In March of 2009, I sat in a Senate hearing room in Washington, DC and heard our supposed intelligence “experts” tell the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the Somali youths, former refugees to the US, who went back to Somalia for Jihadist terror training were there only to defend Somalia from African invaders, like the Ethiopians. (Readers, we began following the news of the Somali missing youths, here in 2008.)
Senators Lieberman and Collins seemed relieved (giddy really) in March 2009 to hear the testimony from the “experts” that Al Shabaab had no capabilities outside of the Horn of Africa. Even I could tell they were delusional then!
[Incidentally, these same Senators will be hearing how the Iraqi refugee terror suspects came to be in the US, here, next week.]
Now comes news, oops!, Al Shabaab has joined with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to become a threat to the West—mostly because of their ability to recruit Somali immigrants and others living in the West! Hat tip: Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum.
From AEI Critical Threats (emphasis mine):
The terrorist threat to America from the Gulf of Aden is metastasizing as the most dangerous al Qaeda affiliate, Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), appears to be partnering with Somalia-based militant Islamist group al Shabaab in attacking the West.
On June 23, an American drone strike targeted two senior al Shabaab leaders in Qandal, outside the al Shabaab-controlled southern port city of Kismayo.[1] Somalia’s defense minister said on July 1 that U.S. military forces retrieved the two men; it is unclear whether they were killed in the strike.[2] The identities of the militants have not been released, but a senior American military official said that they had “direct ties” to Anwar al Awlaki, the Yemeni-American radical cleric who has been operational within AQAP.[3] The official added, “They were planning operations outside of Somalia.”[4] The reported links between Awlaki—whose primary focus has been on attacking the American homeland—and the al Shabaab leaders targeted in the strike suggest that AQAP and al Shabaab have established operational ties. Such an alliance would enable the two groups to leverage their joint resources, including AQAP’s bomb-making expertise and al Shabaab’s recruitment and hosting of militants from the West, to conduct spectacular attacks in the West.
[…..]
An AQAP-Shabaab partnership based on the proximity of their safe haven networks and a shared global militant Islamist ideology constitutes an increasingly complex and dangerous threat. The recent drone strike in Somalia may fortunately have disrupted any AQAP-Shabaab operational planning to attack the American homeland, albeit temporarily; the tasks of dismantling and defeating AQAP in Yemen and al Shabaab in Somalia merit a heightened sense of urgency.
For New Readers! Stories like this one always bring new readers to RRW and you should know that the US State Department brings in thousands of Somalis every year as refugees. Groups like Catholic Charities, the Hebrew Immigrant Aide Society, Church World Service and World Relief (among others) are paid with your tax dollars to resettle them in your towns.
We have admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US. To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years. In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you. The “teen” would-be bomber in Oregon was one of the refugees.
Also, after being closed for nearly two years, the US State Department is on the verge (has been on the verge for months and months!) of resuming the fraud-ridden family reunification program that admitted as many as 36,000 Somalis fraudulently to the US between 2003 and 2008. See the latest on new regulations, here.
Now, also, Somalis are coming illegally across our borders and ironically asking for asylum because of the radical Islamic Jihadists (including Americans!) in Africa.