The Al-Shabaab is regarded as one of the most dangerous African terrorist organizations. Al-Shabaab is a multiethnic militant group out of Somalia that uses many terrorist tactics in attempts to gain control over the country of Somalia. They use many forms of terrorism that include ideological revolutionary, dissident, and nationalist terrorism, as they have the motive to gain power over a territory by overthrowing the government. The Al-Shabaab is suspected to have taken part in many terrorist attacks, including the 1998 United States embassies bombings. The motive behind their violence is their goal of creating an Islamic state in Somalia, which they believe is morally justified by the ideological beliefs. An important psychological factor behind their violence is the struggle to gain power over Somalia’s regions and the death of their original leader, “Aryo”, they use his death as justification for violence against outside nations that interfere with their goal. Al-Shabaab means “The Youth” and is also considered a jihadist group. Their numbers are estimated between four thousand to six thousand militants, which makes them a major terrorist threat. In 2012, the United States Department of State has opened bounties on the Al-Shabaab’s leaders and insurgents Moktar Ali Zubeyr “Godane”, Ibrahim Haji Jama, Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, Bashir Mohamed Mahamoud, and Mukhtar Robow (U.S. Department of State, 2012). The al-Shabaab has claimed to be opposed to all foreigners, Israelis, America, and any western countries that interfere with their goal.
The Al-Shabaab organization is a multiethnic group with Somalis leaders being trained by Afghanistan and Iraq terrorist groups. The group’s members come from other local revolutionary and dissid...
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attacks of terrorist cells, such as al-Qaeda. The strategic location of the base in Djibouti, Africa
As seen from Gettleman´s text, “But Awil is not a rebel. He is working for Somalia's government. The U.S. and other Western nations support the fragile Somali regime, which is battling an Islamic insurgency, as part of the counterterrorism strategy for the region.” As apparent, the United States has put a counterterrorism strategy into place, to help bring down the power that Somalia
In order to combat the Shabab, the US government has turned to Special Operations troops and private contractors to train Somalian and other African troops to conduct raids and fights back against the Shabab. Reentering the region does not come without its share of drawbacks, the United States has used air strikes which have killed civilians. This has created a riff among the US and Somalian government.
Al Qaeda’s history began during the Cold War. Western countries, such as the United States, and its allies supported militant units within Islam to fight the Soviet Union. The United States formed an alliance with the Pakistan Interservice Intelligence Agency (ISI) (White, 2012). The ISI is equivalent to the United States intelligence agency CIA. The ISI, along with the United States began training and arming the mujahedeen (holy warriors) to fight the Soviet Union. In 1979, Afghan mujahedeen along with Saudi Arabia fought the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan (White, 2012). The United States supported the Afghan mujahedeen along with any other form of Islam to combat the Soviet Union. The United States developed an unde...
At that time in the early 1990’s the U.S. was the only superpower country left in the world. The Soviet Union collapsed after the Cold War and the left the U.S. at the top. With the U.S. being the only superpower left, it meant that they were the only ones who could try to keep peace between other countries and hopefully end violence in the world. At the time, Somalia was a complete disaster and still is to this day. They have no structural government and warlords rule parts of the country. The one warlord at the time, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, was stealing shipments of food from the U.S. to the starving citizens in the rest of Somalia. The U.S. did not like this, so they set up a plan to capture Aidid and his men in a building near the Bakaara Market. The U.S. just got done defeating Saddam Hussein’s army in the first Gulf War. Before the war, Hussein had one of the largest armies in the world. The U.S. defeated them in a couple of weeks and gave them a massive amount of confidence going into this raid to try to capture Aidid.
On November 13th, 2015 the world was shocked to discover that terrorists had attacked Paris, however in the latest string of terrorist attacks one must pose the question of whom terrorism impacts the most. Traditionally, in terrorism the victim is the group or region in which the attack is target. Recently, we have seen a large shift in the brunt of the backlash being placed toward minority religions that are simply blemished by small groups of extremists, thus painting an unjust image of the religion entirely. In the case of the Paris attacks, the extremist group, ISIS, has showcased views drastically different than a majority of Muslims, yet the media and millions of people globally have created the misconception that such an anomalistic
.... The next month, the new MPs elected Somali activist, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, as president in the first real presidential election since 1967. As al-Shabaab weakened, piracy also decreased significantly in 2012. In January of 2013, the United States formally recognized the new Somali government. The U.S. had not recognized a government as legitimate in Somalia since 1991. While attacks by al-Shabaab continue to plague Somalia, Mogadishu and the southern regions of Somalia are continually seeing a decrease in victims of violence. Alongside all these promising developments, over the next few years, Somalia will see 2.4 billion dollars in reconstruction aid in order to increase security and strengthen the economy. Although the future of Somalia’s political development is uncertain, it does seem that there is hope that the worst has past for this struggling country.
The article “Officials: Al Qaeda tries to recruit Americans in Syria” is about how Al Qaeda is encouraging fighters in Syria to prepare them in the case that they will return home to carry out attacks. They are prepared to send the fighters home by train. There...
Al-Qaeda Introduction Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization established in Peshawar, Pakistan, between 1988 and 1989 by Osama bin Laden and his teacher Abullah Yusuf Azzam. Al-Qaeda is an international terrorist network that is considered the top terrorist threat to the United States. Al Qaeda is seeking to get rid of all westerns from Muslim territory and replace their own Islamic regime. They are a group of people who work together to plan acts of terrorism against Muslims and non-Muslims especially in the United States. Al Qaeda believes that they are fighting a holy war against the enemy of their religion.
Extremism manifests itself dangerously in the Islam religion (Palmer, Monte, and Princess Palmer, 37). The Muslim religion has some laws and believes that no one should question their design, origin or application. Good people should punish immoral people in Islam religion without showing mercy to them. In Islam, human beings have no right to offer forgiveness to others that can easily lead to and create peace to oneself in the society. The unforgiving nature makes human rights groups in many ways try to change and support governments that try to overthrow Muslim extremist governments. Such an approach creates a war never ending between the Muslim governments and other governments that fight the extremist ideals. In East Africa, Somalia presents a case example by observing how the Government is not able to control the ever fighting and dreadful Al-Shabaab. The “Al-Shabaab” is an Arab name for Muslim youth who over the years try to use enforce extremist rulers in governing the country and hence controlling the resources. Muslim fighters and rebels arm themselves with arsenals they use to fight groups that oppose them by killing and torturing them. The al-Shabaab launches attacks that kill people and openly claim responsibility for the losses and the deaths they cause. They also punish members who commit sin using the retrogressive laws of the Quran on the people they label sinners. Other extremist
Al Qaeda, or Al Qaida, is a global militant Islamist organization. It was agreed upon as a terrorist organization by almost every nation such as the United States, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty), the European Union, United Kingdom, United Nations, India, and many more countries. Al Qaeda is a organization or network comprising of both a stateless and ruthless army with a radical Sunni Muslim movement that has a strict interpretation of Sharia Law, moral law, and their main goal is to achieve global Jihad, the religious duties of all Muslims.
Al Qaeda is an international terrorist organization that was founded by Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s in Peshawar, Pakistan. The name is Arabic for “The Base of Operation” or “method” (Burke 2004). However, many experts agree that al-Qaeda is more dangerous as an ideology than as an organization. As an organization, it has been weakened by fragmentation, arrests, and deaths of the top leaders. This has caused the structure of the organization to be destroyed, resulting in the lack of a central hub for the militant group. One thing that remains is the ideology, which is fueled mainly by a hatred of Western, Zionist, and Semitic cultures and beliefs (Burke 2004). As a result, many people may not be directly part of the al Qaeda network or even directly linked to bin Laden. Due to their common views and beliefs of Western culture, militant groups loosely associated to al Qaeda have been formed, carrying on the original objectives that bin Laden had in mind when he created this organization.
Whenever there is a major crime against humanity or a crime done by a religious group we often think of how bad the acts have been and look at who to blame, we are rarely looking at what positive impacts that set acts have had in the aftermath of the action. In this paper I will look at what Boko Haram have done in Nigeria, and what kind of positive impacts that have risen in the aftermath as well as their search for national identity.
Boko Haram has recently been in international news including South Africa. The most recent of attacks was on a church where Attackers armed with heavy ammunition and explosives killed twenty-two people in a northeast Nigerian city. They set off many bombs and fired shots into the masses during the attack on the church in Waga Chakawa in Adamawa, before burning residents houses and taking hostages during a four-hour bloody siege. Boko Haram wants to impose sharia law, and wants to split Nigeria equally between Christians and Muslims, Boko Haram has killed thousands of people over the past four-and-a-half years, and is considered one of the biggest security risk in the largest oil producer in Africa and second largest economy in Africa after South Africa.
On September 11, 2001, the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon changed the mindset and the opinion of nearly every American on the one of the most vital issues in the 21st century: terrorism (Hoffman 2). Before one can begin to analyze how the United States should combat such a perverse method of political change, one must first begin to understand what terrorism is, where it is derived from, and why there is terrorism. These issues are essential in America’s analysis of this phenomenon that has revolutionized its foreign policy and changed America’s stance in the world.