Hassan Dahir Aweys

October 22, 2012 | Bill Roggio The Long War Journal

Omar Hammami Says ‘Friction’ Exists Between Shabaab, Foreign Fighters

A videotape of Omar Hammami in which he urges "commanders of jihad and the honorable scholars" to intervene to resolve "friction" between foreign fighters and Somali members of Shabaab...

August 21, 2012 | Bill Roggio The Long War Journal

Shabaab Leaders Divided? Not Quite

Has a rift developed between Shabaab's top leaders over the group's decision to formally join al Qaeda, in the face of pressures from the Somali, Ethiopian, and African Union offensive...

July 9, 2012 | Thomas Joscelyn The Long War Journal

2 Eritrean Officials Designated for Supporting Shabaab

The US Treasury Department designated six supporters of Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, on July...

February 9, 2012 | Bill Roggio, Thomas Joscelyn The Long War Journal

Shabaab Formally Joins al Qaeda

Shabaab and al Qaeda have announced their formal merger, according to a video disseminated online today and translated by the SITE Intelligence group. In the video, Mukhtar Abu al Zubayr (a.k.a....

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Eritrea: The Horn of Africa’s Rogue Regime

Last week, exasperated with Eritrea's continued violations of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and its increasing harassment of representatives at the American Embassy in Asmara...

June 14, 2011 | World Defense Review

Somalia Still Sinking as Eritrea Entertains Enemies

September has not been a good month in the sometime Somali capital of Mogadishu, even by the relative standards of a failed state that has not had an effective central government in the sixteen y...

February 1, 2011 | J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Somalia in Need of New Approach Two Decades after State Collapse

Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of the night when Mohamed Siyad Barre, president of the last entity that could plausibly be described as the government of Somalia, fled Mogadishu in hi...

October 18, 2010 | World Defense Review

Somalia’s New Prime Minister: Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered

Just when it seems things can get no worse for Somalia's dubiously legitimate, utterly ineffective, and wholly self-serving "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG), the embattled clique pull...

September 11, 2010 | The Long War Journal

Is ‘Constructive Disengagement’ the Solution in Somalia?

On Thursday, Joshua Foust published an article at PBS's Need to Know that, though avoiding the term "constructive disengagement," mirrors the arguments advanced by Bronwyn Bruton's repo...

June 16, 2010 | Max M. Kampelman The Long War Journal

Hizbul Islam faction in southern Somalia defects to Shabaab

An important Hizbul Islam faction in southern Somalia has broken away from t...

May 10, 2010 | Bill Roggio Long War Journal

American-born Shabaab commander releases recruitment tape

An American-born member of Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, has released a propaganda tape that is aimed at recruiting Westerners to wage war against their home countries and establ...

May 1, 2010 | Bill Roggio Long War Journal

Top Shabaab commander targeted in Mogadishu mosque bombings

Forty Shabaab fighters and supporters were killed in a pair of bombings today that targeted a top Shabaab military commander at a mosque in the Bakara market in Mogadishu. The first bomb...

October 22, 2009 | Middle East Quarterly

The Strategic Challenge of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab

Since emerging from an era of colonialism under Italy and Britain, Somalia has passed through military dictatorship, famine, and civil war to regional fragmentation. In the modern period, America...

October 15, 2009 | World Defense Review

Eritrea: Spoiler Exacerbates Crisis in the Horn of Africa and Beyond

By Dr. J. Peter Pham One of the frustrations with which Africa's friends have had to repeatedly cope over the years has been the seemingly utter incapacity of the African l...

September 24, 2009 | World Defense Review

Putting Puntland’s Potential into Play

By Dr. J. Peter Pham In last week's column, I noted that the United States military and intelligence communitie...

September 17, 2009 | World Defense Review

Somali Instability Still Poses Threat Even After Successful Strike on Nabhan

By Dr. J. Walid Phares The United States struck an important blow against Islamist terrorism in the Horn of Africa earlier this week when, in the middle of the day on Monday, Sp...

June 23, 2009 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Fiddling While Somalia Burns

Difficult as it may be to conceive, the already-bad security situation in Somalia deteriorated further over the weekend. Yet as Islamist militants brought their offensive to the edge of Mogadishu...

March 26, 2009 | Dr. J. Peter Pham Family Security Matters

Bin Laden’s Somali Gambit

Last week, al-Qaeda chieftain Usama bin Laden interjected himself yet once again into the ongoing conflict in the territory of the former Somali Democratic Republic. On closer examination, the mo...

August 25, 2008 | Bill Roggio The Long War Journal

Al Qaeda-linked Shabab in control of southern Somalia

Map of Shabab-controlled regions in southern and central Somalia. The red ovals indicate major cities and towns taken over by Shabab according to open source reports. The yellow boxes...

August 3, 2008 | Bill Roggio The Long War Journal

Al Qaeda’s East Africa operations chief escapes raid in Kenya

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. Click to view. Senior al Qaeda leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed escaped a raid in the resort town of Mandali in Kenyan, police stated. Kenyan police...