January 05, 2007

American al Qaeda Killed in Somalia

Given the fact that the "Foreign Minister" for the Islamic Courts Union is an American citizen named Ibrahim Hassan Addou, I find the reports that American citizens are among the dead in Somalia very credible. Are the Americans al Qaeda fighters or simply Somali expats who have American citizenship and then went back to Somalia to fight for the Islamists? I'm not sure that the U.N. backed Somalian government is the best source of information given their sketchy past.

There is no doubt that al Qaeda and like-minded Salafist jihadis are in Somalia fighting to establish a Taliban-like state---I have personally seen some very credible evidence of that fact. Somalia has recently surpassed Iraq as the jihadis cause célèbre, as evidenced by the new Somalia themed Zawahiri video released yesterday.

If one of the recovered American passports reads Adam Gadahn, I'll definitely be more than a little happy. I'd also be happy if Professor Ibrahim Hassan Addou was found dead.

But there are an awful lot of Somalian refugees scattered all over the world--some in the U.S., but many more in Canada and Europe--many of whom have sympathies with the ICU. So, many of these 'foreigners' are likely dual citizens. It's not all that difficult to tell an Arab or Pakistani from a Somali, though.

In any event it would be very prudent for Homeland Security to be on the lookout for American citizens of Somali, Eritrean, Djiboutian, or Ethiopian (a sizeable minority of Ethiopian citizens have sympathies to the ICU) coming home from international flights.

ABC's The Blotter:

A senior official in the Somali government's new Ministry of the Interior told ABC News government forces had recovered "dozens of foreign passports," including several American passports, on the bodies of al Qaeda fighters killed in combat between forces affiliated with the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and Ethiopian forces in Somalia.

According to the same source, most of the foreign passports were Sudanese, Pakistani and Yemeni, but several American, British and Australian passports were also recovered.