3 December Somali bomber ‘was from Denmark’
I have clearly dropped the ball on keeping up with the news. I missed this.
I’m interested in how long he had been in Somalia prior to conducting this attack– for the purposes of understanding his radicalisation trajectory.
Somali bomber ‘was from Denmark’ | Africa | ModernGhana.com News.
Categories: Attacks and Plots, Somalia
Alledgedly, he travelled about 18 months ago to Somalia with his wife and child. He might already have been quite radicalised before he left, of course. http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article854524.ece?service=print
I’m starting to wonder why there are so many foreign members among al Shabaab in Somalia… Maybe that’s just a bias from my own observation but I would be curious to know what do you think about ?
I wonder if the fact that so many foreigners appear in their suicide attacks is what gives them the impression of volume. Any ideas about how many Shabaab fighters there are in total?
No, no real idea of numbers. But I find it interesting that foreigners are being used for these attacks, the same way they were in Iraq. It’s a propaganda tool. Testament of faith, and all that. Seems to be quite effective too. I’m wondering if they have a separate unit for martyrs as many groups do, and even a separate unit for the foreign martyrs or foreigners more generally. But to find that out, or even guess at it, I’d need a good estimate of numbers, and to be honest I haven’t really dug into it enough to know. Hmm me thinks this might get added to the things to do list.
Look forward to seeing any output from it…btw, have you seen any comprehensive overviews of Shabaab attacks?
Here is what I found from an Garowe Online article (http://allafrica.com/stories/200912210004.html) :
“The other group led by Al-Shabaab Amir Sheikh Mukhtar Abdirahman Abu Subeyr who has the backing of about 1,200 foreign Jihadists, is reported to be in favour of escalation of the conflict ‘until they erect an Islamic government in Somalia”.
The figure of 1,2000 foreign jihadists sounds very overestimated ? Don’t you think ?