"There is a level of activity that is troubling, disturbing,"
US military officials have noticed that a growing number of al Qaida terrorists are moving from the Pak-Afghan border to to areas of Africa, specifically Somalia. Large areas of Somalia are ruled by al Shabaab, a terrorist group linked to al Qaida, which has implemented islamic law. US counter-terrorism officials are worried that the battle hardened terrorists will train al Shabaab in sophisticated terror tactics.
In recent months al Qaida has focused more energy on Somalia. Last month an audio video of Bin Laden called for the overthrow of the Somali government. Al Zawahiri had also released a video calling for more support for al Shabaab fighters.
In fact, al Shabaab has already pledged allegiance to al Qaida and have formulized ties with al Qaida.
This is especially worrying since dozens of Somalis from the US, Canada and Britain have gone to Somalia to fight for al Shabaab.
Sign on San Diego
WASHINGTON — There is growing evidence that battle-hardened extremists are filtering out of safe havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and into East Africa, bringing sophisticated terrorist tactics that include suicide attacks.
The alarming shift, according to U.S. military and counterterrorism officials, fuels concern that Somalia is increasingly on a path to become the next Afghanistan – a sanctuary where al-Qaida-linked groups could train and plan their threatened attacks against the western world.[...]
The foreign fighters moving into East Africa complicate an already-rising crescendo of terror threats in the region. Those threats have come from the Somalia-based al-Shabab extremist Islamic faction and from al-Qaida in East Africa, a small, hard-core group also known by the acronym EEAQ. [...]
Al-Qaida has the skills while al-Shabab has the manpower, said one senior military official familiar with the region. The official said EEAQ appears to be a small cell of a few dozen operatives who rarely sleep in the same place twice and are adept at setting up temporary training camps that vanish days later.
What worries U.S. military leaders, the official said, is the that EEAQ and al-Shabab may merge in training and operations, potentially spreading al-Qaida's more extremist jihadist beliefs to thousands of clan-based Somali militants, who so far have been engaged in internal squabbling.
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