The Somali Youth Mujahideen video – allegiance to bin Laden
The video “Here I am at your service Osama” is getting some serious attention in the wilds of the internet. Not surprising since it contains a pledge of allegiance to bin Laden. I’m surprised it has taken this long for an acknowledgement like this to come out. It’s been in the works for such a long time. I expect the various Somali groups will now merge too. Awey’s comments tend to suggest that this isn’t too far away.
The video is slick, polished and successfully raises not only the profile of the group but also bin Laden. A lot of al Qaeda core’s recent productions (bin Laden’s speech notwithstanding) have featured other key figures. This places the attention firmly back on him. If you think those in these forums aren’t paying attention to this, then take a look at these pics which came out afterwards.
This video is a recruitment tape. Clear and simple. And they are trading on bin Laden to do so. It’s a win win situation and the tape will be successful too, in attracting more support for the Somali Movement. This much is already clear in the reaction to the video in militant circles.
The radicalisation of the Somali Youth Movement has concerned me for some time. It’s now not only hitched it’s wagon to brand al Qaeda, but is adopting the tactics seen in other insurgent theatres of conflict. For al Qaeda it is a plus plus situation. It doesn’t need to operate in Somalia in order to gain currency and power and influence from the events there. The Somali Youth Movement is doing this for it. As many of you would know al Qaeda has had a hard time operating in any sizeable manner in the country and has tried and failed repeatedly to establish itself on the ground. It no longer needs to. The movement has hitched itself onto al Qaeda’s wagon of its own initiative and for its own purposes. Linking in Osama like this makes it a more attractive jihad destination, and gives it the power and currency to compete for recruits against the many other theatres of combat.
It also internationalises the Youth Mujahideen. This has significant consequences and could see al Qaeda tap into it/subcontract out for external operations.
More thoughts to follow later on this. It is quite a significant video. Far better quality than anything al Qaeda core has put out in a while. It reminded me of al Qaeda’s first effort actually (the State of the Ummah video), well a more localised version. It followed a very similar narrative structure.
UPDATE: Nick Grace has just reminded me of something important this tape may allude to. The declaration of an emirate in Somalia. I omitted to mention this, and agree with him that it is very likely this will be announced, after that is the groups merge.