Somalis Leaving U.S. for Jihad

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/10/AR2009041003734.html

“Obama Team Mulls Aims Of Somali Extremists
Seeing Potential Terror Threat, Officials Debate Their Options”
By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 11, 2009; Page A01

SNIPPET: “Senior Obama administration officials are debating how to address a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests from a Somali extremist group, with some in the military advocating strikes against its training camps. But many officials maintain that uncertainty about the intentions of the al-Shabab organization dictates a more patient, nonmilitary approach.

Al-Shabab...”

A Look at a jihadi propaganda:

http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=SP231109

Special Dispatch - No. 2311
April 13, 2009 No. 2311

“Somali Shabab Al-Mujahideen Movement Spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Vows to Continue Fighting Foreign Forces in Somalia, Says Somali Pirates ‘Created by the Americans’”

SNIPPET: “The following are excerpts from an interview with Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, spokesman for the Shabab Al-Mujahideen in Somalia.”

A bit off topic but interesting...adding to post no. 42:

BLOG:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/what-piracy-this-is-the-same-old-jihad/

“What Piracy? This Is the Same Old Jihad
The Somali pirates are simply acting on centuries-old doctrines of Islamic warfare.”

April 17, 2009 - by Raymond IbrahimPage 1 of 2 Next ->

SNIPPET: “During the recent Somali pirate standoff with U.S. forces, when American sea captain Richard Phillips was being held hostage, Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer confidently concluded that “the good news is that these [pirates] are not jihadists. If it’s a jihadist holding a hostage, there is going to be a lot of death. These guys are interested not in martyrdom but in money.”

In fact, the only good news is that Richard Phillips has been rescued. The bad news is that what appears to have been a bunch of lawless, plunder-seeking Somalis “yo-hoing” on the high seas is, in fact, a manifestation of the jihad — as attested to by both Islamic history and doctrine.”

http://www.startribune.com/local/43231252.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

“Somalis, FBI in other U.S. cities on alert for terrorist recruiting”

“While Minneapolis is the core of an investigation, leaders elsewhere want to keep youth from being drawn to violence.”

By JAMES WALSH and RICHARD MERYHEW, Star Tribune staff writers
Last update: April 18, 2009 - 10:11 PM

COLUMBUS, OHIO -

SNIPPET: “”No one has disappeared,” said Ahmed Hosh, who works with Somali youths in Columbus. “But if those who did the recruiting were individuals talking to someone alone, the scary thing is it could happen here.”

The Twin Cities area has been at the center of the federal investigation ever since a 27-year-old from Minneapolis blew himself up in a suicide attack in Somalia last fall. But other cities with large Somali populations are being scrutinized, too: Boston, Seattle, San Diego and Columbus, which has the second-largest population of Somali refugees in the United States behind Minneapolis — an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people.”

Note: To really get the full impact of this blog entry, please click on the link below to read the full text and the hypertext links within the text on The Jawa Report. Thank you.

BLOG:

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/197420.php

April 24, 2009

“It’s Official: Obama Administration Now Supporting Terrorists”

SNIPPET: “You know how Leftists are always making the (false) claim that the US sponsored Osama bin Laden during the 1980s — the inference being that somehow we are morally culpible for “making” bin Laden and therefore that 9/11 somehow is our own fault?

Well, unlike that false urban legend about US sponsoring Islamist terrorists, it’s my sad duty to report that today the US is sponsoring Islamist terrorists. Directly.

I’ve mentioned Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys in the past, but today he officially returned to Somalia to join the US and UN sponsored reconciliation government, but let me recap why his return means that the US is now directly funding terrorists.

Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys was once heavily funded by Osama bin Laden, helped shield the US embassy bombers form justice, and is on the U.S. State Department’s list of designated terrorists:

Designated on November 7, 2001...
Hassan Dahir Aweys

Are you getting this? The U.S. State Department has Aweys on their list of designated terrorists. This means that all of Aweys assets are to be frozen.
But it’s not just the U.S. that has designated Aweys a terrorist. So, too, has the UN:

A U.N. Security Council resolution has designated Aweys as a terrorist
Today Aweys is back in Somalia as part of the new government.
The very same government that is backed by the US:

The United States will help pay for the fledgling Somali government’s domestic security force as Washington looks to bolster the fragile country’s peace process, said a top U.S. diplomat on Thursday.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Phillip Carter said the Obama administration wanted to focus on long-term security for Somalia while at the same time fighting piracy off its shores, which included a brazen attack last week on a U.S.-flagged container ship.

The US is now funding a government that includes a man officially designated by that very same government as a terrorist.
I wonder if OFAC can impound State Department funds headed for Somalia?

I, for one, would like to thank Obama for clarifying his position on terrorism. It’s crystal clear, I think, that the starry eyed Bush era doctrine of treating the terrorists and the states that sponsor them as one as the same is over.

Goodbye War on Terror, hello funding those very same terrorists!”

Note: Here’s another look at the same situation.

QUOTE:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/025818.php

April 24, 2009

Jihad leader returns to Somalia

Reconciler

In 2007 I wrote this in the Journal of International Security Affairs: “Aweys, who became the [Islamic Courts Union] group’s leader around the same time it began to gain significant power in Somalia, struck an explicitly anti-American posture and spoke of the Islamic Courts’ effort to take control of Somalia as part of the global jihad, vowing to fight America and its allies ‘everywhere, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan.’”

And now he is back.

“Sheikh Aweys returns to Somalia to ‘reconcile Islamist factions,’” from Garowe Online, April 23 (thanks to James):

MOGADISHU, Somalia Apr 23 (Garowe Online) - The leading opposition figure in Somalia returned to the country on Thursday after spending more than two years exiled in Eritrea, Radio Garowe reports.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the former legislative head of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), arrived on a private plane at No.50 airstrip in Lower Shabelle region.

He was accompanied by a seven-member delegation from the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), an Islamist-led opposition group that divided into two camps months before ex-ICU executive chief Sheikh Sharif Ahmed became President of Somalia.

“I will meet with anyone concerned about Somalia and my trip [to Somalia] is not influenced by foreign countries,” Sheikh Aweys told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV, although he did not specify whether he plans to meet with President Sheikh Sharif.

Sheikh Ismail Haji Addow, a senior member of ARS-Eritrea, told reporters that Sheikh Aweys would meet with meet with different sections of society in Mogadishu to promote reconciliation among Islamist factions.

“We [ARS-Eritrea] have moved back to Mogadishu, but we will keep an office in Eritrea,” Sheikh Addow said, while underscoring that Sheikh Aweys’ main task would be to reconcile factions within the muqawama, or the resistance movement that became popular during the Ethiopian army’s two-year intervention in south-central Somalia....

Sheikh Aweys fled Mogadishu in Jan. 2007 as Ethiopian troops backing then-Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf’s interim government entered the capital and dislodged the ICU from power.

The ICU fractured into different factions and began a bloody guerrilla war, known locally as the muqawama.

Some ICU factions later joined the Somali government, but the hardliners like Al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam – to which Sheikh Aweys and the ARS-Eritrea faction is a member – have rejected to recognize the government....

Posted by Robert at April 24, 2009 2:28 AM

Thanks to But Three Lefts Do for the ping to this thread.

Note: The following post is a quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2237914/posts

Some Minnesota Somalis subpoenaed to testify before grand jury
KARE11.com ^ | 4/25/09 | AP
Posted on April 25, 2009 7:14:34 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo

Some local Somalis have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury as authorities continue to investigate whether some young Somali-American men were radicalized here and recruited to fight with terror groups in their homeland.

Federal authorities won’t confirm the grand jury investigation but the subpoenas — as well as questions by FBI agents and customs officials — have unnerved some in the community. Local Somalis have felt vulnerable since officials began looking into why these young men left, and why one carried out a suicide bombing in Somalia last fall.

Omar Hurre, director of Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, the largest mosque in Minnesota, said about 20 young Somalis have come to him in the last few months, asking for advice about grand jury subpoenas.

“Most of them just come to me and say, ‘Hey, I got this. What should I do?”’ he said. “Some of them are even crying when they come to me and confused and scared because they think when they get a visit from any law enforcement agency ... that maybe they did something wrong.”

(Excerpt) Read more at kare11.com ...

Note: The following post is a quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2238311/posts

6 Killed in Somalia in Attack on African Union Peacekeepers
Garowe Online ^ | 26 Apr 26, 2009
Posted on April 26, 2009 3:06:25 PM PDT by nickcarraway

At least six people were killed Saturday afternoon in the Somali capital Mogadishu after Islamist hardliners attacked African Union peacekeepers (AMISOM), Radio Garowe reports.

The fighting began after armed groups launched mortars at an AMISOM base home to Burundian soldiers, witnesses said.

Several mortars hit residential areas in Hodan and Howlwadaag districts, killing at least six civilians and wounding nearly 25 people.

“Two people were killed in Howlwadaag [district] including my brother,” witness Ahmed Salad told Mogadishu-based radio stations.

Another witness said he saw three dead civilians at Bakara Market, the country’s largest marketplace, saying that shells hit inside the market causing civilian deaths.

Workers at Daynile Hospital and Medina Hospital in Mogadishu said tens of wounded civilians were admitted for emergency treatment.

An officer who spoke for AMISOM said no peacekeepers were hurt during the attack, but noted that three civilians who came to the AMISOM medical center for medicines were hurt.

No group has claimed responsibility for attacking AMISOM peacekeepers, but the deadly attacks come at a time Islamist opposition leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys has returned to Mogadishu and has demanded the withdrawal of AMISOM from Somali soil.

Note: The following text is a quote:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/025935.php

May 2, 2009

U.S. intel: Some jihadist cells migrating from Pakistan border area to east Africa

This report corroborates an earlier one from July 2008 that noted the same pattern. Interesting, isn’t it, how pockets of “extremists” and “militants” far removed from one another can end up “misunderstanding” and “hijacking” Islam in the same way?

“’Jihadis leaving Af-Pak for Africa’,” from the Times of India, April 29:

WASHINGTON: There is growing evidence that battle-hardened extremists are filtering out of safe havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and into east Africa, The alarming shift, according to US military and counterterrorism officials, fuels concern that Somalia is increasingly on a path to become the next Afghanistan — a sanctuary where al-Qaida-linked groups could train and plan attacks on the west. So far, officials say the number of foreign fighters who have moved from southwest Asia and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region to the Horn of Africa is small, perhaps two to three dozen.
But a similarly small cell of militant plotters was responsible for the devastating 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And the cluster of militants now operating inside East Africa could pass on sophisticated attack techniques gleaned from seven years at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, US officials said.

“There is a level of activity that is troubling, disturbing,” Gen William “Kip” Ward, head of US Africa Command, said. “When you have these vast spaces that are just not governed it provides a haven for support activities, for training to occur.”

Several military and counterterrorism officials cautioned that the movements of the al-Qaida militants do not suggest an abandonment of the ungoverned Pakistan border region as a safe haven. Instead, the shift is viewed by the officials more as an expansion of al-Qaida’s influence, and a campaign to gather and train more recruits in a region already rife with militants.
Last month, Osama bin Laden made it clear in an audiotape that al-Qaida has set its sights on Somalia. In the tape, he urged Somalis to overthrow their new moderate Islamist president and to support their jihadist “brothers” in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

Posted by Marisol at May 2, 2009 7:49 AM

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/05/warsame_al_qaeda_members/

“Attorneys for alleged terror supporter want to talk to al-Qaeda members”
by Elizabeth Stawicki, Minnesota Public Radio
May 5, 2009

St. Paul, Minn. —

SNIPPET: “The defendant, Mohamed Warsame, is a Canadian citizen of Somali descent who lived in Minneapolis in 2002.

The federal government charged Warsame with providing material support to al-Qaeda after he left Canada to attend two terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

SNIPPET: “Warsame’s attorneys want to talk to some-al Qaeda members, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9-11 attacks, because they were unable to identify Warsame by photo or name.

The defense will also ask for Warsame’s conditional release.”

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026234.php

May 23, 2009

“Report: Nearly 1000 foreign jihadists in Somalia, including American and British nationals”

SNIPPET: “Just a few, the jihadist leader said. “British and American fighters respond to jihad call in Somalia,” by Tristan McConnell for the Times Online, May 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Up to a thousand foreign fighters, including Britons, have answered the call to jihad in Somalia and are leading street-fighting Islamist extremists in the war-torn capital Mogadishu, The Times has learnt.

Early yesterday the Western-backed Government launched a counter-offensive after almost a fortnight of attacks by insurgents that have killed at least 200 civilians.

At least 45 people were killed yesterday in battles across the city, the highest daily death toll for months.

The insurgents’ attacks have threatened to topple the shaky Government of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed only weeks after the international community pledged £135 million to support him.

Senior security officials in the region say that the foreign fighters are behind the recent success of the extremists. More than 290 fighters from Britain, the US, Canada, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia entered Mogadishu in the past two weeks.

An intelligence report seen by The Times, which is due to be presented to the US Congress next week, states: “An estimated ten foreigners have taken the lead to command both Somali and foreign fighters in Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia.”

“I have no doubt that some of the foreign fighters are British as well as North American and Scandinavian,” said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top Somali diplomat for the United Nations. One Western diplomat with experience in Somalia said: “These foreigners are the ones with al-Qaeda links. I would be surprised if Britons were not the leading foreign members of al-Shabaab.” “

This just indicates that Radicalized Muslim groups are already producing Jihadi inside America. It also indicates that the hold on attacking America is still in place.

I believe that will soon be lifed if Obama continues to placate Islamic radicals. Islam is not attacking America because it is not scriptural to do so in the Koran and the Hadith as America fought back. If we pull out or sue for peace it will clearly indicate that America is finally ready to be terrorized.

Obama, if he continues to follow his course of action of late will cause terrorism inside the United States borders. When the blood runs in America’s streets there will be one man at fault, just as the lack of terrorism in the last 8 years is one man’s fault.

This time Obama will not be able to blame it on Bush. Obama in my opinion, is starting World War III. And I believe he is doing it because his style of leadership does not work without an enemy to blame. Obama needs enemies and needs them quickly.

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