Al Shabaab Officially Joins with al Qaeda
Posted by Kaitlin Kindbergh on Fri, Feb 10, 2012 @ 03:16 PM
Overview
In a 14-minute-long video posted on jihadist forums yesterday, al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri formally announced that Somalia’s militant group al Shabaab has officially joined the al Qaeda network. Al Shabaab’s leader Mukhtar Abu al-Zubeir was also featured in the message, pledging his allegiance to the terror network. Al Shabaab has publicly declared links to al Qaeda since October 2009, but there has been little evidence of any clear, direct collaboration. Until now, the strongest indication of cooperation between al Shabaab and al Qaeda has been the presence of several al Qaeda in East Africa operatives within Somalia, including Fazul Abdullah Muhammad who was killed by Somali forces last year. Additionally, intelligence collected last summer suggested a potential alliance was forming between al Shabaab and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
“I will break the good news to our Islamic nation, which will… annoy the crusaders, and it is that the Shabab movement in Somalia has joined al Qaeda… The jihadist movement is with the grace of Allah, growing and spreading within its Muslim nation despite facing the fiercest crusade campaign in history by the West.” – Ayman al-Zawahiri
Implications
There could be several motivations behind the announcement of the now formal relationship between al Shabaab and al Qaeda. The al Qaeda network has been challenged within the last year with the deaths of prominent figures, including Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Ilyas Kashmiri. Zawahiri’s announcement may have been released to boost the morale of his followers and to show the Western world al Qaeda’s relevance. The merger appears to be mutually beneficial, with al Shabaab gaining legitimacy by officially becoming an al Qaeda affiliate and al Qaeda showing they still have centralized power. Al Shabaab has successfully recruited Westerners for either material or operational support in the past, but the new merger could potentially aid their recruiting efforts.
The formal statement may signal permission from Zawahiri for al Shabaab to carry out external operations against the West. This has raised fears that al Shabaab may seek to attack within the US to secure its place within the al Qaeda network. Counterterrorism officials are now increasingly concerned that a number of Somali-Americans who have traveled to Somalia in recent years after being recruited by al Shabaab may return back to the US to conduct terrorist acts. According to reports, al Shabaab’s only plot within the West thus far was the attempted assassination of the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in January 2010.
