Lawless Somalia draws influx of foreign fighters

Some of these foreign fighters hail from the US (Minnesota), Britain, Canada and all the other usual suspects...Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc. AFP

Somalia now shelters an estimated 450 foreign fighters who are working with the Shebab, a home-grown hardline Islamist group that has spearheaded a bloody insurgency since 2006.

While foreign fighters wanted for links to Al-Qaeda have long used Somalia as a backyard, their numbers have swollen dramatically in 2009, experts say.

"There were maybe 100 foreigners last year but now our estimate is up to 450," said Ismail Haji Noor, a former Somali security official who has established a secular militia bent on rooting out the Shebab and their foreign allies.

Buried deep within the article is an interesting tid bit of information

"A young man who talked to me said he was from Morocco but the group leader is called Mohamed and he is a white American," a local shop owner who said his life would be in danger if his name was published told AFP.

Residents say many white men are among the newly-arrived Islamic fighters in Baidoa, a town 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Mogadishu where the country's transitional parliament normally sits.

"These white men are heavily armed with hand grenades and machine guns. They sometimes come to the mosque and pray with us," resident Ahmed Hasan said.

"They are more disciplined than local fighters, they look very religious, but I don't know why they are here, there is no jihad now that the Ethiopians have left," said 28 year-old Mohamud.

Rusty speculates that the white jihad leader might be Adam Gadahn. As for the other white men who are "more disciplined than local fighters, they look very religious" might be there just for training for attacks in Europe or the US. I remember reading some time back that al Qaida was training a few dozen white muslims, in Pakistan, to carry out attacks in Europe. Perhaps they moved their operations to Somalia.