At your service, Osama Ahmed Godane the African Bin Laden behind theUganda bombings

[Liibaan]

Al-Shabab's leader Ahmed Abdi Godane

 

 

"At your service, Osama" - the African Bin Laden behind the Uganda bombings

 

 

He is, nonetheless, an unlikely contender to become Africa's answer to bin Laden: born in the breakaway republic of

Somaliland

, he is described as small, slightly-built figure in his late 30s, whose early career included a spell as an accountant for an airline. In the late 1990s, he joined al Itihad al Islamiya, a now-defunct militant group, and went to Afghanistan to fight.

As Somalia's al Shebab militants claim responsibility for bombings in Kampala, the Telegraph profiles their spiritual leader, accountant-turned-jihadi Ahmed Abdi Godane.

 

 

 

 

As befits a man who fears he has a US missile with his name on it, Ahmed Abdi Godane knows the importance of keeping a low profile.

 

The leader of Somalia's al-Shebab militant movement, he prefers to be heard rather than seen, ranting away in radio broadcasts from his group's strongholds in northern Mogadishu. Thanks to his fatwahs against pop music, foreign films and even televised football, he already has a captive audience - as of last week, though, he made the rest of the world take notice too.

 

"What happened in Kampala was just the beginning," he warned in his latest broadcast, gloating over Sunday's twin suicide bombings in the Ugandan capital, in which Shebab-backed "martyrs" slaughtered 76 people as they watched the World Cup final. "If Uganda and Burundi do not withdraw their troops from Somalia, there will be more bombings like these."

 

Delivered with the same fiery rhetoric with which he recently declared himself "at Osama bin Laden's service", Godane's warning confirmed what many outside Somalia have long dreaded: that the Shebab, which has imposed a Taliban-style regime across much of the anarchic, war-torn land, would one day begin exporting its brand of Islamist violence to the wider world.

 

 

Last Sunday's attacks, designed to punish both Uganda and Burundi for providing troops to support Mogadishu's shaky Western-backed provisional government, marked the first time the group had struck outside its own borders. Now, having proved the Shebab's credentials as the world's newest international terrorist group, security officials fear it is only a matter of time before Godane, also known as Abu Zubayr, orders similar attacks against the West.

 

"This is a move into a different league altogether, and will put Godane and al Shebab on the world map," one Nairobi-based security official told The Sunday Telegraph. "He is very much of the international jihads mindset, and wants Islamic rule across the world, from Somalia to Alaska."

 

Just like the piracy crisis off Somalia's coastline, the Shebab's declaration of wider war is a sign of how Somalia's problems are becoming those of the wider region. The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, whose security forces yesterday arrested 20 people in connection with the bombings, has called for more troops to be sent Somalia, this time not as bodyguards to the government, but to hunt down the Shebab.

 

"We are going on the offensive and will get these people," he vowed, calling on other African nations to help beef up the force from its current 5,000 to at least 20,000.

 

But many fear that would play directly into Godane's hands, allowing him to raise the spectre of a foreign "invasion" against which more Somalis would flock to the Shebab. Such a scenario could ignite a region-wide conflict, pitting the mainly Christian nations of the rest of East Africa against the predominantly Muslim population of Somalia.

 

Until now, the Shebab - which means "youth" - has thrived through the very fact that the rest of the world has left Somalia to its own devices. Just like the Taliban in Afghanistan, its leaders first won credibility by imposing a degree of law and order in a land plagued by warlords and criminals, and devoid of proper government for 20 years.

 

Today it controls much of southern Somalia, as well as parts of the capital, Mogadishu. But the relative security it provides has proved a Faustian pact for those who live under its rule. As well as harsh Sharia punishments, such as stonings and amputations, the Shebab imposes religious edicts as extreme as anything the Taliban dreamed up.

 

The list of "banned" activities, for example, goes well beyond just the obvious targets like music, drink and fraternisation between the sexes. It also includes banning women from wearing bras - on the basis that they showcase the chest - and banning men watching the World Cup: in the stern words of a Shebab spokesman, "they will not benefit anything or get any experience by watching mad men jumping up and down."

 

Instead, the Shebab encourages more wholesome forms of recreation, such as last year's notorious Koranic recital contest, in which a teenaged winner was awarded prizes of an AK-47, two hand grenades and an anti-tank mine.

 

Until recently, Western diplomats took comfort that such an odious vision at least had no ambitions beyond Somalia's borders. The focus of the Shebab's military efforts was mainly against the Western-backed transitional government, which it sees as Western stooges, and which currently controls little more than a few blocks of Mogadishu. But in the past year, the Shebab has taken on a more internationalist outlook, recruiting hundreds of foreign fighters into its ranks and advertising Somalia as a safe base from which to wage global jihad.

 

Much of that dramatic change in direction is put down to Godane, who last year issued a blood-curdling jihadist video called entitled "At your service, Osama". In it, he urged all Somalis to follow the al Qaeda leader, and vowed that "the wars will not end until Islamic Sharia is implemented in all continents in the world."

 

He is, nonetheless, an unlikely contender to become Africa's answer to bin Laden: born in the breakaway republic of Somaliland, he is described as small, slightly-built figure in his late 30s, whose early career included a spell as an accountant for an airline. In the late 1990s, he joined al Itihad al Islamiya, a now-defunct militant group, and went to Afghanistan to fight.

 

He and his followers quarrelled with Itihad's leadership when it mooted the idea of peaceful politics after September 11, producing the nucleus of what would go on to become the Shebab today.

 

However, last week's bombings were not their first taste of foreign blood. In 2003 and 2004, the same splinter group were responsible for a string of murders of Western aid workers, including Richard and Enid Eyeington, a British couple who ran a popular school in Somaliland. While eight men were subsequently sentenced to death for the murders, Godan, according to the US State Department, was "implicated" in the planning.

 

Today, his main role is as the Shebab's spiritual leader, although like Mullah Omar, the one-eyed ruler of the Taliban, he is extremely reclusive. He rarely appears in public, and is careful never to have his photograph taken - mindful, it seems, of the fate of his comrade Adan Hashi Ayro, who was killed by a US missile strike in 2008.

 

"Apparently he turns up on the battlefield quite often, but comes dressed just in jeans and a baseball cap to blend in," said Abdi Aynte, the author of a recent research paper on the Shebab, who has interviewed some of Godane's former comrades.

 

What makes him effective, though, is not his battlefield experience but his background in finance and airlines. "He knows how to move money and people, both of which have been useful in building up links with foreign jihadists", said Mr Aynte. Western intelligence officials estimate Godane may now have recruited up to 500 foreign jihadists in Somalia, some drawn from warzones like Iraq and Afghanistan, others from diaspora communities in Britain and America. The former bring a wealth of guerrilla expertise, but it the latter that cause Washington and London the real worries - they give the Shebab the potential to spread their mayhem to the streets of London and elsewhere.

 

"Despite all the West's talk about the war on terror, al Shebab has been allowed to become much more powerful and extreme than it used to be," said Rashid Abdi, a Naroibi-based Somali expert with the International Crisis Group thinktank. "Countries with big diaspora communities, like the US and Britain, should now be especially concerned."

 

Such fears are shared by British police, who claim to have detected evidence of Shebab funding networks within the 100,000-strong Somali community. The British government points out that the vast majority support only moderate Islam, but to quote Godane, it only needs a few people "at Osama's service" to cause the damage – and judging by a recent trip that Mr Abdi made to London, already some are showing signs of radicalisation.

 

"I was in Shepherd's Bush, where five years ago, all the young Somali men were wearing jeans and trainers," he said. "Now many are growing beards and wearing robes. Sure, a change of wardrobe proves nothing. But I have seen how communities get sucked into the al-Qaeda web, and I was worried by what I saw."

[Liibaan]

Al-Shabab's leader is Ahmed Abdi Mohamed Godane, who is best known as Abu Zubayr, a native of the breakaway

region of Somaliland

who once worked as an accountant with a telecommunications company. His group controls most of southern and central Somalia, including wide swaths of Mogadishu, the capital.

Who is al-Shabab? Somali terror army extends reach

 

 

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN and MALKHADIR MUHUMED (AP) – 3 days ago

 

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Somali militants who formed the hardline terror group al-Shabab carried out their first suicide attack in 2006, during the height of violence in Iraq. The world hardly noticed.

 

This week al-Shabab become the world's newest international terror group, after claiming twin blasts in Uganda's capital Kampala during the World Cup final that killed 76 people.

 

Ugandan officials on Tuesday showed off an unexploded suicide belt, suggesting the militants had hoped for a third explosion and more carnage. Ugandan officials arrested five people and hinted that Somali nationals were among those detained.

 

The FBI and U.S. Homeland Security Department warned in an assessment distributed to law enforcement personnel that if al-Shabab — "the youth" in Arabic — is responsible for the Ugandan blasts, it could mean the group can attack in the U.S.

 

The fact that the al-Qaida-linked group carried out attacks far from its base in Mogadishu "does not bode well for other neighboring countries," said Frank van Rooyen, a researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

 

"One can expect them to start carrying out further terror attacks there," van Rooyen said.

 

The 2006 suicide bombing targeted former Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, and was carried out by former members of the Islamic Courts Union, a Somali opposition group that attempted to restore order in Somalia after nearly two decades of lawlessness after warlords overthrew longtime dictator Siad Barre in 1991. But the ICU's attempts at governance failed, and the group later gave rise to al-Shabab.

 

Members of the ICU included top religious leaders and even Somalia's current president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed.

 

But a year after the Islamic Court Union's emergence, what initially appeared to be benign support for Islam turned into a radical interpretation of the religion, akin to the harsh brand practiced by Afghanistan's Taliban regime. The ICU splintered, and the conservative militant wing gained power, forming al-Shabab.

 

"The group was a member of the Islamic Courts Union but it had always their hidden very extreme agenda. They were concentrating on trainings and arming themselves," said Sheik Ahmed Siyad, a former ICU member.

 

Al-Shabab battles African Union and Somali forces in the streets of Mogadishu daily, in an effort to topple Somalia's weak, U.N.-backed administration. Those attacks often miss their military targets and the crossfire kills scores of civilians, a reason al-Shabab cited in trying to justify the Ugandan attacks. The group hopes to install its conservative reading of Islam in Somalia. Music would be banned. Official punishments would include amputations and stonings.

 

Over the last two years, foreign fighters numbering in the low hundreds with experience in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq have joined al-Shabab, according to international officials, raising the group's level of militant expertise. Somali-Americans have been recruited and taken part in suicide bombings.

 

Al-Shabab members began pledging allegiance to al-Qaida last year. And one of its most famous members is known as Abu Mansour al-Amriki, or "the American." He appeared in a jihadist video in May 2009.

 

But the group has long been on America's radar. One of the group's first top leaders, Aden Hashi Ayro, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2008. Last September, a U.S. commando raid in rural southern Somalia killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, wanted for the 2002 car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

 

A Somali government intelligence official estimated al-Shabab's strength at between 3,000 and 7,000. The official, who asked not to be identified because of his job, said foreign fighters and young Somali recruits continue to swell the group's ranks.

 

In Washington, an intelligence analysis dated Monday and obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday said that U.S. citizens aligned with al-Shabab could return to the United States, "possibly to carry out acts of violence."

 

Intelligence officials have previously considered the al-Qaida affiliated group a threat to the U.S. In 2007 and 2008, about 20 Somali-American men were recruited and left the Minneapolis area to join al-Shabab.

 

Al-Shabab's leader is Ahmed Abdi Mohamed Godane, who is best known as Abu Zubayr, a native of the breakaway region of Somaliland who once worked as an accountant with a telecommunications company. His group controls most of southern and central Somalia, including wide swaths of Mogadishu, the capital.

 

Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage, al-Shabab's spokesman, warned Monday that more attacks could be aimed at Uganda and Burundi, two countries with troops deployed to Mogadishu as part of the African Union peacekeeping force there. Analysts say Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti could also face attacks.

 

The head of Kenya's anti-terrorism police, Nicholas Kamwende, said security forces have been put on high alert. An official in Burundi said the government has increased security.

 

"The government is taking the threats from al-Shabab very seriously and it is taking more preventative measures to curb any attack," said Gervais Abayeho, an official in the Burundian president's office.

 

The U.S. branded al-Shabab a terrorist organization in 2008, more than a year after Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia and touched off an Islamist and nationalist insurgency that still rages.

 

Kamwende cited Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who is wanted by the U.S. for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and who is believed to be hiding in Somalia, as one of the top suspected al-Qaida members giving support to al-Shabab.

 

Associated Press reporters Eileen Sullivan in Washington, Michelle Faul in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Tom Maliti, Tom Odula and Jason Straziuso in Nairobi, Kenya contributed to this report. Muhumed reported from Nairobi.

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

obamas problem

[Amistad]

Somali Militant Group Built Training Camps

 

 

By WILL CONNORS in Kampala, Uganda, SIOBHAN GORMAN in Washington, D.C., and SARAH CHILDRESS

 

The terror group behind last weekend's deadly Uganda blasts recruited a local man to coordinate the attacks and received funds from al Qaeda, say investigators, as it extends its reach beyond lawless Somalia.

 

Al Shabaab, the Somalia-based group that has claimed responsibility for July 11's triple suicide blasts that killed 76 people in Uganda's capital, Kampala, has in recent months built up Pakistan-style terror training camps. One top leader, Sheikh Muktar Robow, has helped to transform the group from a local insurgency into a global jihadist organization modeled on, and swearing allegiance to, al Qaeda.

 

Bombings Show Support for al Qaeda

 

View Slideshow

 

Dominic Nahr/Magnum Photos for The Wall Street Journal

A private security officer checked customers entering a phone shop in one of the main malls in Kampala.

 

More photos and interactive graphics

That picture of the group, and its development under Mr. Robow, emerged from interviews with Ugandan, Kenyan and U.S. investigators; current and former U.S. intelligence officials; and Somalis, including a member of the militant group.

 

A U.S. intelligence official said information gleaned from militant communications shows links between al Shabaab and al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Yemen. U.S. officials also see evidence of overlap in training and membership and say their working assumption is that al Shabaab has several hundred core members, similar to the numbers in al Qaeda in Pakistan and in al Qaeda's Yemeni outpost.

 

Intelligence officials say they believe al Qaeda is using the Somali group as a symbiotic host body, allowing its operatives access to other African countries. "As much as we're looking at al Shabaab, they are riding on the back of a more experienced player," said Col. Herbert Mbonye, the director of counterterrorism for Uganda's military intelligence body.

 

That relationship has raised red flags at U.S. intelligence agencies. In the past 18 months, militant training camps have emerged in Somalia similar to those that developed in Pakistan's tribal areas, a U.S. intelligence official said. Intelligence officials are now following about two dozen individuals from the U.S. and other Western countries who may have been affiliated with al Shabaab, or gone through these camps.

 

"It's quite an alarming story," the U.S. intelligence official said.

 

Al Shabaab's relationship with al Qaeda appears to have been cultivated in part by Mr. Robow, a top commander. Also known as Abu Mansur, he is among the U.S. government's most wanted terrorists.

 

Mr. Robow offered a warning of sorts ahead of Sunday's blasts, which hit a restaurant and a sports club where people had gathered to watch the final match of the World Cup. Speaking during a public address at Friday prayers earlier this month, Mr. Robow called for attacks against countries that had sent some 6,000 troops under African Union auspices to support the Somali government's offensive against al Shabaab. "We tell the Muslim youths and Mujahedeen, wherever they are in the Muslim world, to attack, explode and burn the embassies of Burundi and Uganda," Mr. Robow said, according to local media reports.

 

Mr. Robow grew up in southern Mogadishu as a devoted student of the Quran, according to public speeches he has made. He studied law at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, and then returned to Mogadishu to teach Arabic for several years. He is about 40, U.S. officials believe, based on a birth date on an Eritrean passport he used.

 

In 2000, Mr. Robow traveled to Afghanistan to train with the Taliban and al Qaeda, which used the strife-torn South Asian country to plot the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. In Afghanistan, Mr. Robow learned to fight, fire a sniper rifle and conceal roadside bombs, an al Shabaab official in Somalia said. He stayed less than a year, leaving before U.S.-led forces swept into Afghanistan.

 

Back in Somalia, Mr. Robow became a member of the Union of Islamic Courts, which aimed to establish strict Shariah law in the country, which had been largely lawless for a decade. The group came to power in 2006. Mr. Robow helped to establish an Islamist government and founded al Shabaab, a youth brigade that would serve as the union's armed wing.

 

The Islamist government soon collapsed. Al Shabaab endured. Mr. Robow, a skilled orator, became an al Shabaab spokesman and eventually deputy commander.

 

Al Shabaab, which controls vast territory in Somalia, has been engaged in a running battle with Somalia's transitional federal government. The group has pinned the government to a strip of the capital, Mogadishu, and largely prevented officials and parliament from meeting.

 

Beyond his ambition to overthrow Somalia's government, Mr. Robow has advocated linking the group's ambitions to global jihad. Through media interviews and in videos posted online, he sought to attract fighters in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq, largely because foreign recruits could replenish al Shabaab's ranks and aid its finances. In a 2008 interview, he lamented that there "are not enough non-Somali brothers."

 

The same year, the U.S. Treasury Department declared al Shabaab a terrorist group and named Mr. Robow its "spiritual leader." Mr. Robow later released a statement saying the group was "honored" to be included on the list but expressed disappointment al Shabaab wasn't ranked higher.

 

Senior U.S. administration officials said some foreign fighters who answered Mr. Robow's calls—some of whom have "close links" with al Qaeda—came with experience, funding and the agenda of establishing Somalia as a base from which to attack Western targets.

 

The foreigners also brought new tactics. Roadside bombs and suicide blasts, once unheard-of in Somalia, are now part of al Shabaab's armory. The group's commanders have banned dancing, mustaches and, most recently, watching World Cup games on television. Fighters punish offenders with floggings or public amputations.

 

On Wednesday, armed al Shabaab fighters drove through towns in southern Somalia, blaring a warning to residents through megaphones mounted on their vehicles, according to witnesses contacted by telephone. "You must collaborate with [us] and allow your sons to fight the enemy of Allah," Abu Maryama, a senior al Shabaab official told crowds in the southwestern town of Baidoa. "If you pay no heed to this … you will be considered as another enemy and face punishment."

 

Harsh retribution and indiscriminate deaths have sapped public support for the group, and created rifts within it. Mr. Robow has been caught between those who want to focus the insurgency in Somali—and retain a measure of popular support— and the global jihadists who don't care about local backing, according the al Shabaab colleague. Mr. Robow, a Somali who has long opposed foreign intervention in his country, may not be considered radical enough for the new agenda, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels based think tank.In the Uganda attack, the group's two factions apparently found middle ground.

 

The blasts have presented U.S. officials with a quandary. They see a need to step up support and involvement in the region, but they haven't determined the best course. "Violence always breeds urgency," the U.S. intelligence official said. "The question is: What [to do]?"The U.S. has been tracking al Shabaab and al Qaeda in Somalia for years, officials say. The Central Intelligence Agency works with military special forces units to collect intelligence and pinpoint targets, a former senior intelligence official said. The U.S. also works closely with the Ethiopian and Kenyan governments on counterterrorism operations.

 

Those efforts have grown in recent years as U.S. officials discovered as many as 20 Americans from Minnesota making their way to Somalia, including one who was determined to have been among five suicide bombers in an October 2008 attack in northern Somalia.

 

The intelligence-gathering paid off last year when U.S. Special Forces killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a top operative linked to both al Qaeda and al Shabaab who was believed to be linked to 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

 

But U.S. Special Forces units and intelligence officials have been grappling with a broader response to the growing terror threat from Somalia. Calling in airstrikes could fuel retaliatory measures against a weak Somali government. It could also stir up anti-U.S. sentiment that would advance the group's agenda, said the U.S. intelligence official.

 

"If you strike a camp, it makes you feel good, but what do you do the next day?" the official said. "You don't effectively eliminate the threat."

 

On Thursday, an al Shabaab leader underscored that point, delivering a message on the radio in Mogadishu congratulating what he called the Martyr Saleh Nabhan Brigade for the Kampala attacks.

 

Intelligence agencies have warned about al Shabaab's growing ambition to attack other countries—particularly Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya—as well as the West, the U.S. intelligence official said.U.S. intelligence hadn't picked up many direct threats against Uganda, but there has been a general concern about attacks targeting countries that supply troops to A.U. forces.

 

Investigators in Uganda say they are questioning a Ugandan man, Ali Isa Ssenkumba, who they say has confessed to helping plan the attacks.

 

Mr. Ssenkumba, who is in his late thirties and hails from a farming community outside Kampala, told investigators he was recruited by Somali men who persuaded him that he could have success in business in Somalia, according to a Ugandan military official close to the investigation.

 

Posing as a businessman, Mr. Ssenkumba made frequent trips to Somalia, where he attended an al Shabaab training camp, the Ugandan official said. Mr. Ssenkumba told investigators many other Ugandans are at al Shabaab's Somalia training facilities.

 

This person says Mr. Ssenkumba become familiar with guards at the borders between Uganda and Sudan and Uganda and Kenya, and received money and coordinated logistics for roughly two dozen al Shabaab members in Uganda who are suspected of plotting the triple suicide blast. Mr. Ssenkumba said, and investigators say they separately determined, that the attack was partially funded by informal money transfers from al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

 

Police in Kenya said they arrested Mr. Ssenkumba last week, before the attack, and handed him over to Ugandan investigators Tuesday, after the bombings.

 

According to Nicholas Kamwende, the commanding officer of Kenya's anti-terrorism police unit, Mr. Ssenkumba walked up to an immigration officer on the Kenya-Somalia border some time before the Kampala attacks and turned himself in.

 

"He said he didn't want to stay any longer with al Shabaab, that he wanted to go home," Mr. Kamwende said. "We didn't have anything to hold him on and we thought the Ugandans would be in a better position to exploit what he knew."

 

Mr. Ssenkumba wasn't made available to comment and it wasn't immediately apparent whether he was represented by a lawyer. Neither Mr. Kamwende nor Ugandan officials would say whether Mr. Ssenkumba provided information before the impending attack.Ugandan officials say Mr. Ssenkumba didn't turn himself in voluntarily.

[NASSIR]

The African bin Laden??

 

Where do you get from this racist phrase?

 

I remember reading a report by the Times which concluded that the Somali 'mad mullah' pre-figured in many ways the so called Osama and his followers hiding in caves and jungles.

 

 

Liibaan, Afrikaankan sanka waaweyn hanagu tilmaamin.

[NASSIR]

The same tactics used by the British Empire against Sayid, the local Somaliland Corps, will be employed in Afghanistan.