Kenya (catch all)

[Bill Moore]

I am not an expert, let alone well read on the presence of sadism in Jihadist violence, but this passage simply did not sound truthful:

So I contacted an Indian friend, a Mumbai resident, who officially investigated the attacks and is "in the know". He responded:

The Indian police charge sheet, which details what property was recovered and no such weapons are shown (I have a copy).

I do not doubt mutilation has happened, for example in London, but the author is wrong about Mumbai and I suspect such violence did not occur in Nairobi.

David,

Unfortunately based on personal observation of several bodies in Iraq and a few elsewhere that were mutilated by Jihadists that indicates to me at least some, and I suspect a minority, do engage in mutilation for whatever purpose. Shifting to your comments on Mumbai, a lot of people from several nations investigated the attacks in Mumbai, so pardon me for being suspect of your friends apparent all knowing assumptions. He may very well be correct, but the jury is still out in my opinion. The latest I read on the Jewish victims, which were the only victims in Mumbai that were possibly tortured was their bodies were too badly mutilated to tell. I saw photos and it appears their bodies were mutilated by explosives. If I recall correctly, hard to believe the attacks were 5 years ago now, the reason the torture was suspected was based on the directions the terrorists were received from Karachi that was intercepted. Even if they did cut their throats, that isn't exactly torture in my view, it is just murder, but getting back to your friends comments none of the terrorists died at that site, so not having knives on them is hardly justification to rule out they didn't use a knife (perhaps for the Indian version of Sherlock Holmes that suffices as evidence of innocence). For example, a group of thieves could break into my house and tie me up, and then grab a knife from my kitchen or elsewhere and slice my throat, and then leave the knife at my house and continue on their killing rampage. I doubt any western investigator would rule they couldn't have cut my throat because they didn't have a knife on them when they were killed or captured. I'm simply throwing out a counter argument to reinforce what Fuchs pointed out, which is that the truth is elusive, which leads to ignorance.

The information coming out of Nairobi is still terribly confusing, the only thing that remains clear is that several innocents were murdered by terrorists, and possibly several more were killed by the so called security forces. The number of attackers according to open source reports ranges from four (apparently all that was seen in the videos) to 15 to as high as 30! It has been several days since the attack and the reporting is still mixed. Sometimes what passes for the truth doesn't emerge until years after the event.

After reading the Selected Wisdom post it seemed to be a lot of uninformed rambling about nothing. Al Shabaab has been a multinational terrorist network for years, and they also have been an insurgency force (even longer). Contrary to all the reports of Al-Shabaab being on their last leg, they remain one of the more dangerous Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist networks (even if their insurgency efforts were rolled back). We struggle too much to try to fit loose networked organizations into our desired view of organizations with a formal structure, and this results in a continued misdiagnosis or classification. We think we know how to defeat formal organizations, but loose networks are much harder to understand since they constantly adapt and are also very resilient. We seem to want to claim victory prematurely simply because African Union forces pushed Al-Shabaab out of the major urban areas in Somalia, yet they still exist and they still have the will and capability to fight, so making claims like they're on their last leg only sets us for disappointment when we find they're far from it. Instead of making such wishful comments, we should pursue the momentum the AU created and continue to aggressively target them until they're sufficiently suppressed. Furthermore, there is no reason to think they conducted this attack on the mall on their own, since the various terrorist networks around the globe mutually support each other to varying degrees, but on the other hand it may been conducted by homeboys from Kenya. It wouldn't surprise me if actors as far away as Pakistan and Yemen were involved (neither are that far away). Much too early to tell at this point, but whatever the truth is, it shouldn't be surprising, since all are credible probabilities.

http://www.nctc.gov/site/groups/al_shabaab.html

Al-Shabaab is not centralized or monolithic in its agenda or goals. Its rank-and-file members come from disparate clans, and the group is susceptible to clan politics, internal divisions, and shifting alliances. Most of its fighters are predominantly interested in the nationalistic battle against the TFG and not supportive of global jihad. Al-Shabaab’s senior leadership is affiliated with al-Qa‘ida and is believed to have trained and fought in Afghanistan. The merger of the two groups was publicly announced in February 2012 by the al-Shabaab amir and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of al-Qa‘ida.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/05/world/...rticle_sidebar

Washington (CNN) -- A pre-dawn raid by elite U.S. forces in southern Somalia, in the heart of territory controlled by the al Qaeda subsidiary Al-Shabaab, targeted an Al-Shabaab commander connected to one of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, a senior Obama administration official said Sunday.

The suspected foreign fighter commander is named Ikrima, a Kenyan of Somali origin about whom little is known. The official said Ikrima is associated with two now-deceased al Qaeda operatives who played roles in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and the 2002 attacks on a hotel and airline in Mombasa, also in Kenya.

Not only do they have American, British, and Kenya recruits:

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-s...,4926499.story

According to Norway's Channel 2, Ikrima had traveled to Norway in 2004 and sought political asylum while living in Oslo. He received travel documents but left in 2008 before authorities had ruled on his asylum request. Two Swedes whom he met in Norway later joined him at Shabab training camps in Somalia, the TV station said, adding that a Swedish member of the Shabab was killed in the SEAL raid Saturday.

Morten Storm, a Dane who said he has worked for several Western intelligence agencies, told CNN that he helped pass messages between Ikrima and Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen between 2008 and 2012.

Ikrima communicated directly with Anwar Awlaki, the American-born Al Qaeda leader in Yemen who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, about going to Yemen but never made the trip, Storm said. Instead Ikrima, who speaks Norwegian, became a key handler of Shabab recruits from the West.