Obama administration ignoring the dangerous al-Shabaab

by: jim kouri | published: 08 08, 2010

This week's indictments of 14 terrorism suspects have opened the eyes of many government officials to the danger brewing in Somalia: that this beleaguered African nation may turn out to be the new Afghanistan.

The four separate indictments were announced on Thursday in the District of Minnesota, the Southern District of Alabama and the Southern District of California charging 14 individuals with terrorism violations for providing money, personnel and services to the Somalia-based terrorist organization al-Shabaab, a group allied with al-Qaeda.

Police sources said the men planned to wage jihad as part of the Somalia-based Islamist terror group with several thousand fighters spread throughout Somalia’s southern region. Al-Shabaab, whose full Arabic name means "Mujahideen Youth Movement," has strong ties to al-Qaeda, according to national security experts.

In a statement that came as no surprise to U.S. security and law enforcement experts in January 2010, the Somali-based Muslim terrorist group al-Shabaab announced that its fighters are aligned with al-Qaeda's global terrorism campaign. The deadly group said in the statement, broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, that the "jihad of Horn of Africa must be combined with the international jihad led by the al-Qaeda network".

The group's statement also announced that its militants had joined forces with a smaller insurgent group called Kamboni, another radical Muslim organization.

That group is reported to be based in the southern town of Ras Kamboni. Kamboni's leader, Hassan Turki, is accused of funding terrorism and terrorist groups, according to a U.S. intelligence source.

The Somali al-Shabaab claims its primary focus for now is uniting all Islamist terror groups and their supporters in order to create a Muslim state, or Caliphate, in Somalia to be ruled according to Sharia law.

The group's reign of terror includes public beheadings and stonings.

In a December terrorist attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, al-Shabaab terrorists killed and injured innocent civilians at a graduation ceremony for Somali medical students. The attack also resulted in the deaths of the Ministers of Health, Higher Education and Education of the Somali Transitional Federal Government.

"This was a criminal attack on people dedicated to building a peaceful, stable and prosperous future for the people of Somalia," United Nations officials said in their condemnation statement.

"While the UN should be expected to condemn such barbarism, calling it a 'criminal act' is wrongheaded and treats an act of war as if it were a bank robbery," said former Marine intelligence officer and New York police detective Sid Francks.

Unfortunately, Somalia has not had even a facsimile of a central government since 1991, and its police and military are fearful when confronted with groups such as al-Shabaab.

In an intelligence analysis report, several security experts said they believed the Somali-based pirates are helping to fund al-Qaeda operations.

Also, Somalia's police spokesman, Dhexe Abdullahi Hassan is quoted as saying that al-Qaeda was the prime suspect in a smuggling operation involving counterfeit notes after international financial institutions starved the terrorist group of all money supplies, according to a report obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police's Terrorism Committee

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