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The ICU’s rise didn’t last long, and its fall was swift. Pressured by Ethiopia on one side and the Somali government on the other, then hammered by U.S. air strikes, the ICU crumbled and its leaders resigned.75

Soon afterward, a second-wave Islamist movement arose—Al Shabab, made up of the most militant members of the ICU, who had split to form their own organization, and a number of foreign mujahideen. The new militia used any means available to undercut the Somali government, including assassinations and suicide bombings. Most of its victims were, and continue to be, Somalis.76

Given the intense internal conflict, including Muslim-on-Muslim violence and a deep entanglement with essentially local conflicts of long standing, Somalia bore little resemblance to previous magnets for the global jihad movement.77 Unlike the Afghans in the 1980s and the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s, Al Shabab did not possess a clear claim to the moral high ground, and it certainly did not enjoy the support of Western governments and media.

Nevertheless, Al Shabab has attracted an extraordinary number of American jihadists. In 2007 and 2008, at least twenty young men from Minneapolis, Minnesota, left America to study the art of war at Al Shabab’s training camps. Several other Americans from all over the country also left for the battlefield. The vast majority of those who joined the conflict were Americans of Somali descent. Many had been born in Somalia, and most had family or tribal ties to the combatants. In 2008 former Minneapolis resident Shirwa Ahmed earned the unhappy distinction of being the first American suicide bomber.78

Some fighters were recruited by people directly connected to Al Shabab or al Qaeda. Al Shabab recruiters were able to successfully leverage the involvement of Ethiopian troops working in conjunction with the Somali government to create a narrative of “Crusader” aggression. In this respect, they recreated some of the strengths of the old Soviet jihad recruiting model, in which jihadists lured young men to the battlefield first, then indoctrinated them with radical Islamic ideas in a tightly controlled environment. By the fall of 2010, U.S. intelligence estimated that several American citizens had risen to senior leadership positions in the organization.79

The Minneapolis community most heavily targeted by Al Shabab recruiters faced a particularly difficult version of the American experience, living in poverty and violence in and around a housing project called Riverside Plaza. Murders and drug violence were endemic, and random death came to both criminals and innocent bystanders. The desire for an escape was understandable. Although life with Al Shabab was hardly an improvement in security, some recruits found that the chance to die for a cause compared favorably with the very real risk of dying for no reason at all.80

While the problem of American ethnic Somalis joining Al Shabab is a serious concern, it’s also diagnosable and thus a manageable problem for intelligence and law enforcement (up to a point). But the appeal of Al Shabab didn’t stop there. Starting in 2006 and continuing through 2010, an increasingly diverse selection of American Muslims have tried to go to Somalia to take part in jihad.

Jehad Mostafa was an American citizen of Kurdish descent who was raised as a Muslim. He was known as a friendly young man without any particular extremist leanings. A college friend remembered him as an unlikely mujahideen. “I used to tease him that his name was pronounced like ‘jihad,’ and I’d say you’re named after holy war? He’d say Islam is a religion of peace and love.” He prayed at the Islamic Center of San Diego, one of the locations visited by the September 11 hijackers. He married a Somali woman in about 2005, left the country shortly thereafter, and eventually made his way to Al Shabab.81

There were several others (see chapter 11), but the most significant player was a Muslim named Omar Hammami, who hailed from the small southern town of Daphne, Alabama.82