WASHINGTON — As people crowded into the capital for Barack Obama’s inaugural celebration, senior counterterrorism officials huddled in the White House situation room, frantically trying to unravel intelligence about a possible attack on Washington.
By the time Obama took the oath of office, the threat of a terror plot by the Somalia-based al-Shabab organization had been debunked, but it underscored growing worries about this Islamic militant group.
“Are they the ones that are going to plan the next major terrorist attack in the United States and carry it out?” said Theresa Whelan, deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs. “Probably not. But could they provide some of the foot soldiers for it? Yes.”
The State Department considers al-Shabab a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda, something the group denies. The goal of al-Shabab, which means “The Youth,” is to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.
U.S. counterterrorism officials suspect that al-Shabab is recruiting young men from Somali communities in Minnesota and other Midwestern states, luring them back to their ancestral homeland for terrorism training and creating cells of fighters who could travel to other countries, including the U.S., to launch attacks.
Four months ago, a young Somali man left Minneapolis to become a suicide bomber. He detonated a bomb he was wearing, one step in a series of coordinated attacks in Hargeisa, the capital of the Somaliland region of Somalia. It was the first known time that a U.S. citizen became a suicide bomber.
In response, the Federal Bureau of Investigation stepped up efforts to reach out to community leaders in the Minneapolis area, where young Somali-American men have disappeared and are believed to have traveled to Somalia to fight with militants. FBI spokesman E.K. Wilson said that since the disappearances, the bureau has worked to expand relationships with community elders, religious leaders and others active in the local Somali population, which numbers about 80,000.
