Catherine Philp | August 06
IF the Islamists arrested in Tuesday's pre-dawn raids were plotting to storm Australian army bases, it is unlikely al-Shabaab told them to do it.
The al-Qa'ida linked extremist group has been conducting a massive international recruitment among the Somali diaspora to bolster its forces as it fights for control of Mogadishu and the imposition of strict Islamic rule across Somalia.
The young men it lures from Western countries such as Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia and the US join a Somali jihad, not a transnational movement such as al-Qa'ida, which has global aspirations.
In May, The Times reported that up to 1000 foreign fighters, including Britons, had answered the call to jihad in Somalia and its war-torn capital, Mogadishu.
What al-Shabaab cannot do is stop the foreign fighters it has radicalised in its training camps from returning home to attack domestic targets in the name ofIslam.
Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned of the risk of returning ethnic Somalis doing just that. Al-Shabaab is keen to keep its foreign fighters committed to the Somali jihad. Their efforts are said to have greatly contributed to the Islamists' recent military successes.
But to attract such recruits, al-Shabaab's own propaganda plays up its ties with other Islamist insurgencies such as those in Algeria and Chechnya.
And al-Qa'ida's promotion of al-Shabaab -- Osama bin Laden has personally urged his followers to join the fight there -- has widened its appeal among Islamist communities around the world with broader concerns than just Somalia.
The fear is that an al-Shabaab takeover will make Somalia into a magnet for foreign jihadis seeking training, just as Taliban rule in Afghanistan gave al-Qa'ida a haven to establish training camps where thousands of foreign militants flocked.
Al-Shabaab is already drifting towards the kind of dependency on al-Qa'ida that the Taliban developed, allowing the extremist group to call the shots.
The US has become the latest Western country to voice concern about the threat of radicalised young recruits returning home from Somalia after the discovery of a huge recruiting ring in the mid-western US city ofMinneapolis.
Washington's interference in Somalia, backing the government against al-Shabaab and its allies in the ousted Islamic Courts regime, may have made the West a greater target for al-Shabaab than it ever was.
Source: The Australian
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