There aren’t enough good targets in Somalia…
A senior leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia has declared jihad against neighboring Kenya for supporting the weak Somali Transitional Federal Government.
Latest Updates: al Shabab RSS
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johnpi
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johnpi
Al Shabab launches new effort to drive girls out of schools in areas it controls.
The Al-Shabab movement in Somalia has issued directives in schools located in areas under its control, in an effort to instill Islamist ideology in the younger generation.
Islamist authorities in Merca, located some 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu, have ordered that boys and girls learn in separate classrooms and that the Somali national flag be replaced with the movement’s flag in schools, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat.
Observers and human rights activists are concerned that the new directives will help the Islamists spread a radical ideology among impressionable schoolchildren.
….Analysts suspect the directives are a sign the movement is trying to push girls out of the school system in moves reminiscent of the Taliban’s attacks against girls’ schools in Pakistan, since imposing separate schooling for boys and girls is logistically and financially impossible.
“Al-Shabab has already demonstrated its clear need to subjugate women, and the expulsion of girls from schools fits into this,” Roque said, “in the same way that the Taliban separated men and women, their roles, their rights, and their role in the public and private spheres.”
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johnpi
The New York Times magazine is publishing a big profile of Omar Hammami aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, the Somali al Shabaab militant commander, an American who grew up in Daphne, Alabama.
It’s a magazine article so there is lots of this:
Daphne sits along Alabama’s serene Mobile Bay, just north of the Gulf of Mexico. The town seems stopped in time. Colonial-style cottages and gazebos dot the bluffs. The wide, blacktopped streets are shaded by pecan trees and Southern maples. At dusk, the tide slaps the docks as fishermen loll, casting silhouettes against a golden sky.
But Hammami strikes his most dramatic pose silhouetted against the rubble of Somalia:
When Hammami engages in combat, he makes an impression on other militants, said a former Shabab commander, Sheikh Mohamed Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Mohamed. “He doesn’t blink in the face of the enemy,” said Mohamed, who recalled four battles in 2008 and 2009 in which he and Hammami took part. In combat, Hammami used a sharpshooter’s rifle, firing calmly and with precision, said Mohamed…
The author suggests with this quote from a poem that Hammami wrote when he was 12 that he is a glory-seeker:
“My reality is a bore. I wish, I want, I need the wall to fall and the monster to let me pass, the leash to snap, the chains to break.
….“I’ve got a taste of glory, the ticket, but where is my train?”
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johnpi
An AP article looks at the issue of extremism and al Shabaab support among Swedish Somali refugees.
“It’s a small group but they have power,” said Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a 25-year-old hip-hop artist and “110-percent Muslim” who has become the best known Somali in Rinkeby because of his campaign to counter al-Shabab’s influence. “People don’t speak up against them. They don’t dare.”
….Hussein, the hip-hop artist, said youth who were approached by al-Shabab told him they were shown videos of al-Qaida suicide bombings and urged to become jihadists in their ancestral homeland.
As his worries worsened, he started going public to Swedish media on the issue last year. Since then, resistance to the extremists has grown and last month dozens showed up for a rally against al-Shabab in Rinkeby.
The singer’s campaign has also prompted Swedish politicians to talk about the spread of extremism in immigrant suburbs, something that in the past might have drawn charges of being hostile to Muslims.
“He is a real hero,” said Nalin Pekgul, a leading politician for the opposition Social Democrats said of Hussein. Pekgul, a Kurdish immigrant, is an outspoken critic of the radicals.
But Hussein has paid a price. In September he was attacked on the street by a masked man who slashed his forehead with a sharp object – he has an inch-long scar – and warned him in Somali to “leave us alone or we’ll kill you.” Police haven’t found a suspect.
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johnpi
Al Shabaab launches offensive in Somali northern region of Puntland.
Having consolidated its power in the Deep South along the Kenyan border, Shabaab has launched a terror offensive in the northern self-declared state of Puntland. It is a Mexican drug gang-style campaign, with an aggressive string of targeted assassinations and low profile bombings in a Somali region that had been relatively safe and prosperous.
….In its quest to overrun Puntland, Shabaab will have to confront two strong groups. The first is Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a, a pro-government Somali Islamist militia that follows the religious tradition of Sufism. Shabaab has targeted Sufis for practicing a different strain of Islam, and has destroyed Sufi shrines, cemeteries, and other symbols. Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a is strong in the central regions of the country and has fought back against Shabaab’s incursion on its turf.
The second group standing in Shabaab’s way is the Puntland security forces.
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johnpi
In the wake of threats by al Shabaab to send fighters to Yemen to assist Al Qaeda there, the Yemeni government is cracking down on Somali refugees and keeping them locked in camps.
This follows reports earlier this week in Kenya that authorities there swept through Somali neighborhoods and rounded people up by the hundreds after protests on behalf of Abdullah al Faisal.
Apparently, Somali refugees are being unfairly tainted with the reputation of al Shabaab and viewed more widely in Africa with suspicion and mistrust. Consequently, they are being targeted for greater persecution.
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johnpi
Al Shabaab flogs one man for flirting, another for having a “secret marriage.”
“One of the young men was found engaging in secret wedlock which is illegal under Islamic law,” Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, a senior Shebab official, said from Kismayo.
“The other one was found seducing a lady alone. Both of them confessed to the charges in front of a court and they were publicly punished,” he said.
The flogging took place over the weekend.
Youths in some Muslim countries where sex before marriage is forbidden and the cost of a wedding prohibitive sometimes resort to secret marriage, known as “Qudbosir” in Somalia and “Urfi” in most Arab countries.
The custom, which keeps the matrimony secret from the couples’ parents and sometimes from another wife, is frowned upon in most of Somalia but has been practised in southern regions.
So by this particular interpretation of the Shariah, its purpose is to prevent those who are too poor to afford a wedding from getting married. And they say capitalists are cruel…
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johnpi
A friend of Omar Hammami has been keeping tabs on him through Somali contacts and gave the Toronto Star on update.
Hammami – who grew up in Daphne, AL and is now known as Abu Mansour “Al-Amriki” – became the leader of a 180 member foreign fighter unit of Al Shabab in September after the former leader was killed in a US helicopter raid. And the latest info:
Abdi says he heard in October that Hammami had been fighting near the Ethiopian border, and is recovering in hospital from bullet wounds and mental problems.
War will do that to a guy, Islam or no…
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johnpi
Danish police shoot Al Shabaab operative who was attempting to kill Prophet cartoonist.
Police foiled an attempt to kill an artist who drew a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Muslim world, the head of Denmark’s intelligence service said Saturday.
Jakob Scharf, who heads the PET intelligence service, said a 28-year-old Somalia man was armed with an ax and a knife when he attempted to enter Kurt Westergaard’s home in Aarhus shortly after 10 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Friday.
….“The arrested man has according to PET’s information close relations to the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaida leaders in eastern Africa,” he said.
Scharf said without elaborating that the man is suspected of having been involved in terror related activities during a stay in east Africa. He had been under PET’s surveillance but not in connection with Westergaard, he said
Police shot the Somali man in a knee and a hand, authorities said. Preben Nielsen of the police in Aarhus said the suspect was seriously injured but his life was not in danger.
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johnpi
The Asia Times excellent correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad, who recently had a face-to-face interview with Ilyas Kashmiri proving that he was still alive after the Americans announced him dead in a drone attack, has another good feature article with a lot of new information about Al Qaeda and its plans to expand in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Remember when Lashkar e Taiba was primarily a Kashmiri independence group before being transformed into a global jihad group? Al Qaeda wants to effect the same transformation elsewhere with local resistance movements – that is, colonize indigenous movements with local nationalist grievances and transform them into global jihad/global caliphate fighters.
…al-Qaeda sources have told Asia Times Online, al-Qaeda has re-established itself in Somalia and Yemen. From Somalia, the sources say, al-Qaeda plans to further disrupt trade routes around the Horn of Africa, while from Yemen, al-Qaeda aims to make a comeback in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia and beyond. The overall goal is to take control of all Muslim resistance movements in the region, very much on the lines of al-Qaeda’s South Asian pattern.
There’s also new information about the extent to which Ilyas Kashmiri is now an al Qaeda military leader.
In South Asia, al-Qaeda’s chief of the Lashkar al-Zil (Shadow Army), Ilyas Kashmiri, sits in Afghanistan orchestrating targets, including in India. (Lashkar al-Zil is an alliance of several Pakistani, Afghan, Uzbek, Iraqi and al-Qaeda groups that carry out operations under the al-Qaeda banner.)
Kashmiri is also cited as one of two al Qaeda leaders who worked on the ground in Somalia establishing the al Shabaab militia.
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johnpi
Al Shabaab applies its own ruthless brand of justice again.
Islamists in southern Somalia have stoned a man to death for adultery but spared his pregnant girlfriend until she gives birth.
Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka.
An official from the al-Shabab group said the woman would be killed after she has had her baby.
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johnpi
Somalis living in northern Kenya have accused the government in Nairobi of secretly recruiting and training youths from the region as soldiers to go to fight for the transitional Somali government against al-Shabaab fighters.
Local leaders have said that in the last three weeks alone, at least 200 Kenyans of Somali origin have been recruited in the town of Garissa.
The recruitment drive has also been accused of operating in other towns and the refugee camps in Dabaab.
Habiba Kosar, one of numerous parents in northeastern Kenya raising the alarm, said her 18-year-old son, Mohammed, was recruited and is being trained as a soldier at a Kenyan government security facility.
“My son was picked in the middle of the night. He is being trained for Somalia. We have never seen Somalia and have no connection with the country. I just want my son back,” she said.
“This is cheap propaganda disseminated by some militia groups in Somalia,” a Kenyan spokesperson said.
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johnpi
Somalia Sufi forces organize to fight the ‘existential threat’ of Shabaab Wahhabis.
Somalia’s main Sufi movement, Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa, on Thursday wrapped up an unprecedented conference in Nairobi to strategize its response to the rise and radicalization of the Shabaab group.
Dozens of the usually quiet religious movement’s leaders have in recent days converged on Nairobi from Somalia and from Western exile to close ranks against what they see as an existential threat.
“The Shabaab are misguided people who have misunderstood the true values of Islam,” overall chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Muhieddin told AFP before leaving Kenya Thursday.
Sufism is dominant in clannish Somalia, where Muslim saints are often also clan founders, but its leading clerics have voiced concern that hardline Islamist groups such as the Al Qaeda-inspired Shabaab were slowly eradicating it.
It emphasizes the mystical dimension of Islam and includes practices considered as idolatry by the followers of the Wahhabi sect adopted by the Shabaab.
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johnpi
Al Shabab threatens regional war in Africa.
Somalia’s al-Shabab fighters have said they will attack the capitals of Burundi and Uganda in revenge for rocket attacks by peacekeepers from the two countries.
The threat follows the killing on Thursday of at least 30 people in Mogadishu, the capital, by Amisom, the African Union’s peacekeeping force to which Uganda and Burundi contribute troops.
Speaking late on Thursday, Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, a senior al-Shabab commander, said: “We shall make their people cry. We’ll attack Bujumbura and Kampala … We will move our fighting to those two cities and we shall destroy them.”
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johnpi
One of Pakistan’s responses to the urban terrorist attacks in its borders has been to raid a Hizb ut-Tahrir ’seminar’ that was being held in Islamabad to, as a HuT spokesman described, “mobilize people against the American raj and Waziristan operations.”
…police arrested dozens of suspected members of the outlawed Sunni Islamist Hizb-ut-Tahrir organisation following raids in an upscale neighbourhood of Islamabad.
“Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a peaceful political party which was holding a seminar at a residence to condemn the South Waziristan operation. We will continue to make our protest,” the group’s chief spokesman, Tehrir Naveed Butt, said in a statement.
Over at HuT’s website, the full Youtube statement by the group’s spokesman has been posted in English.
Interestingly, Hut’s website also has an announcement that a nuclear scientist was among those arrested. His name is Rizwan Aleem, and he is a PhD candidate at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI). I’ve blogged a few times about this illustrious learning institution when the Taliban were about to take over the district where it is located in the Northwest Frontier Province, and made some predictions about how campus life would change, the institution’s reputation would be affected, and how donations might drop off.
Given HuT’s approving comments about al Shabaab-style shariah, Aleem must have disapproved of the campus life (gender mixing) that others seemed so proud to have posted pictures of on GIKI’s Facebook page. Anyway, Aleem’s future is in doubt now: “Sources say the Hizbut Tahrir activists were likely to be handed over to intelligence agencies for further interrogation.”
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johnpi
Shabaab rebels destroy Sufi religious leader’s grave and mosque in Somalia.
Witnesses said residents in the small town of Galhareeri tried to stop the al Shabaab fighters late Sunday, but the rebel gunmen opened fire in the air, forcing everyone to flee.
“They destroyed the grave of Sheikh Ali Ibaar and our mosque. They also knocked down our Islamic university,” local elder Hassan Ali told Reuters by telephone from Galhareeri.
“We are now just squatting among the trees on the outskirts of the town. We do not know where to flee.”
….Separately in the capital Monday, police displayed the body of a foreign gunman who appeared to be Arab and was killed Sunday during an al Shabaab attack on government forces.
“You see this dead Arab. He was among the members of al Qaeda who came from other countries just to destroy Somalia,” police spokesman Abdullahi Barise told reporters, standing over the corpse of a light-skinned man with several bullets wounds.
Al Shabaab have urged foreign jihadists to join their battle against what they describe as Somalia’s apostate government.
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johnpi
Sharia law meets “Girls Gone Wild” – Salon on latest Shabaab outrage.
Clearly, al Shabaab’s outrage over women’s underthings tracks with its general modesty initiative. What of the bra removal and jiggling of breasts, though? It might seem counter-intuitive to any modesty campaign, but such shaming is an essential part of keeping women’s bodies under wraps. Forcing a woman to put on such a show in public is humiliating and reputation damaging. These are just the things al Shabaab would like to associate with women’s sexuality.
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johnpi
Guns and grenades for Somali Ramadan quiz winners.
No luxury cruise but a ticket to jihad was the prize for the winners of a team quiz organised by Somalia’s insurgent Shebab group during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
“The reason the young men were rewarded with weapons is to encourage them to participate in the ongoing holy war against the enemies of Allah in Somalia,” Sheikh Abdullahi Alhaq said at a ceremony late Friday.
The radio-broadcast quiz organised by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab organisation in the southern Somali city of Kismayo lasted throughout Ramadan, which ended last month.
Five neighbourhoods of the port city entered the competition, which consisted mainly of questions on science, culture and the Koran.
The winners — a team from Farjano district — were given a first prize consisting of one AK-47 assault rifle, two hand grenades, an anti-tank landmine and office supplies at a ceremony attended by hundreds of residents.
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johnpi
Somali hardliners whip women for wearing bras.
Somalia’s hardline Islamist group al-Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a deception, north Mogadishu residents said on Friday.
….Residents said gunmen had been rounding up any woman seen with a firm bust and then had them publicly whipped by masked men. The women were then told to remove their bras and shake their breasts.
“Al-Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,” a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.
“They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.”
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johnpi
Feature article on Sufi communities resisting al Shabaab in Somalia.
“Our Jihad is for the freedom of our religion and of Muslims’ property which Al-Shabab describes legal for them to loot,’’ Abu-Yusuf snappily said after taking a phone call from Mogadishu telling him that Al-Shabab executed two men for espionage.
“They kill anyone who does not want their crazy ideologies and fake justifications,’’ he adds.
….In contrast to Al-Shabab, there are no strict religious punishments in the group’s strongholds such as, whipping, executions and amputations, rather people are being peacefully preached to practice the religion well.
“The Sufis will forever be our religion’s clerics. They were the first ones to spread Islam in our country,’’ Somali educator Abdulle Nur told The Media Line by phone from Nairobi, Kenya.
The central region of Galgadud is the only place in which Sufism was threatened as Al-Shabab forbade the performances of spiritual ceremonies in the region while it was under their control.
But now the Sufis are in charge, and this time in Galgadud, Sufis are enforcing the law, patrolling the streets and implementing justice.
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johnpi
An American man has been arrested in northern Kenya while trying to enter an area of Somalia controlled by Islamist insurgents, police and residents said on Monday.
Lawless Somalia is viewed by the international community as a breeding ground for al Qaeda-linked groups which have been carrying out an insurgency against the U.N.-backed administration of President Sheikh Shariff Ahmed.
A witness told Reuters that the man was arrested on Sunday by police manning the immigration office at the border town of Liboi in Kenya’s North Eastern province. He was on his way to Qoqani in southern Somalia without any security escort.
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johnpi
The Sunday Tribune can reveal that the US’s closure of its offices in the country [on September 22] was because of intercepted cellphone communication detailing planned attacks on American interests here. It is unclear whether American interests necessarily include a possible visit by US President Barack Obama for the official opening of the World Cup.
Intelligence officers, according to two sources, intercepted a call made in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, to a group based in Somalia, and the conversation confirmed a plot to blow up American interests in South Africa last month.
A source said US intelligence agents, South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency and SAPS Crime Intelligence operatives launched a surveillance operation on the Cape-based group, gathering crucial information before the operation was thrown into disarray.
Could FBI director Robert Mueller’s comments about al Shabaab to a congressional hearing last week have been a reference to this attack?
“I would think that we have seen some information that the leaders would like to undertake operations outside of Somalia,” Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
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johnpi
Somalia president condemns Minnesota terror recruiting.
The president of Somalia on Sunday denounced the recruiting of young men from Minnesota’s huge Somali community for terrorist activity in his war-ravaged homeland, and said he plans to work with the U.S. government to bring those still alive back home.
….Ahmed is in Minnesota for three days as he tries to build support for his struggling government. He’s met with scholars, university students, former Somali leaders, women, elders and others.
Sunday evening, he spoke to about 5,000 people at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The crowd cheered when Ahmed again condemned the terrorist recruiting.“Those responsible for this trouble, I am asking them to stop what they are doing,” he said in Somali that was translated.
Ahmed expressed his condolences to the parents of the young men who have been recruited and said his government would give them any assistance it could. He said he was saddened to see the men flee the U.S. to engage in violence.
“These parents brought their children here for a peaceful life,” he said.
Ahmed also plans trips to Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, another city with a large Somali population, as he continues to advocate for peace in Somalia.
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johnpi
A few bad news items this morning. I’ll post as a roundup:
• Fox News reports that for the first time, a top US law enforcement official, FBI Director Robert Mueller, has stated on record that al Shabaab may be interested in attacks outside Somalia, including possible operations inside the United States.
• Suicide bomber kills five at UN food agency in Pakistan. Thabet already posted this below, but in the same article, a report that the US is considering a strategy that includes sending special forces on ground operations inside Pakistan for the first time (I haven’t heard this before).
American officials have said they are considering a strategy of intensified drone attacks combined with the deployment of special operations forces against al-Qaida and Taliban targets on the Pakistani side of the border — part of an alternative to sending more troops to Afghanistan in what is an increasingly unpopular war.
• A ludicrous article out of Australia has a headline that warns about ‘terrorist tweeting.’ The article itself is a rehash of concerns about violent extremists using technology to advance their interests.
Terrorist leaders were using videos that were reported by news channels and validated by CIA statements to conduct what he called ”virtual state visits”, Mr Mirchandani said.
Ooh – ”virtual state visits” – whatever.
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johnpi
Shabaab rebels take full control of Kismayu port.
Many casualties, including foreign fighters, reported on all sides in battle with another Islamist militia.
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johnpi
Islamist groups on a “war footing” in Kismayo, Somalia.
Tension is rising in Somalia’s southern coastal city of Kismayo following fears of impending fighting between Islamist groups Al-Shabab and Hisbul-Islam due to a split within their ranks, local sources told IRIN.
The two groups control Kismayo, 500km south of the capital Mogadishu, and much of the country’s southern regions.
The tension follows a decision by Al-Shabab to ignore an earlier agreement between the two that control of the city would rotate between them, a businessman resident in Kismayo, who requested anonymity, said.“When they [Islamists] captured Kismayo in 2008, they agreed that Al-Shabab will govern for the first six months and then Hisbul-Islam will take over, but Al-Shabab now refuses to honour that agreement,” he said.
He said both sides had brought troop reinforcements into the city. Al-Shabab was reported to be digging in on the southern side of the city while Hisbul-Islam had set up defensive positions in the north.
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johnpi
Abu Mansour al-Amriki — or Omar Hammami as he was known – has been spotted in the background of a Shabaab video released on Tuesday. This is according to MEMRI and reported by Fox News. There is a picture of some fighters training and a blurred figure behind who is reported to be the Alabama native. Fox fills in some blanks in his background, including the report that he was ‘radicalized’ in Toronto:
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johnpi
World Policy Review had a pretty good three part investigative series that delves into the question of why Somali-American youth in Minnesota would be susceptible to appeals to go fight in Somalia.
Part I here.
Part II here.
Part III here.Here’s an excerpt from Part II:
For protection and justice, many young Somalis turn to gangs with names like the “Hot Boyz” and the “Somali Mafia.” Minneapolis community organizer Shukri Adan estimated in a report to the city that between 400 and 500 Somali youths are in gangs, according to the Associated Press.
What’s striking is the similarity between the Somali gangs and Shabab, which not coincidentally means “youth” in Arabic. Like the Somali gangs in Minneapolis, Shabab originally formed to defend innocent victims of violent crime, before evolving into the armed wing of an Islamic political movement from which it subsequently split. Today, the group mainly functions as a loose alliance of mercenaries, religious zealots, criminals and, yes, street gangs.
During our visit to Mogadishu in November 2007, city residents told us they feared the gangs more than they did any Shabab army, for the gangs would stop cars and steal drivers’ cash and cell phones. Over the years, Shabab has become what it once despised. So, too, have the Somali-American gangs. Formed to protect Somali youths from white violence, the Minnesota gangs are now suspects in a number of killings . . . of Somalis.
For young Somali-Americans already deep into gang culture, the step to joining a group that is, in essence, just a bigger, better-armed and more strictly religious gang, based in another country, is a short one.
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johnpi
Al Shabaab has put out a new call for reinforcements from foreign militants after a US commando operation killed one of the region’s most wanted al Qaeda suspects.
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johnpi
A Fox news local station that broadcasts in the southern Alabama/ Florida panhandle area will be airing a hit piece tonight on the Muslim Student Association, using Omar Hammami as its jumping off point. Hammami was president of the MSA at the University of Southern Alabama right after 9/11.