In the Netherlands, Australia and the US, radical Muslims are being linked with the group Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

By Koert Lindijer

Nairobi, August 8, 2009 – The name Al-Shabaab (Arabic for 'the youth') has sprung up suddenly in various places around the world over the past weeks, from the Netherlands to Australia, and from the US to Indonesia.

Four men from the Netherlands who were arrested in Kenya last week were reportedly en route to an Al-Shabaab training camp. They were arrested in Brussels, Belgium, after they were deported from Kenya, and they have since been extradited to the Netherlands, where they are being held on suspicion of participation in a terrorist organization.

Limited international agenda

This week four men were arrested in Australia on suspicion of planning an attack on a military base. They reportedly have ties with Al-Shabaab and some of them are said to have fought in Somalia.

Al-Shabaab is thought to have attracted hundreds of foreign supporters of the jihad, primarily from countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the group seems to have a limited international agenda. Leading Al-Qaeda figures such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have called for a jihad in Somalia via video messages in the past, but analysts say that ties between Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab have never been definitively proven.

"As far as we know, Shabaab fighters have had sporadic contact with extremists in Yemen and sympathizers from Indonesia and Australia earlier this year," says a source involved with UN peacekeeping operations who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "A suicide bomber with Somali connections blew himself up in Yemen earlier this year. Al-Shabaab also maintains good contacts with arms suppliers in Yemen.”

But there are no concrete indications that they are leading international terrorist actions, says the source. "Presumably they do not have the capacity for that."

Order restored

At least two young men from Minneapolis, Minnesota, a city with a Somali community of more than 30,000, admitted in court this year that they followed armed training from Al-Shabaab in Somalia. In October of last year a 26-year-old Somali-American blew himself up in the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland, becoming the first known American suicide terrorist ever.

Al-Shabaab emerged as the vanguard of the fight against the Somali government after the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was driven out in December 2006. The ICU, an alliance of radical and moderate Muslims, was in power for six months. In the summer of 2006 the ICU had succeeded in seizing power with broad popular support from a group of corrupt warlords who were supported by the United States in the hopes that they would help apprehend terrorists.

Under the fundamentalist rule of the ICU in the capital of Mogadishu, some form of order was restored to the failed state of Somalia, where any form of effective central authority had disappeared with the end of the dictatorship in 1991. Citizens went out on the streets unarmed again, the roadblocks were lifted and piracy off the coast largely came to an end.

The ICU was driven out at the end of 2006 by troops from Ethiopia, which feared the fundamentalist government at its border. The radical military wing of the ICU, Al-Shabaab, continued the fight under the leadership of Aden Hashi Ayro. Ayro had led Al-Shabaab during the six months of fundamentalist government in Mogadishu. He also led the puritanical campaign against television and the use of the mild stimulant drug khat. In 2005 he reportedly ordered the murder, in Mogadishu, of British BBC correspondent Kate Peyton.

Controversial agenda

From December 2006, Al-Shabaab, under Ayro's leadership, fought the troops from Christian Ethiopia, which were regarded by many Somalis as occupiers. Ayro is considered responsible for the murders of Somali and foreign aid workers and journalists in Somalia. The attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and on an Israeli hotel on the Kenyan coast in 2002 were reported prepared by Al-Qaeda in Somalia, with Ayro's cooperation.

American bombs killed Ayro last year. Since Ayro's death Al-Shabaab has been led by his comrade-in-arms Hassan Turki. The group now controls virtually all of southern Somalia and parts of central Somalia.

The political agenda of the fundamentalists is controversial in Somalia. Politically-inspired Islam in Somalia dates back to the nineteen sixties when the first radical Muslim group was established there. For centuries Somalis have practiced their Islam in a way that respects other faiths, with tolerance and moderateness. The rigid code of conduct of the fundamentalists has provoked opposition, as does their prohibition on the use of the popular mild narcotic khat.

The radicals have caused great annoyance among Somali Islamic scholars by their destruction of the tombs of respected Sufi saints, since according to the Wahhabi Islam adhered to by Al-Shabaab, ancestors may not be honored. Under the rule of Al-Shabaab, adulterous men and women have been stoned and thieves have had their hands chopped off in public.

Source: NRC International 

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