.  For a few 
weeks in 2004, the foreign press carried reports 
about the Zanzibar explosions, and Uamsho's 
suspected role in them.  Since then, Uamsho's 
clerics have has found a place in the rolodexes of 
foreign journalists, becoming reliable, accessible 
spokesmen for Muslim fundamentalists on Zanzibar. 
In a May 17 visit to Uamsho's offices, poloff noted 
that the only other visitors who had signed the 
guest book in the previous month were journalists, 
including reporters from Reuters and the BBC. 
 
7. (C) Uamsho also values its contact with the US 
and British diplomatic missions.  Although Uamsho's 
clerics do not agree with many of our international 
policies, particularly the Iraq war, they do see 
foreign diplomatic missions as valuable allies that 
can provide recognition to the NGO and leverage in 
its dealings with the Zanzibari Government.  Recent 
Uamsho press releases highlighted the NGO's contact 
with foreign diplomatic missions.  Uamsho also 
publicly called on the US Embassy to press the 
Zanzibari government to halt alleged abuses against 
Zanzibaris of Pemban origin. 
 
8. (C) In the last year, Zanzibar's religious 
disputes have cooled, even as the political campaign 
began to heat up.  Most of the usual flashpoints for 
conflict have simply failed to ignite.  The Answar 
Sunni sect publicly observed Idd al Fitr during the 
"wrong" days in November, and did so without any 
interference from the authorities.  Uamsho still 
refuses to request permits for its demonstrations 
from the Office of the Mufti, but it has refrained 
from street-level confrontations. 
 
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The Clerics Open a Dialogue on the Mufti Law 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
9. (C) Officials in the Zanzibar government and 
leaders in Uamsho quietly confirmed that they were 
discussing amendment of the controversial Mufti Law. 
In a February meeting at the Ministry of Good 
Governance, which supervises the Office of the 
Mufti, an official told poloff that the Ministry had 
established a Review Committee on the Mufti Law. 
The official said that the Government had approved 
the Law in 2001 because it was concerned about the 
threat of Islamic terrorism in East Africa and 
wanted to control fundamentalism.  He said that 
Zanzibar's fundamentalist groups, which were tiny 
and not typical of the Muslim majority, had 
vigorously objected to the law.  It was important to 
"listen to the NGOs," the official said, so the 
Review Committee was seeking input from Uamsho and 
other religiously-oriented NGOs.  In the May 17 
meeting, Uamsho Executive Committees member Samahi 
confirmed the meetings at the Ministry of Good 
Governance.  Uamsho representatives first met with 
Adam Mwakanjuki, when he was the Minister, and then 
with his replacement, Ahmed Hassan Diria.  Samahi 
said the process stalled after Diria's death early 
in 2005, but he thought that Uamsho might eventually 
resume discussion with Acting Minister Shamhuna. 
 
10. (C) Clerics in the Office of the Mufti have also 
reached out to the dissenting Imams of Uamsho. 
Sheikh Soraga, who directs most of the Offices' 
programs, told poloff that he had met upwards of 
four leaders of Uamsho on five different occasions. 
He made the rather extraordinary statement that "We 
(in the Mufti's Office) are no longer enemies with 
Uamsho."  Soraga is still trying to convince 
Uamsho's leaders that the Mufti Law is 
constitutional; Uamsho still refuses to ask the 
Mufti for permits to hold its demonstrations.  These 
disagreements notwithstanding, Sheikh Soraga said 
that Uamsho's Imams were now on friendly terms with 
those in the Mufti's Office:  he noted that they all 
greet each other in public, although they had never 
done so before. 
 
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The Imams Focus on Election-Year Politics 
----------------------------------------- 
 
11. (U) For now, all of the Imams have put their 
disputes over religious policies on the back burner, 
the better to focus on election-year political 
issues.  Uamsho has turned to human rights advocacy; 
specifically, calling the attention of the press and 
foreign embassies to abuses committed against 
presumed opposition supporters during Zanzibar's 
voter registration period.  (Please see reftel A for 
a summary of the meeting Uamsho arranged with poloff 
and three individuals arrested under Operation 
Dondola.)  The civil servants in the Mufti's office 
are attempting to use their network of clerics to 
disseminate civic education throughout the islands 
in advance of the elections.  Sheik Soraga said that 
the Office of the Mufti was in contact with leaders 
of Zanzibar's miniscule Christian population and 
with the World Conference on Religion and Peace.  He 
said that he would soon submit a proposal to USAID 
for an ecumenical group of clergy to conduct 
seminars on civic education and civic peace for 
Zanzibar's fractious political leaders. 
 
12. (C) Comment:  The Zanzibari Government moves at 
a glacial pace even in the best of times.  Although 
elements of the Mufti Law pose real concerns for 
religious freedom, the law is not likely to be 
amended any time soon.  The new truce between 
Zanzibar's religious establishment and its most 
vocal group of religious dissidents is nonetheless a 
positive development:  for now, dialogue has 
replaced confrontation on the streets.  Uamsho's new 
status is another positive development.  Probably, 
we will never know if Uamsho had any involvement in 
last year's fire-bombings.  But if Uamsho was ever 
inclined to violence, it is much less so now that it 
has secured a place in Zanzibar's policy debates and 
ready access to the media.  The focus on electoral 
politics by Muslim clerics across the spectrum is 
another intriguing development, especially since the 
civil servants in the Office of the Mufti presumably 
support the CCM, and Uamsho is still perceived as a 
stand-in for the opposition CUF.  If the 2005 
elections are again disputed, it's not inconceivable 
that the Imams would offer to mediate a solution to 
the resulting chaos and political deadlock.  It's 
doubtful, however, if either the Mufti's Office or 
Uamsho has the administrative capacity or political 
clout to effectively fill that role.  End comment. 
 
OWEN