It’s déjà vu All over Again Part 2: Update on The American-Somali Terrorist Connection

Evidence continues to come light to suggesting that the dozen or so young Somali-Americans initially reported as having left the United States last year to train in terrorism and guerrilla warfare in Somalia represent only the tip of a potentially dangerous iceberg.  And, like the captain of the R.M.S. Titanic, who failed to appreciate the dimensions of an impending menace and misread the murky waters through which his vessel sailed, the United States today appears to be in the same boat in terms of understanding this new threat to homeland security.  Indeed, as the surprising international reach of a hitherto obscure and local terrorist movement now demonstrates, we are faced with a continuing terrorist threat from al-Qaeda and associated movements that is at once as operationally durable as it is evolutionary and elusive in character.

Asleep at the Wheel?

As the previous edition of InSITE reported,[1] a 27-year-old former University of Minnesota student and naturalized American citizen of Somali heritage named Shirwa Ahmed provided “the first instance of a US citizen participating in a suicide attack anywhere.”[2] Ahmed carried out a suicide terrorist attack on 29 October 2008 in northern Somalia that targeted United Nations aid workers and killed at least 30 persons.[3] His death[4] followed by less than a month that of a Seattle, Washington native and African-American convert to Islam, cum-ex-felon, named Ruben Luis Shumpert.  According to “The Faith of Abraham,” an electronic magazine first identified by SITE as the new product of the media arm of a Somali terrorist group called al-Shabaab, Shumpert died in a suspected US military cruise missile strike outside of Mogadishu.[5] Then, in early November, news broke that several Somali-American youths from the same Minneapolis, Minnesota immigrant community to which Ahmed belonged had left the US to train and fight with al-Shabaab.  The families of three of the young men had come forward publicly with information that their sons and three other young Somali-Americans had secretly departed the US for Somalia.[6]

Suspicions, as the March issue of InSite explained, focused on a largely unknown, radical Somali organization, called al-Shabaab (Arabic: “the youth” or more accurately, the “young guys”).[7] Significantly, too, the most credible terrorist threat that had surrounded Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44^th president of the United States on 20 January 2009[8] had come not from al-Qaeda or its leader, Usama bin Laden, or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, but from these youths and al-Shabaab.[9] Although no attack occurred to mar the inaugural festivities, the warning presented US authorities with the most serious evidence to date of a “homegrown” terrorist recruitment problem right in the American heartland.

But more worrisome still is the confusion and contradictions that continue to surround the case and raise anew serious concerns about America’s homeland security:

• First, it appears that the first time authorities reportedly became aware of the dimensions of this potential threat, was when the aforementioned families of three of the boys came forward with information about their departure.

• Second, the number of persons who have left the US for Somalia to receive instruction in terrorist tactics and other combat skills is higher than previously assumed. As many as 27 young men are now presumed to have similarly been recruited, radicalized, and indoctrinated in the US and then persuaded to travel to Somalia.  Indeed, it is as yet still unknown exactly how many American citizens have been recruited and radicalized and transported to Somalia.

• Third, the recruitment of US nationals to train in Somalia was likely not a phenomenon restricted to the Minneapolis-St Paul area only.  In addition to the ongoing FBI investigations in Minneapolis-St Paul, where a grand jury has been convened, another grand jury is sitting in San Diego investigating similar disappearances of Somali-American youths from southern California alongside continuing FBI inquiries in at least two different locations in Ohio and in Boston as well[10]

 Four of the youths who left the US last November have now apparently returned to their homes in Minneapolis.  According to National Public Radio reporter, Dina Temple-Raston, who has closely followed the story, “It is unclear whether [the four young men] are under protective custody or whether their parents are keeping them under wraps just to keep them safe.”  Somali-American community leaders who have been able to speak with the youths report that they had changed their minds and came home because they “didn’t like what they saw when they arrived in Africa.”  Even though their passports had been taken from them, the youths were somehow able to obtain other documentation to facilitate their travels.[11] It is believed that at least some may have transited through a third country where they were detained when their phony documentation was detected before being transferred back to the US.  Their experiences will likely fill in the many gaps in information about their radicalization, al-Shabaab’s alleged role in it, and the extent of the group’s reach in America.  Until that time, a number of important questions pertaining to the broader implications of these incidents remain unanswered.

Not Much Heat And Even Less Light

On 11 March 2009 the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held hearings on “Violent Islamist Extremism: al-Shabaab Recruitment in America.”  Chaired by Senator Joseph Lieberman, the hearings provided an ideal opportunity to illuminate the details behind the Somali-American youths’ disappearances; the extent of terrorist radicalization and recruitment occurring in the US; and, the dimensions of the potential threat posed by al-Shabaab.  Instead,and surprisingly, they generated as little heat as they also failed to shed any new light on al-Shabaab recruitment activities in this country.

The two US government witnesses——Philip Mudd, the FBI Associate Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch and Andrew Liepman, the Deputy Director of Intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) Directorate of Intelligence, are the among most knowledgeable and longstanding experts on terrorism in the US government. Mudd, a career CIA officer before coming to the FBI in 2005, was a highly effective deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) during the years following the September 11^th 2001 attacks,[12] and will likely be nominated to be the new Assistant Secretary of Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security.  Liepman, another career CIA officer, succeeded Mudd as the CTC’s deputy director before assuming his current post at the NCTC in 2006.[13]

Philip Mudd-Associate Executive Assistant Director,
National Security Branch FBI

Both their prepared statements and answers to questions posed by the committee were noteworthy for sober analysis, broad perspective and a distinctly modulated sense of either threat or alarm that hardly squared with the bulletin jointly issued the day before the inauguration by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US intelligence community to state and local law enforcement advising that persons affiliated with al-Shabaab might attempt to stage an attack in the US.  For example, in contrast to the concern raised by the pre-inauguration bulletin, Liepman’s written testimony states, “I want to emphasize that we do not have credible reporting to indicate that US person who have traveled to Somalia are planning to execute attacks in the US.”  He conceded, “we cannot rule out that potential given the indoctrination and training they might have received in East Africa.”[14] Similarly, Mudd’s written submission seems also to dismiss and discount the pre-inauguration bulletin, stating that “there are no current indicators that any of the individuals who traveled to Somalia have been selected, trained, or tasked by al-Shabaab or other extremists to conduct attacks inside the United States.”  He too though admits “we remain concerned about this possibility and that it might be exploited in the future if other US persons travel to Somalia for similar purposes.”[15]

Both witnesses took pains to argue that “nationalist” motivations——rather than religious ones——were the main reason behind the youths’ decision to travel to Somalia.  “Extremist recruiters play upon these nationalistic sentiments,” Liepman explained:

"to rally elements of the diaspora with well-produced videos of heroic Somalis engaged in combat against historic rivals, tactics that enhance their fundraising and recruitment efforts.  These themes of heroism and becoming part of something larger resonate especially among adventure-seeking young men."[16]

Mudd echoed this assessment.  “We assess that for the majority of these individuals,” he stated, “the primary motivation for such travel was to defend their place of birth form the Ethiopian invasion, although an appeal was also made based on their shared Islamic identity.”[17] In the questions and answers that followed, Mudd was even more emphatic on this point.  “Somali-Americans who join al-Shabaab, he argued, “are not going to join terrorist cells, they are going to war.”[18]

“Nationalist” motivations, however, do not appear to have been dominant in either of the two documented cases where US citizens have died fighting in Somalia.  For example, as the March 2009 InSITE article on this same subject reported, Shumpert, a Muslim convert, born in the United States with no known Somali heritage, was certainly more clearly a dyed in the wool jihadi than a Somali “nationalist” simply “going to war” to defend a real or imagined homeland.  Shumpert, the previous InSITE article had recounted, ran a barbershop in Seattle, Washington that also functioned as a public front for the recruitment of other converts and the radicalization of fellow Muslims for jihad.  Shumpert’s own radicalization had reportedly been abetted by viewing jihadi videos and reading other material that had reportedly been given to him by persons who had returned to the US from “jihad in Chechnya”——according to Shumpert’s obituary published in the aforementioned first issue of al-Shabaab’s “The Faith of Abraham” on-line magazine.  Moreover, his “dream” had not been to serve any conception of Somali nationalism but rather as a “knight obsessed with the news of Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” according to “The Faith of Abraham.”  Hence, Shumpert’s initial aspiration was to join al-Zarqawi’s “convoy in [Iraq].”[19] How he ended up in Somalia with al-Shabaab remains unclear, but, like other Muslim foreign fighters who previously had fought in the iconic jihadi struggles in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, Shumpert’s motivation was his commitment to jihad——and not because of any nationalist affinity.  This must surely have been Shirwa Ahmed’s motivation as well.  The target of his martyrdom suicide operation last October, for instance, were not enemy forces threatening Somalia’s territorial integrity (such as it is), but United Nations aid workers.  Moreover, as SITE reported, on 30 March 2009 al-Shabaab released a recruitment video featuring a Caucasian American, with the nom de guerre, Abu Mansour al-Amriki (“The American”).  In it, Abu Mansour laments the loss of fellow al-Shabaab fighter, explaining how “We need more like him, so if you can encourage more of your children, and more of your neighbors, and anyone around you to send people like him to this jihad [my emphasis], it would be a great asset for us.”[20]

[Screen shot of American jihadist, Abu Mansour al-Amriki, as he appears in a March 2009 video from al-Shabaab]

Indeed, Liepman’s testimony would appear to go on to contradict these same arguments of nationalist motivation that both he and Mudd claim given the long discussion it presents of radicalization based more on religious than nationalist motivations.  The recruiters who sought out the Somali-American youths, Liepman explains, “subject individuals to religiously [my emphasis] inspired indoctrination to move them toward violent extremism”.  Further on, Liepman also notes how:

And, he continues, adding still more weight to the dominance of religious over nationalist motivations, that:

However, the most disquieting dimension of the testimony was the extent to which authorities remain in the dark about the extent and degree of the symbiotic al-Shabaab/homegrown threat.  Neither witness could state exactly how many Somali-Americans or indeed other American citizens who may have gone off to Somalia to train and fight.[23] But what authorities do know, according to Mudd, is that “The number of individuals we believe have departed for Somalia is comparatively larger than the number of individuals who have left the Untied States for other conflict zones around the world over the past few years.”[24] The reason for this, both officials conclude——despite previous protestations in their respective testimonies to the contrary——is al-Qaeda and not Somali nationalism.  “Al-Qa’ida’s senior leadership in recent months has praised al-Shabaab,” Liepman stated, “and depicted Somalia as a local manifestation of a broader conflict between the West and Islam, a stimulus that could reinforce the commitment of individuals already predisposed to embracing violence.”[25] Similarly, Mudd argued:

In fact, during the month of March 2009, al-Qaeda made Somalia a priority of its propaganda.  The movement’s perennially active media arm, as-Sahab, released three videos in recent months that either specifically mentioned or featured that East African country.  In these tapes, Usama bin , his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and al-Qaeda commander Abu Yahya al-Libi all praised al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia.

Conclusion

Recent news accounts suggest that the Obama Administration is in fact more concerned about al-Shabaab than the 11 March 2009 testimony would indicate.  The lead story in the Washington Post exactly a month later, for example, reported that the White House is weighing ordering the US military to attack al-Shabaab training camps in Somalia.  “The organization’s rapid expansion, ties between its leaders and al-Qaeda, and the presence of Americans and Europeans in its camps have raised the question of whether a preemptive strike is warranted,”[27] the story explained: thus suggesting that threat al-Shabaab poses is now being taken very seriously indeed.

But the use of military force can only be a partial solution.  Protecting and securing the US homeland from terrorism ultimately depends on state, local, and law enforcement officers who are both the first and last lines of homeland defense.  Their familiarity with the communities that they patrol enables these officers to observe and detect radicalization and recruitment efforts that may indicate a broader terrorist plot.  The case of the Somali youths cries out both for the intimate knowledge and bottom-up information that community-oriented local law enforcement is best situated to provide and the top-down big-picture strategic knowledge and intelligence-driven guidance and direction that only federal authorities can furnish to their state and local counterparts.  The fact that the radicalization, indoctrination and alleged recruitment of young Somali-Americans to terrorism was apparently missed at all levels of our national and homeland security apparatus until it had already occurred, underscores the critical importance of this nexus of federal, state and local authorities working closely together to identify, prevent and interdict such threats from top-down as well as bottom-up dimensions.

Further, as the Somali case and sudden emergence of al-Shabaab as a potential international terrorist threat demonstrates, we are faced with a continuing and constantly evolving security challenge from al-Qaeda and associated movements.  Accordingly, in so dynamic a threat environment our responses and preparations need to be equally as evolutionary, flexible and robust.

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[1] Bruce Hoffman, “’Mom, I’m in Somalia’ Or, It’s déjà vu All Over Again,” inSITE, vol. 2., no. 3 (March 2009), pp. 7-10.

[2] Statement of Philip Mudd, Associate Executive Assistant Director, National Security Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 11 MARCH 2009, p. 2 accessed at: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/031109Mudd.pdf.

[3] See Ibid.; Associated Press, “Young Somali men missing from Minneapolis,” USA Today, 26 November 2008 accessed at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-26-missing-somalis_N.htm; Abdi Aynte, “Are jihadist groups luring Minnesota Somalis back to fight?” The Minnesota Independent, 23 December 2008 accessed at: http://minnesotaindependent.com/21144/did-jihadist-recruiters-lure-local-men-home-to-fight; Sara A. Carter, “Somalis in US draw FBI attention,” Washington Times, 29 December 2008; Amy Forliti, “Families of Somalis missing from Minn. Speak out,” Associated Press, 7 December 2008 accessed at Minnesota Public Radio http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/07/families_of_somalis_missing_from_minn_speak_out/; Hsu, “Threat ‘Uncertain’: Security Alert Issued For Inauguration Day,”; Evan Perez, “FBI Probes Terrorism Links in US Somali Enclaves,” Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2008; and, “Young Somali men missing from Minneapolis,” Associated Press, 26 November 2008 accessed at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-26-missing-somalis_N.htm.

[4] Ahmed’s remains were flown back from Somalia to Minneapolis for burial in December. See ‘Somalis Missing From Minn. May Have Returned,” National Public Radio, 31 March 2009 accessed at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102416429.

[5] Site Intelligence Group, “Shabaab Martyr Biography of American Convert,” 4 October 2008; and, idem, “Shabaab Debuts New Magazine, ‘The Faith of Abraham’,” 6 October 2008.

[6] Sara A. Carter, “Somalis in US draw FBI attention,” Washington Times, 29 December 2008; and, Bob Drogin, “Minneapolis/Somali Teen goes missing, leaving family to wonder: Are secret calls from guerrilla camp?,” Los Angeles Times, 18 January 2009 accessed at http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_11486628?source=rss.

[7] Al-Shabaab also has used, or is know by, the following names: Harakat al-Shabaab al-Muja­hideen; Hisb’ul Shabaad; Hizbul Shabaab; Al-Shabaab al-Islam; Al-Shabaab al-Islamiya; Al-Shabaab al-Jihad; Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin; Mujahideen Youth Movement; Mujahidin Al-Shabaab Movement; Unity of Islamic Youth; The Youth; Youth Wing’ and, Popu­lar Resistance Movement in the Land. See Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Reference Aid: Foreign Groups in Focus: Al-Shabaab, IA-0110-09, Unclassi­fied//For Official Use Only, p. 5. Note: only material from this DHS report marked unclassified has been cited in this testimony.

[8] See Spencer S. Hsu, “Threat ‘Uncertain’: Security Alert Issued For Inauguration Day,” Wash­ington Post, 21 January 2009; Paul Duggan and Mary Beth Sheridan, “Security Efforts Are Mostly a Success, Officials Say,” Washington Post, 21 January 2009; and, Temple-Raston, “Missing Somali Teens May Be Ter­rorist Recruits.”

[9] Hsu, “Threat ‘Uncertain’: Security Alert Issued For Inauguration Day,”; and, Paul Duggan and Mary Beth Sheridan, “Security Efforts Are Mostly a Success, Officials Say,” Washington Post, 21 January 2009.

[10] National Public Radio, “Somalis Missing From Minn. May Have Returned.”

[11] Ibid.

[12] Philip Mudd——Associate Executive Assistant Director, National Security Branch accessed at: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/nsb/nsb_jmudd.htm

[13] See Participant Bio Statements, CIAG, Critical Incident Analysis Group, “Avenues for Dialogue: Driving Discourse toward Peaceful Goals,” Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, February 25- February 28 2008 accessed at: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Andrew+Liepman+bio&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[14] Statement of Andrew Liepman, Deputy Director of Intelligence, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Directorate of Intelligence, Hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Govern­mental Affairs Committee, “Violent Islamist Extremism: Al-Shabaab Recruitment in America,” 11 March 2009, p. 2. accessed at: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/031109Liepman.pdf Why circular before the inauguration?

[15] Statement of Philip Mudd, Associate Executive Assistant Director, National Security Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 11 March 2009 accessed at: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/031109Mudd.pdf

[16] Statement of Liepman, p. 4.

[17] Statement of Mudd, p. 2.

[18] Quoted in Alex Kingsbury, “Why the Somali-American Terrorist Threat May Be Overblown: A group of missing Somali-Americans has sparked fears, but officials downplay the terrorism risk,” US News & World Report, posted 19 March 2009, accessed at: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2009/03/19/why-the-somali-american-terrorist-threat-may-be-overblown.html.

[19] Site Intelligence Group, “Shabaab Martyr Biography of American Convert,” 4 October 2008; and, idem, “Shabaab Debuts New Magazine, ‘The Faith of Abraham’,” 6 October 2008.

[20] SITE Intelligence Group, “American Member of Somali Jihadist Group Appears in Video”, 30 March 2009. http://sitemultimedia.org/video/SITE_Shabaab_

[21] Statement of Liepman, p. 4

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., p. 2

[24] Statement of Mudd, p. 2.

[25] Statement of Liepman, p. 4.

[26] Statement of Liepman, p. 4.

[27] Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, “Obama Team Mulls Aims Of Somali Extremists,” Washington Post, 11 April 2009.