How the Islamic State’s Propaganda Feeds Into Its Global Expansion Efforts
Co-written by Bridget Moreng and Nathaniel Barr Even before the dramatic blitzkrieg...
Sheikh Mukhtar Robow
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...
Op-eds
7 Shabaab Leaders Added to Rewards for Justice Most Wanted List
The US State department has added seven senior leaders of Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, to the...
Op-eds
Al Qaeda’s Unsurprising Merger
Several years ago, I was having drinks at an Irish bar with an intelligence official. (Al Qaeda is always best discussed while drinking Guinness.) He had brought with him several pages of publicl...
Op-eds
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....
Op-eds
Around the Troubled Horn
Even by the much-reduced expectations of the subregion, the news emanating from the geopolitically-sensitive, but ever-volatile Horn of Africa has not been at all good these last few weeks....
Op-eds
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...
Op-eds
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...
Op-eds
Western Terrorism Recruits in Somalia
On Monday, the United States unsealed terrorism charges against eight defendants for supporting a Somali Islamist group called al-Shabaab. While few lay people in Canada or the United States have...
Op-eds
Understanding al-Shabaab
By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Madeleine Gruen The advance of Islamist groups in Somalia is seen as a cause for concern by Western law enforcement and...
Op-eds
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...
Op-eds
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...