Failure by Western Intelligence agencies to stop the flow of jihadists from leaving their nations and going to Somalia has significantly imperiled the course of war against Al Shabaab. Recent intelligence shows that some Somalis living in the West have provided considerable assistance to the Sunni terrorist group. There are also instances of some Somalis – alongside Arab terrorist enablers – residing in the Gulf Arab countries providing support to Al Shabaab.
The terrorists who carried out the infamous Westgate Mall attack in 2013 had lived in the West and most of them had European citizenship. Today, the FBI has declared Liban Haji Mohamed as a wanted terrorist. Liban is a 29 years old Somali-American who purportedly worked as a cab driver but who intelligence agencies accused of recruiting Somali-Americans to go to Somalia and join Al Shabaab. He is also accused of providing material support to Al Shabaab. The most intriguing fact is that Liban Haji Mohamed is now in Somalia fighting alongside Al Shabaab terrorists. How he left America unnoticed is not yet known.
US federal agents have also intercepted an 18 years old Somali-American, Abdullahi Yusuf, thus preventing him from leaving the US and joining a terrorist insurgency in the Horn of Africa or the Middle East. Abdi Nur, an accomplice of Yusuf, traveled out of the US and has currently joined an Islamist insurgent group. For Abdullahi Yusuf, a US court sentenced him to reside in a halfway house and to enroll into a community-based counter-terrorism program.
Intelligence sources have identified the Minneapolis-St. Paul region as the nexus from where Somali-Americans are radicalized and dispatched to Somalia to fight against the UN-recognized government and AMISOM troops. A case in point, a group of 22 Somali-Americans left the US to join Al Shabaab in Somalia where most of them were killed during counter-terrorism operations.
By allowing Islamist jihadists to migrate into Somalia from the West, Western intelligence agencies are negatively impacting the gains made by the regional intelligence agencies in their war on terror. Even so, there are instances where Western intelligence agencies openly opposed Kenya’s counter-terrorism efforts with disastrous consequences.
When Kenyan security personnel uncovered and dismantled a terrorist cell operating at the coast in 2010, it was discovered that one of the suspects, Michael Adebolajo, was a British citizen. The British asked the MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5 – UK’s domestic counter-intelligence security agency) to do all it could to see him freed from the Kenyan justice system. The maniac relocated to the UK where he subsequently beheaded Lee Rigby. Adebolajo came to Kenya in 2010 under instructions from British Jihadists – allied to the extremist Sheikh, Abdul Qadir Mumin – to join Al Shabaab and attempt to form an alliance between Al Shabaab and Islamists terrorists residing in the UK. Adebolajo was arrested by Kenyan security forces in the company of Hassan Omondi, a bonafide Al Shabaab bomb maker. Hassan would later die in a gun fight with Kenyan counter-terrorism officers.
SIS advice is that Western Intelligence agencies should cooperate with regional Intelligence agencies for mutual benefit. The current war on terror calls for cooperation, mutual assistance and understanding. It is quite imprudent for the responsible agencies to undermine each another.
Well done and well stated.