One of the country’s preeminent experts on the Islamist agenda in America, Patrick Poole, in a recent PJ Media post tells us why the federal “lone wolf” extremist concept is bogus and highlights a case he was personally familiar with involving Somali Dahir Gurey in Columbus, Ohio during the height of the Al-Shabaab recruitment of Somali refugees in America.
For background see at least this post from 2008, here at RRW where you will see that the recruitment issue was covered fairly widely but never really broke into the national consciousness as has the recent ISIS recruitment in the US.
I think the final number of Somali refugees who joined Al-Shabaab, thumbing their noses at the good life in America you gave them, was in the 20s (or at least that is the number the feds actually found evidence of).
Here is Poole at PJ Media (hat tip: Richard at Blue Ridge Forum). ‘Lone Wolf,’ or ‘Known Wolf’? The Ongoing Counter-Terrorism Failure:
CVE (countering violent extremism) has been a colossal disaster because it has no roots in reality. It was always intended as a convenient fiction for politicians, bureaucrats, media and academics to avoid talking about the problem of the ideology that supports Islamic terrorism.
There has never once been a recorded case of anyone on the planet swearing their allegiance to the ideology of “violent extremism” and their willingness to kill others and die in the cause of “violent extremism.” It is a null set. There is nothing to counter, which is the whole point. And yet there are academics and institutions who are the beneficiaries of mountains of taxpayer cash to pursue the elusive CVE unicorn.
[….]
One crackpot theory has been that there are good Islamists that we can use against the bad Islamists. This was the keystone of the Obama administration’s Arab Spring policies. And this theory put into practice in Egypt, Libya, Syria and other places has left the Middle East in even worse shape than Obama found it.
Poole’s personal report from Columbus, Ohio about Somali refugee Dahir Gurey:
I’ve seen this “known wolf” problem work first-hand.
When the problem of terror recruitment amongst the U.S. Somali community by al-Shabaab became an issue in 2008 and 2009, there were reports in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, which has the second largest Somali population in the country, that al-Shabaab operative Dahir Gurey was fundraising and recruiting for the terrorist group in the area. He later showed up in Minneapolis.
When we told the FBI about it, the response was that our information couldn’t be accurate, because if it were true they would have heard about it from their local Muslim outreach partners.
Fast forward 18 months: Dahir Gurey was killed in a firefight in Mogadishu operating as a senior al-Shabaab commander. As I reported at the time, local FBI officials had publicly said that there was no known terrorist recruitment in the Columbus area just a week before Gurey’s death. He was featured last year in a recent al-Shabaab recruitment video targeting American recruits. But it’s doubtful our FBI office subsequently asked their Muslim outreach “partners” about it.
In 2009 we attended a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the recruitment issue and were shocked at the naivety demonstrated by Senators Lieberman and Collins.
And for your information: We have admitted 9,000 Somalis to the US in FY2014 which ended on September 30th.
That makes this year one of the ‘best’ years for Somalis since the Bush years of 2004, 2005 and 2006, here.
Update October 27th: See also Columbus, Ohio mosques mushrooming, here.