Mogadishu, January 09, 2010 – Renewed fears over the Somali al Shabaab group’s links with Yemen and an attack on the home of a Danish cartoonist by an axe-wielding man with reported ties to the insurgents have turned a spotlight on the Islamist group.

Here are some questions and answers about the hardline guerrillas and their international reach:

WHY DO WE CARE NOW?

Western security agencies have long said Somalia is a safe haven for foreign militants plotting attacks across the region and beyond. But until recently the focus has mostly been on preventing Somalis abroad becoming radicalized then returning to join the rebels and fight the UN-backed government.

There have been several cases of this, including reportedly the suicide bombers who struck a university graduation ceremony in Mogadishu on December 3, and last September at the heart of the African Union’s (AU) main military base in the capital.

Somali officials said the bomber who killed 22 people, including three government ministers, at the graduation was a 26-year-old Danish citizen of Somali descent. One of the AU base bombers was reportedly from Seattle, while about 20 young men are also said to have disappeared from Minneapolis’s large Somali community in the last two years to join al Shabaab.

WHAT IS AL SHABAAB’S RECORD?

The rebels have threatened in the past to launch attacks in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, as well in Uganda and Burundi, which both sent troops for the AU’s peacekeeping mission Amisom.

But they have so far failed to follow through. Experts believe some al Shabaab financiers have large amounts of funds in real estate in Kenya’s capital Nairobi — meaning they would not want to see any attacks that put their investment at risk. Some analysts suggest the absence of any strikes in Kampala or Bujumbura suggests much of the rebels’ rhetoric may be just that.

That has not stopped concerns being stoked further afield, however. Last August, police in Australia said they had foiled a suicide attack on an army base there by four men with al Shabaab links in that country’s biggest terrorism case.

Then Danish police said the 28-year-old who broke into Westergaard’s house had links to al Shabaab and al Qaeda and that the attempted killing was “terror related”. The group’s ties to Yemen have also come under close scrutiny given Washington’s renewed security focus on the Arab world’s poorest nation following the foiled December 25 attack.

Regional analysts say there has long been a degree of cooperation between people-trafficking gangs and other organized criminals on both sides of the Gulf of Aden, but that the extent of any other links remains unclear.

WHAT ARE AL SHABAAB SAYING?

Veteran al Shabaab commanders declined to speak to Reuters on the record about the group’s global connections, but a senior rebel official who agreed to talk on condition of anonymity said they received help from many individuals in Islamic nations who supported their struggle to impose sharia law across Somalia.

The official said jihadists from across the Muslim world had joined them, including high profile al Qaeda suspects like Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 Kenya and Tanzania US embassy bombings that killed 240 people.

Asked about a report that Fazul, a Comorian in his late 30s with a $5 million reward on his head, was now leading the group, the official said he would not answer because he was protecting his fellow mujahideen from the Western nations hunting him.

Source: The Daily Nation, January 6, 2010

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