Blackwater Founder Is Said to Back African Mercenaries

The NY Times reports that Erik Prince, the founder of the international security giant Blackwater Worldwide, is backing an effort by Saracen International, a controversial South African mercenary firm to insert itself into Somalia’s bloody civil war by protecting government leaders, training Somali troops, and battling pirates and Islamic militants there, according to American and [...]

Countering Terrorism in East Africa: The U.S. Response

New CRS report which provides an overview of current U.S. counterterrorism assistance programs and influence operations in East Africa and explores some of the strategies underpinning them. It also provides a brief description of the evolving terrorist threat in the region.

Somali terrorist activity in US raises concerns

The Christian Science monitor says it is workth asking how al Shabab’s supporters in the US see their own activities. My guess is that many of them see terrorism not as goal in and of itself, but as part of war. Al Shabab’s attack in Uganda this summer was unquestionably an act of international terrorism, [...]

Federal prosecutors charge 3 men with funding Somalia terrorist organization

The US District Court Eastern District of Missouri unsealed an indictment charging three men with providing material support to Somali-based Islamic terrorist organization al Shabaab. The October 21 indictment charges Mohamud Abdi Yusuf, Duane Mohamed Diriye and Abdi Mahdi Hussein with funding and providing materials to a known terrorist organization. The federal grand jury charged [...]

UN: More Than 230 Civilians Killed in Two Weeks in Mogadishu

According to a report by the United Nations refugee agency, the past two weeks of fighting in the Somali capital city of Mogadishu has left at least 230 civilians killed and over 400 others wounded. An estimated 23,000 people were displaced by the clashes pitting Government forces against Al-Shabaab insurgents during the same period, according [...]

Radicalisation in Kenya

The Washington Post has an interesting article on Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood, where the Somali immigrant community lives. Eastleigh, community leaders say, is an ideal breeding ground for radicalism. The neighborhood is poor and isolated; few Kenyans enter it. Local authorities have ignored it: Roads are unpaved, muddy and covered with trash. The smell of raw [...]

Political Science academic theses on counterterrorism

Ahrnens, Anette.  Lund University, Sweden; 2007 A Quest for Legitimacy: Debating UN Security Council Rules on Terrorism and Non-proliferation. Alienated: A Reworking of the Racialization Thesis after September 11th Using the Qur’an to Justify Terrorist Violence: Analysing Selective Application of the Qur’an in English-Language Militant Islamist Discourse Berger, Michael Andrew. St Andrews University, U.K.; 2010 [...]

Kenya accused of illegally transferring 4 terrorist suspects

Kenya secretly sent four terrorism suspects to Uganda after the World Cup bomb blasts in violation of Kenyan law, and FBI agents interrogated three of them in a manner that broke Ugandan law, human rights officials say. The officials said that Kenya circumvented its own extradition laws to send the four suspects to Uganda, where [...]

Somalia: Counterterrorism Law Proposed in Puntland Regional State

It was reported on July 17, 2010, that the Puntland Council of Ministers unanimously approved a new anti-terrorism law, which, if enacted by the state’s parliament, will establish a special court to try terrorism suspects and their accomplices.The 66-member parliament is expected to start debating the proposed law soon. Puntland, an area in the northeastern [...]

Fourteen Charged with Providing Material Support to Somalia-Based Terrorist Organization Al-Shabaab

The Justice Department announced that four separate indictments were unsealed on August 5th in the District of Minnesota, the Southern District of Alabama and the Southern District of California charging 14 individuals with terrorism violations for providing money, personnel and services to the foreign terrorist organization al-Shabaab. In the Southern District of Alabama, prosecutors unsealed [...]