Word: shabaab
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sept. 11 hijackers worshipped. After al-Awlaki departed the U.S. in 2002, eventually ending up in Yemen, his sermons and teachings - delivered in English - apparently became a source of inspiration for the Fort Dix six and some of the young men who eventually left the U.S. to join al-Shabaab, the Islamist group in Somalia. (See the top 10 crime stories...
...choice of targets appears to have been a demonstration of the group's power because it occurred in one of the few remaining areas of Mogadishu that the Transitional Federal Government still controls. Al Shabaab fighters have advanced steadily across the country in recent months, while the TFG has been unable to expand its own control despite the backing of the United States, other western powers and neighboring powers Ethiopia and Kenya...
...Shabaab are a hard-core al-Qaeda group, and they are really establishing a foothold and deepening their bases in Somalia," Nuruddin Dirie, a London-based Somalia analyst and former presidential candidate in its Puntland region, tells TIME. "We knew they would target the government officials, but a hotel setting, targeting the graduating students, it tells us quite a lot about how ruthless, how uncaring this enemy is." (Read how Somalia's fishermen became pirates...
Sheikh Abdifatah, the al Shabaab official, says that the group had indeed received funding from al-Qaeda, along with other financers. He said the group does not distinguish between foreign or Somali fighters, so long as they seek the same goal. "We are in international Jihad against the enemies of Allah, so here on the ground we are all the same - we do not say this is al-Qaeda, this is foreign. We are all the same," he said. "Our next step is to continue the jihad until the foreign troops and TFG is removed together from the country...
Western powers offered their help after Thursday's blast, though they gave no specifics. The West has been unable to solve the al Shabaab riddle or figure out how to bestow enough power and authority on the Transitional Federal Government so that it can wrest control of the country back from the militants. President Barack Obama mentioned Somalia as one of the next battlegrounds in the fight against al Qaeda in his December 1 speech on Afghanistan. The United States supplied 40 tons of weapons to the TFG in June, but a security expert has told TIME that those guns...