Somali extremists may be radicalizing Americans
U.S. intelligence officials warn of recruitment efforts here
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 Boston, San Diego, Seattle, 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.
Officials are still trying to assess the scope of the problem but say reports so far don’t warrant a major concern about a terrorist threat within the United States. But 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 Wednesday chaired by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn.
U.S. officials give varying assessments of the problem. On Feb. 25, CIA Director Leon Panetta told reporters that the relationship between Somalis in the United States and in Somalia “raises real concerns about the potential for terrorist activity” and “constitutes a potential threat to the security of this country.”
Two days later, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III appeared to play down the concern, calling Ahmed “just one manifestation of a problem” since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks of young men in the United States being recruited to fight with terrorists overseas. Federal authorities have investigated cases of U.S. fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.
Mueller added in a speech to 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.”
Overall, U.S. intelligence officials assess that “homegrown” extremists are not as numerous, active or skilled here as they are in Europe, but authorities remain focused on what Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair called the “likelihood that a small but violent number of cells may develop here.”