Terrorism in the USA:threat & response

[davidbfpo]

Post created for a new thread and so will appear out of sequence.

Three members have drawn attention whether the Jihadist group in Somalia, Al-Shabaab / Al-Shabab poses a threat to the USA and this discussion may take-off.

There are several threads on the subject, notably Terrorism in the USA:threat & response (merged thread):http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=8828

Somalia: not piracy catch all thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=8468

Horn of Africa historical (pre-2011): catch all thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...read.php?t=789

[Chowing]

Post created for a new thread; please refer to Post 5 for cross-references.

So much for African terrorism not being of concern to the US. In a story just out today by longtime federal prosecutor W. Anders Folk in testimony before th the Investigative Project on Terrorism:

According to an investigative report issued in July by the House Homeland Security Committee's majority staff, Shabaab-related federal indictments "account for the largest number and significant upward trend in homegrown terrorism cases" filed by the Justice Department, with at least 38 cases unsealed since 2009

Link:http://www.investigativeproject.org/...shabaab-threat

[KingJaja]

Doesn't Al Shabab in the US have more to do with a large concentration of Somali immigrants in places like Minnesota?

That is a risk that has to be dealt with, but it is nothing like the Muslim enclaves in Bradford, Birmingham and London. (I once lived in Leeds, not too far from Bradford).

America is great at integrating immigrants unlike most of Europe.

[Stan]

Al Shabaab: Recruitment and Radicalization within the Muslim American
Community and the Threat to the Homeland

COMMITTEE FINDING: More than 40 Americans from Muslim-American
communities across the U.S. have joined Shabaab since 2007, including two-dozen
recruits from Minneapolis, Somalia experts told the Committee’s Majority staff. Three
who returned home have been charged in U.S. courts, one awaits extradition from The
Netherlands, and 15 are believed dead, leaving as many as 21 American Shabaab
fighters still at large or unaccounted for. At least 20 Canadians of Somali descent,
many from Toronto, also have disappeared and are believed to have joined Shabaab,
according to Canadian security officials.

Much more at the link

[KingJaja]

Is Al Shabab:

1. Purely an Islamic terrorist organisation.
2. A nationalist movement triggered by the US sponsored invasion of Somalia.
3. Equal parts (1) and (2).

I'm asking because I suspect it is not only Islam motivating a significant number of ethnic Somalis to fight against foreign forces in Somalia or to attack the US.