operates several internal security organs, including an intelligence agency, Amniyat, and a police force, Jeysh Al-Hisbah. Membership Especially in its early years, al-Shabaab was sometimes characterised by Somali opponents as dominated by the Hawiye clan, which is one of the largest clans in Somalia. Hawiye remain influential in the group, and, according to a 2018 analysis by the Somali Hiraal Institute, five of the ten members of the executive shura council were Hawiye, as were about 94 of the top 220 officials. However, al-Shabaab is attached to an ethos of anti-clannism, and has therefore tried to appeal to minority groups and to ensure ethnic and clan diversity among its leadership. It incorporates a relatively large contingent of foreign fighters . Rank-and-file members, though sometimes recruited by force, are also attracted by the regular pay that al-Shabaab offers and by its political propaganda. In the past, many young al-Shabaab recruits were drawn from marginalised southern clans, such as the Jareer. Many are children. In February 2012, Fu'ad Qalaf Shongole, an al-Shabaab officer with responsibility for "awareness raising", encouraged a Somali gathering to send their unmarried daughters to fight jihad with al-Shabaab, which until then had used only male fighters. However, according to International Crisis Group, women rarely participate directly in military decision-making or operations, though they do play important roles in recruitment, intelligence, and explosives smuggling. History 2006–09: Ethiopian incursion Al-Shabaab rose to prominence as a relatively well-organised militia, garnering popular support from Somalis sympathetic to their opposition to the Ethiopian invasion: though the invasion had fractured the Islamic Courts Union, it galvanised nationalism on which al-Shabaab capitalised, especially for recruitment purposes. In the military arena, al-Shabaab suffered key losses during offensives by the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), which was established in 2007, but during this phase "put down the roots of an enduring insurgency", establishing networks and territorial bases concentrated in rural south-central Somalia. 2009–10: Dominance in the south Having made important territorial gains from mid-2008, al-Shabaab increasingly focused its attention on opposition to the Somali Transitional Federal Government, as the Ethiopian-led war segued into the next phase of the protracted Somali Civil War. By 2009–10, al-Shabaab controlled most of central and southern Somalia (south of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland), and it had formed administrative structures to govern territories under its control. It had particular success building relationships with local leaders in order to build cross-clan coalitions,