Great News!
Al-Shabab, the Somali al-Qaeda affiliate, has threatened to attack Israel. It’s PO’d about al-Aqsa, which shows a new worldliness for a group whose top agenda items have been getting a cut of the local piracy bonanza, getting Somalia off its khat habit, and turning Mogadishu into an Islamic paradise, or else. CNN:
“We will transfer and expand our fighting in the Middle East so we can defend Al Aqsa mosque from the Israelis,” Al-Shabab commander Abdifatah Aweys Abu Hamza said in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
He is apparently the leader of a new Al-Shabab armed group calling themselves “Mujahedin Al Aqsa,” or “Al Aqsa Holy Warriors,” which they said is assigned to attack Israel.
It is not clear whether Al-Shabab has the capacity to carry out its threats against Israel.
No, but if it does in any way, shape or form, I’m pretty sure Israel has the capacity to address it … and hopefully will address the daylights out of it. Could be a pretty effective answer to the Islamic terrorist group that has been ravaging and destabilizing already war-ravaged and destabilized Somalia.
But Rashid Abdi of the International Crisis Group warned that the group should be taken seriously.
“We should not underestimate the capacity of Al-Shabab,” he said. “This is a deadly organization, a formidable foe.”
Abdi said the group had been mutating from a nationalist group into a terrorist organization more like al Qaeda, which was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
“If you look at the rhetoric and language and if you look at the Web sites, if you hear their preachers or their scholars speak, it is completely indistinguishable from al Qaeda leaders,” Abdi said.
The group has also become more vicious in Somalia, a local human rights expert said.
“The most gruesome and gross violations of human rights are committed by Al-Shabab,” activist Hassan Shire Sheikh said. “They have also instilled fear. They just shoot, they kill, they maim and they lash.”
The group also threatened African neighbors on Friday, including Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Eritrea, Ghana, Sudan and Uganda. They have in the past threatened African nations that provide peacekeeping troops to the war-torn country.
OK. Threats all around. So far they remain a largely localized problem, though as the people who are anxious to abandon Afghanistan keep pointing out, if we insist on fighting them there, then sooner or later we’ll have to fight them in Yemen, the Sudan and Somalia, too. Each conflict in its own time, according to its own needs, I say. And if al-Shabab would prefer to be taken out by Mossad, that’s fine with me. Heads up, al-Shababis: Cell phones blow up.
Topics: GWOT, Israel, al qaeda
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:14 am on Monday, November 2, 2009
One Response to “Great News!”
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November 2nd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Don’t forget, though: there are large Somali popuiations in the US.