Posts Tagged ‘al shabaab’
 
August 10, 2012 0

Kenyan Al Qaeda Supporters’ Magazine Takes On Jews And Obama

A pre­dom­i­nantly Swahili-language online ter­ror­ist mag­a­zine, appar­ently writ­ten by Kenyan sup­port­ers of the Somali-based Al Qaeda affil­i­ate Al Shabaab, fea­tures English-language arti­cles that describe Jews as “the worst enemy of Islam,” as well as a “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster of Pres­i­dent Barak Obama.

Screen­shot from Gaidi Mtaani article

The mag­a­zine, titled Gaidi Mtaani, roughly trans­lated as “Ter­ror­ism Street,” is replete with the graph­ics and lay­out rem­i­nis­cent of Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Penin­sula’s English-language ter­ror­ist mag­a­zine, Inspire. Two issues have been released since April 2012.

The Eng­lish arti­cles repeat­edly describe Kenya’s mil­i­tary incur­sion into Soma­lia to com­bat Al Shabaab as “a clear man­i­fes­ta­tion of hatred of Mus­lims” and part of “America’s global war on Islam.”  The mag­a­zine claims the objec­tive of this Amer­i­can proxy war is to “Crush Islam or Islamic Renaissance.”

The mag­a­zine casts “the Zion­ist with their Amer­i­can part­ners” as the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the “cru­sade” in Soma­lia and crit­i­cizes the Kenyan pres­i­dent for trav­el­ing to Israel to secure Israeli coop­er­a­tion for coun­tert­er­ror­ism efforts.  Although the Eng­lish arti­cles do not directly threaten Israeli or Jews, Israeli inter­ests had pre­vi­ously been tar­geted by Al Qaeda in Kenya, includ­ing an attempt to shoot down an Israeli air­liner and an attack on an Israeli-owned resort in 2002.

The authors warn that they will not “dif­fer­en­ti­ate between civil­ians and com­bat­ants” and call on Kenya’s cit­i­zens to “reflect on the mag­ni­tude of what is yet to come,” cit­ing the 1998 bomb­ing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya that killed over 200 people.

Al Shabaab and its sup­port­ers have been blamed for repeated grenade and gun attacks in Kenya since Kenya began mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Soma­lia last October.

The Mus­lim Youth Cen­ter, a Kenyan orga­ni­za­tion sup­port­ive of Al Shabaab, has pro­moted the mag­a­zine via its Twit­ter account and blog, which was taken down shortly after the mag­a­zine was advertised.

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July 27, 2012 1

Hezbollah on Your iPhone: There’s An App for That

Update: The Alma­nartv appli­ca­tion was removed from Apple’s iTunes over the week­end. It was later removed from Google Play for Android.

In the lat­est exam­ple of ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions exploit­ing cur­rent tech­nol­ogy to spread their vio­lent mes­sages, an appli­ca­tion was made avail­able on Wednes­day through Apple’s iTunes ser­vice pro­vid­ing mobile access to con­tent from Hezbollah’s satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion, al-Manar.

The new free appli­ca­tion, adver­tised on air by al Manar, directs users to var­i­ous sta­tion con­tent, includ­ing speeches by Hezbol­lah leader, Has­san Nas­ral­lah. Al-Manar broad­casts the ter­ror­ist group’s mes­sages of hate and vio­lence, dis­sem­i­nates anti-Semitic and anti-American pro­pa­ganda and glo­ri­fies sui­cide bomb­ings to mil­lions of view­ers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Hezbol­lah is a U.S. des­ig­nated For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion, and al-Manar was listed as a “Spe­cially Des­ig­nated Global Ter­ror­ist” by the Depart­ment of the Trea­sury in 2006.Al-Manar has a pres­ence on other inter­net plat­forms as well, includ­ing a Twit­ter account with over 17,000 fol­low­ers and 51,000 messages.

Other ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions use the microblog­ging ser­vice, includ­ing Al Shabaab, a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion in Soma­lia which for­mally merged with Al Qaeda ear­lier this year. There are also numer­ous ter­ror­ist sup­port pages on Face­book and other social media platforms.

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May 23, 2012 0

Alabama Jihadist Omar Hammami Resurfaces Online

Update: An audio lec­ture by Ham­mami posted online on May 25 may pro­vide insights into his appar­ent rift with Al Shabaab.  In the 45-minute lec­ture, orig­i­nally posted online in Jan­u­ary but quickly removed, he crit­i­cizes jihadist orga­ni­za­tions with a local focus, liken­ing them to a “can­cer­ous tumor.” He also calls for all Mus­lims to unite in a “jihad of the entire Ummah [Mus­lim nation]” under the ban­ner of restored Caliphate. 

Amid rumors of his death and his own dec­la­ra­tion that his “life may be endan­gered by” the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion he joined in Soma­lia, Omar Ham­mami, an Alabama native who became the pub­lic face and voice of Al Shabaab, announced that he is still alive in part 1 of his autobiography.

In the auto­bi­og­ra­phy, dis­sem­i­nated online on May 16, Ham­mami describes his jour­ney from Alabama to his involve­ment in the cre­ation of Al Shabaab, the Al Qaeda-linked Somali ter­ror­ist group.

He calls join­ing jihad “the dream of any Mus­lim who has the love of the reli­gion burn­ing in his heart” and main­tains that it is “truly an indi­vid­ual oblig­a­tion upon all of us.” Ham­mami por­trays him­self as “a man with no regrets” despite his appar­ent falling out with Al Shabaab’s leadership.

In describ­ing his role as a ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­dist, Ham­mami advises that “being casual, when pos­si­ble, is a bet­ter approach when reach­ing out to those like myself in the West… my peers can smell a poser from a mile away.” He also stresses the impor­tance of media to the jihadist move­ment. “The war of nar­ra­tives has become even more impor­tant than the war of navies, napalms, and knives.

Ham­mami also dis­cusses his rela­tion­ship with Daniel Mal­don­ado, an Amer­i­can cur­rently serv­ing 10 years in prison for receiv­ing mil­i­tant train­ing in Soma­lia with him after they trav­eled together to the Mid­dle East.

Ham­mami con­cludes part 1 by urg­ing oth­ers to emu­late him. “Not that I’m extremely spe­cial, but then again I haven’t seen too many mid­dle class ‘white’ guys from Alabama in Jihaad these days. Hope­fully oth­ers will say to them­selves: ‘I can do that too!’”

On May 22, a photo of Ham­mami pos­ing with a com­puter dis­play­ing the auto­bi­og­ra­phy was released online, osten­si­bly to con­firm that he is indeed still alive and that the auto­bi­og­ra­phy is authentic.

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