Robow at a press conference
Sheikh Mukhtar Robow (born c. 1965), also known as Abu Mansur, was Emir of Al-Shabaab from 2008 to 2009 and a general of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia.
Biography[]
Robow was born in Berdaale in the Bay region of southern Somalia in the 1960s. In the 1990s he studied Islamic law at the Univeristy of Khartoum in Sudan, and became a worker for the Al-Haramain Foundation, educating orphans in sharia law. In the 2000s he went to Afghanistan to fight in the Afghanistan War against the United States and ISAF forces, and in 2008 he became the leader of Al-Shabaab, the armed wing of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) after the death of Adan Eyrow. He was succeeded by Moktar Ali Zubeyr, but remains a spokesperson.