Armies of Liberation

The shipment of weapons is par for the course. Yemeni weapons shipments to Somalia are a leading cause of its instability and have been ongoing for years. The last shipment doesn’t necessarily show that AQAP and al Shabab are linked up in a new level of coordination; what it likely shows is that UN sanctioned weapons dealer Fares Manna is back in business. Its a very complicated relationship, check my category “Proliferation” or search “Fares Manna” for the chapter of the story about the shipload of Chinese weapons brought into Yemen with forged documents from the Defense Ministry. See Evaluating relations between Al-Shabab and Al-Qaeda for a review of the rhetorical and physical support between al Shabab and AQAP, including the arrest of Warsame. For earlier, see the 2006 arrest of eight westerners in Yemen (all later released) who were smuggling weapons to the fanatics in Somalia and the connection of Awlaki to those persons, who are hopefully all under the microscope now. Rahm’s report below seems to be from Sun Times: U.S intercepts ship suspected of carrying weapons for Al-Shabaab

Terror Free Somalia: The U.S Navy has intercepted a Somalia bound Yemeni cargo ship carrying weapons suspected to be for Somalia’s Al Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab militia.Somalia consulate in Yemen said the cargo ship en route from Yemen to Somalia coastline ended up in the hands of U.S Navy at the Gulf of Aden.The Somali consul Hussein Hajji Ahmed said U.S navy opened fire on the ship after the ship captain defied Navy orders to stop the vessel but later surrender to the United States navy.

He added that the ship is suspected of carrying military supplies for the Al-Shabaab militia in Somalia, a clear indication that Yemeni Al-Qaeda supports the militia in terms of weaponry.Ahmed said investigations into the issue are currently underway.He urged the Somali government to boost security along the country’s coastlines and seek supports from the neighbouring countries in making sure that no arms are illegally smuggled into the country through the coastal areas.The U.S has recently received critical information suggesting that Yemeni based Al-Qaeda network provides weapons and other military necessities to Somalia’s Al-Shabaab insurgents fighting the Somali government.

A bunch of overdue AQAP links and articles: First, business as usual: Sadiq al Ahmar said 16 of the recent al Qaeda escapees are living in villas in Sanaa, and other al Qaeda members are in the counter-terror forces, Republican Guard and Central Security. Its typical; we listed names of some of the AQ in the CT forces some years ago. Its well documented that other al Qaeda terrorists receive no-show salaries from the army or intelligence forces. The regime spun it as “rehabilitation,” until they needed a deniable proxy. The US dismissed them as “militants” but now the US is droning “militants” with no clear affiliation to al Qaeda or any transnational terror organization.

Yesterday, in an interview with Al Sheba, about what promoted the power of “the existence of al-Qaeda in Yemen”, Shekh Sadiq al Ahmar stressed that the so-called al-Qaeda elements are out of the house of the presidency and they exist in an anti-terrorist forces and the Republican Guard and the Central Security, noting that 16 members of Al Qaeda leaders who fled from the prison of Al-Mukalla month the past, “present in the villas in the capital alone to them the system in it.” He added, “The system uses the al-Qaeda bogeyman to extort from the Gulf, and promoted himself to America.”

Second, Shabab fighter Ahmed Warsame, arrested in the Gulf, was brought to the US for trial. Warsame has ties to both AQAP and al Shabab and met Anwar. Awlaki has been pimping al Qaeda to the Somalis since (at least) 2006 when the eight westerners were arrested trying to smuggle weapons to Somalia from Yemen. The enmeshment between al Qaeda in Yemen and al Shabab was politically inconvenient prior to the rev and is an expedient sound bite now.

NYT 7/10: In his remarks on his plane, Mr. Panetta said there were greater dangers to the United States in Yemen. “There’s no question when you look at what constitutes the biggest threat in terms of attacks on the United States right now, more of that comes from Yemen and people like Awlaki,” he said. He added that in Yemen, “There are a number of operations that are being conducted not only by the Defense Department, but by my former agency to try to focus on going after those targets. I would say that’s one of our top priorities right now.”

Fox News: The Somali terror suspect transferred this week to a New York City federal court spent “significant time” with American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, a U.S. official told Fox News. (Read on …)

May be??? Piracy has been facilitated from Yemen for a long time. The presence of Yemeni pirates is little compared with the intelligence assistance, logistical and supplies from Yemen.

Red Sea piracy may be going multinational – U.S.
Reuters; LONDON, March 7 (Reuters) – Piracy in the Red Sea may be becoming a “multinational” business with Yemenis joining Somalis in the lucrative crime, a senior U.S. official said on Monday. (Read on …)

One escapes. Why don’t the drug dealers or tribesmen ever escape prison?

YP An Al-Qaeda suspect escaped from an Aden hospital, with reports suggesting an unknown group could have infiltrated into the hospital and helped him escape. Amin Al-Sayed was arrested along with four other terrorist suspects last week, and was hospitalized at the BaSuhaib military hospital. Last week, the authorities announced the arrest of almost ten Al-Qaeda suspects in Abyan and Hadramout, amid the continuous hunt for and large-scale operations against AQAP militants, mainly in southern, southeastern and eastern regions.

Yemen Post: A Yemeni court specialized in the cases of terrorism in Hadramout sentenced four suspected Al-Qaeda militants between three to five years in prison. (Read on …)

The following article is a guest post by Fathia Mohamed Absie*

It seems as though, every month if not every other week, there is a terror plot that gets disrupted somewhere in the U.S. These plots are in most cases carried out by some so called Muslim jihadist. Every time I hear news of something bad happening somewhere in the U.S, my heart skips a beat and I start to pray that it is not a Muslim person at the helm of it.

The Corvallis, Oregon plot have shocked me even further because the young man who attempted to carry out the crime is from my home land, Somalia. Like me, Mohamed Osman Mohamud is a naturalized American citizen who came to this country as a baby. After listening to stories of friends of the family, I thought the kid was almost born here. He is from a middle class family. His father is an engineer and his mother a stay at home mother who was never absent from his life. Young Osman had everything going for him, a smart young man who was a college student at OSU with a bright future. He had the potential to become anything he set his mind on unlike the many young Somalis that are stuck in Somalia trying to survive flying bullets or those who have no choice but to live in an overcrowded refugee camps with no foreseeable bright future.
(Read on …)

No link, sorry, it kinda looked like a news site but then it didn’t. The most senior foreign fighter in al Shabab was the now deceased Yemeni AQAP Rajah abu Khalid. Update: Rahm has the same story, unsurprisingly. Update 2, Garowe: Officials with the UN-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) claimed that a Yemeni-born foreign fighter named Rabah Abu-Qalid was killed during heavy clashes Sunday in Mogadishu…The group has close links to Al Qaeda has brought foreign fighters to southern Somalia to provide training with military tactics, explosives and suicide bombings, which were alien to Somalia’s anarchy before 2006. The foreign fighters in Somalia number 300 to 1,200, according to Somali and U.S. intelligence estimates. Most are from neighboring countries such as Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, and Yemen.

The militant commander, who was named Rajah Abu Khalid, a Yemen national, was reported that he was seriously wounded with 13 other fighters and was taken to an Alshabab medical facility in Jowhar district, 90kms from the north of Mogadishu.

Martyr Rajah Abu Khalid, succumbed in Jowhar hospital last night, he died several hours later when he was wounded said an Alshabab sources in conditions of anonymity. (Read on …)

The arms flow between the two is well established. If we recall the eight foreigners arrested, and later released, for trying to ship weapons to Somali’s ICU in 2006. And the connection of Anwar al Awlaki with that case. Afterwards, numerous Somali Islamists came to Yemen. The weapons have been flowing from Yemen via Faris Manna, legally he claims. The boats delivering the refugees over the last several years wouldn’t return empty.

Telegraph: Yemeni officials have claimed that members of the al-Shabaab terrorist group have been arrested in refugee camps for Somalis. The government fears that refugee camps such as Al-Kharaz, which now houses 18,000 out of an estimated 2-300,000 Somali refugees in Yemen, could become recruiting grounds for radicals.

Officials also claim there are “regular links”, including arms transfers between al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group accused of planting parcel bombs on planes last month.

“I see Shabaab people on the streets of Aden,” said one former Somali airport official who fled with his family when he was threatened and now lives in a fly-blown two-room hut in the al-Kharaz refugee camp, two hours’ drive into the desert from the port city.

Its Naba News, so its hard to say, but its the third report in the last months. And who knows if they stay in Somalia or move on.

According to sources familiar with the “news News” that the information received by the security forces during the past two days revealed the flight of a group of al Qaeda in Yemen towards the African coast, after coordination with elements of the “youth movement” Somali, weighted by their move to Somalia. (Read on …)