Somalia's al Shabaab and al Qaeda Announce Terrorist Alliance
Looks like the future is rather bleak in the Yemen, Somalia, Horn of Africa. Somalia has always been a festering in Africa for terrorism and with Yemen just across the Gulf of Aden, the al Shabaab terrorists, the largest group in the area and in Mogadishu, have officially formed an alliance with al Qaeda.
This is not a non-event as many thing. Often, when you brush off threats, it happens because you do not take it seriously. The African al Shabaab terrorists are growing and do have a decent cache of weaponary in the Horn of Africa. Forming an alliance with al Qaeda allows the latter to help train and procure more weapons and manpower to attack the West in Yemen, in Africa, in Pakistan. Somalia is already unstable, just as Yemen is. The West provides the Somali government very little in aid despite a hollow pledge of $213 million in the past. With the support of al Qaeda, their strategies increase with al Shabaab joining in the Jihad.. if Somalia collapses to them, al Qaeda gains a big prize. Al Shabaab has already sent trained fighters to Afghanistan and indicated it will send troops into Yemen, a hop across the Gulf of Aden to support al Qaeda.
Al Shabaab already controls much of Somalia who battle with Somalia nationalists who want Shariah law in their country. Estimates of al-Shabaab's strength, as of December 2006, vary between 3,000 to 7,000.The UN force there now only has 5000 soldiers in a peace keeping role. In September 2009, a Somali-American from Seattle drove a truck bomb into an AMISOM base in Mogadishu, killing twenty-one peacekeepers and himself. Plane loads of weapons said to be coming from Eritrea were sent to anti-government rebels in southern Somalia. The group is responsible for killing 42 UN workers trying to distribute food. And last year, the US sent the Somalia government 40 tons of weapons worth $10,000,000 to help arm their military. However, recently new reports indicate most of the weapons have been sold on the black market to members of al Shabaab. It was a stupid move on the US part.
Worse, at least 20 US citizens have joined them. No doubt, these will train to blow up aircraft in the US because they all have US passports. This is how al Qaeda will most likely benefit from its new alliance.