WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. counterterrorism officials are stepping up warnings that Islamist extremists in Somalia are radicalizing Americans to their cause, citing their successful recruitment of the first U.S. citizen suicide bomber and potential role in the disappearance of more than a dozen Somali American youths.
In recent public statements, the director of national intelligence and the leaders of the FBI and CIA have alluded to the case of Shirwa Ahmed, a 27-year-old college student from Minneapolis who blew himself up in Somalia on Oct. 29 in one of five simultaneous bombings attributed to al-Shabaab, a group with close links to al-Qaida.
Since November, the FBI has raced to uncover any ties to foreign extremist networks in the unexpected departures of numerous Somali-American teenagers and young men, whose family members believe are in Somalia. The investigation is active in Seattle; Boston; San Diego; Columbus, Ohio; and Portland, Maine, a U.S. law-enforcement official said, and community members say federal grand juries have issued subpoenas in Minneapolis and elsewhere.
Earlier last year, Ruben Shumpert, an African-American convert to Islam from Seattle, was killed in a U.S.-supported rocket attack near Mogadishu after he fled to Somalia in part to avoid prison after pleading guilty to gun and counterfeiting charges in the United States.
Another man, Boston native Daniel Maldonado, now 30, became in February 2007 the first American to be charged with a crime for joining Islamist extremist fighters in Somalia. Maldonado moved to Texas, changed his name to Daniel Aljughaifi and traveled to Africa in 2005, according to government court filings. He was captured by Kenyan soldiers in 2007 and returned to the U.S., where he is serving a 10-year prison term.
Intelligence officials said the recruitment of U.S. citizens by terrorist groups is particularly worrisome because their American passports could make it easier for them to re-enter the country.
Al-Shabaab — meaning "the youth" or "young guys" in Arabic — "presents U.S. authorities with the most serious evidence to date of a 'homegrown' terrorist recruitment problem right in the American heartland," Georgetown professor Bruce Hoffman, states in a forthcoming report by the SITE Intelligence Group, a private firm that monitors Islamist Web sites.
The extent of al-Shabaab's reach into the U.S. Somali community, estimated at up to 200,000 foreign-born residents and their relatives, will be the subject of a Senate homeland security committee hearing today chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Council on Foreign Relations, "We certainly believe that (Ahmed) was recruited here in the United States, and we do believe that there may have been others that have been radicalized as well."
U.S. authorities have been wary of stereotyping Somalis or overstating concerns, with Mueller recently comparing the situation to Ireland, another country with civil strife, terrorism and a large immigrant community in the United States but little violence here.
Al-Shabaab's ranks may also diminish now that an Islamist government has replaced a U.S.-backed Ethiopian occupation in Somalia. "It's very difficult to see how launching an attack using a sleeper cell in the United States would in any way serve their interests," said Kenneth Menkhaus, a political scientist at Davidson College who specializes in East Africa.
Ahmed was a naturalized citizen who reportedly moved to Minneapolis in 1996 and graduated from a local high school. As accounts of his death spread, distraught Somali-American families came forward in Minneapolis, alleging that the first young man left a year ago, then eight more Aug. 1, followed by seven others. Four families spoke out publicly, and U.S. authorities confirmed the names of Burhan Hassan, 17, and Mustafa Ali, 17, seniors at two local high schools who families said attended the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center mosque.
Osman Ahmed, Hassan's cousin, said nearby Universal Travel had said an adult claiming to be a parent paid for tickets of several youths.
"We believe a minority group are recruiting these kids and brainwashing them, and financing and arranging the travel," Ahmed said. "Those who are recruiting kids here can harm us here."
Ahmed said the young men periodically call their relatives, who say they repeat terse, scripted statements that they are safe and in Somalia studying, but nothing more.
Somalis as a whole may be vulnerable to radical appeals since their home country has been torn by two decades of political strife and they are among the youngest, poorest and newest immigrants to the United States. According to a U.S. census report, nearly 60 percent of Somali immigrants arrived since 2000 their average age is 26.8 years and 51 percent live in poverty, with a median household income of $21,461, compared to the national median of $61,173.
Mahir Sherif, a lawyer for the mosque, said its imam, Abdirahman Ahmed, and a youth coordinator were barred from flying last winter by U.S. authorities in connection with the investigation. But Sherif said there is no evidence that mosque leaders recruited, financed or facilitated young men to go to Somalia and accused Jamal and his allies of acting out of hatred for the Muslim religious establishment.
Posted March 11, 2009, The Washington Post
