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1 CuriousLurker  Tue, Sep 24, 2013 7:45:54am

The NBC article you linked to only touches on it very briefly, but I think some of the American members may very well be faced with a choice of finding another group to join, coming home and facing the music, or—like Omar Hammami—becoming Darwin Award recipients at the hands of their fellow jihadis. From earlier this month:

A member of al-Shabab who gave his name as Sheik Abu Mohammed told The Associated Press that Hammami was killed in an ambush in Somalia’s southern Bay region. Some of Mohammed’s associates carried out the killing, he said. Two other fighters with Hammami, including a Briton of Somali descent, were also killed, he said. […]

Hammami, an Arabic speaker, moved from Alabama to Somalia and joined al-Shabab in about 2006. He fought alongside al-Shabab until they had a falling out amid increasing tension between Somali and foreign fighters. He first expressed fear for his life in a March 2012 web video that publicized his rift with al-Shabab.

The first serious attempt on his life came in April, when al-Shabab’s leader, Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, also known as Godane, ordered the killings of several of Hammami’s associates.

“Just been shot in neck by shabab assassin. not critical yet,” Hammami tweeted after the April attack.

Al-Shabab and al Qaeda announced formal merger in February 2012, but the Somali militant group maintained a reputation of being hostile to foreign fighters. […]

“Hammami brought a lot of unwelcome outside scrutiny on Shabab from the international jihadist community. His story will likely be a case study on what can go wrong when Westerners join jihadist movements,” Berger said.

cbsnews.com

More about the internal purge and hostility towards the foreign jihadis, from the BBC earlier this summer:

“Two months ago, Ibrahim al-Afghani wrote an open letter to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, in which he criticised Godane for targeting foreign jihadists, imprisoning them in secret detention centres in the areas the terror group controls, and even killing them,” Mr Abukar says.

The foreign jihadists who joined al-Shabab - including US citizen Omar Hammami known as “al-Amriki”, who reportedly survived an assassination attempt by Godane loyalists - have become increasingly disillusioned with it, he says.

“Moreover, the influx of foreign jihadists into Somalia has, for all practical purposes, decreased and further eroded the place of that country in the annals of global jihad.”

bbc.co.uk

Live by the sword, die by the sword. There’s a sort of poetic justice to it when jihadi terrorists are killed by their own.

2 team_fukit  Tue, Sep 24, 2013 9:54:02am

re: #1 CuriousLurker

Oh yeah, Hammami! The youtube rapper who live tweeted his own assassination attempt! Thanks for making that connection

3 CuriousLurker  Tue, Sep 24, 2013 4:41:06pm

Quick update from the BBC, emphasis mine:

The president said he could not confirm reports that a British national and two or three US citizens were involved in the attacks, but he said forensic experts were carrying out tests to ascertain their nationalities.

In an interview with the US TV programme PBS Newshour, Kenya’s Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said the Americans were 18 or 19 years old, of Somali or Arab origin.

Her remarks have fuelled media speculation about the possible involvement of Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of one of the men who carried out attacks on London’s transport system on 7 July 2005.

But a Twitter post from al-Shabab on Tuesday evening dismissed claims that women were involved in the attack. The group said it “categorically” denied involvement of any woman”.

The group said: “We have an adequate number of young men who are fully committed and we do not employ our sisters in such military operations.” […]

bbc.co.uk


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