May-23-12
Today from Hiiraan Online:  _
Britain, US concern over Somali militants

Thursday, February 09, 2012

A NEW wave of battle-hardened ''lone wolf'' terrorists is expected to infiltrate Britain and the US from African and other war zones to carry out attacks, according to security experts.

British and American Somalis currently fighting alongside Islamist rebels in Somalia are expected to pose a serious threat upon their return from Africa, training others in the techniques they learnt on the battlefield and in terrorist training camps.

''It is only a question of time before their commitment to the cause, and their newly acquired expertise, are likely to be seen on British streets,'' says the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defence think tank.
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RUSI, in a report titled The Global Origins of New Terrorism, says about 50 fighters with the Islamist group al-Shabab, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, are from Britain.

They say the new terror threat will also come from Islamist fighters returning from wars in Yemen and Nigeria, and from the renewed violence in Iraq.

The predictions are echoed by the controversial chairman of the US House committee on homeland security, congressman Peter King, who has warned of the threat to the US from an estimated 50 American Somalis fighting with al-Shabab.

Mr King, who held several congressional hearings last year on the radicalisation of US Muslims, notoriously claimed that ''80 to 85 per cent of mosques in [the US] are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists'' and has been criticised by Amnesty International for his ''divisive'' approach.

Valentina Soria, a research analyst on counterterrorism with RUSI and one of the report's co-authors, told The Age yesterday that the Somalia-based foreign fighters - some converts to Islam - present a significant threat not only to Britain and the US but to other countries, including Australia.

One of the major problems for intelligence services, says Ms Soria, is that many of those who go to Somalia to fight are ''clean skins'', with no history of militancy or radicalisation at home, and therefore unknown to authorities.

Mr King told a British Home Affairs committee on radicalisation in Britain of the threat against the US. ''We have had at least four dozen Americans, young men, Somali Americans, who have been recruited, gone back to Somalia and have been trained,'' he said. ''For a while, American law enforcement and intelligence sources were not that concerned, from our perspective, because it was felt they were going back to Somalia to fight in Somalia.

''But now there is increasing evidence of them attempting to come back to the US and also linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen.''

Mr King has previously said that 20 Canadians were known to have joined al-Shabab. The RUSI report says the growing number of ''lone wolves'' are not normally part of a well-organised pipeline of fighters.

''More usually, they are personally connected to family or friends who have already gone to a conflict zone … Most of these individuals appear to be only informally networked, making the most of personal links through Kenya or South Africa.

''Young British men, and some women, go to fight in Somalia, Yemen and the border areas of Pakistan. So, too, do an increasing trickle of disaffected American men, some of whom have already served in the US Army.''

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