On 14 July 2024, as football fans gathered to watch the Euro 2024 final, a fireball ripped through a café in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, later claimed responsibility for the blast and the five lives it extinguished. It was a message to the Somali government — and to the West as a whole — that the past decade’s attempts to defeat the terror group had stalled.
But it was also a threat. In 2007, 22,000 African Union (AU) troops were brought into Somalia to support Mogadishu’s fragile government. But at the end of this year, they are scheduled to leave. And there’s every reason to believe that al-Shabaab could take over and destabilise neighbouring nations with a large Somali diaspora. Indeed, there are already reports that al-Shabaab is in contact with the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. Such an alliance would further imperil international shipping routes and have enormous consequences for the world economy.
It could also spark more serious threats closer to home. After all, in the aftermath of 9/11, it was in Somalia — not Iraq or Afghanistan — that a new generation of Western jihadists were spawned.
By the turn of the century, London had already become a haven for dissident preachers and jihadi ideologues: Abu Qatada, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, Hani al-Sibai and Abu Hamza al-Masri. But it also produced its own English-speaking radicals, who coalesced in a square mile known as Lisson Green, in the very same borough as the Houses of Parliament.
Many of the youngsters who grew up in the area had been too young to be meaningfully aware of the recent conflicts in Afghanistan or Bosnia, but they swam in the ideological currents of the aftermath. Sheikh Abu Qatadah, a top jihadi ideologue, used to deliver sermons there on Fridays. As did Anwar Awlaki, a firebrand preacher who openly gave jihadist talks and was a favourite of Mohammed Emwazi, the man who would later become known as “Jihadi John”. Just down the road, Muhammad al-Rifai, a man who claimed to be the Caliph of the whole Muslim world, lived in a council flat.
A few years ago, one of those who heard their sermons agreed to speak to me using the pseudonym Abdullah. Abdullah grew up in Lisson Green and attended the youth club where I worked for one summer in 2003. He told me about the Islamist currents that dominated the area: even the local five-a-side soccer team was named the “Shishanees” (the Chechens). Abdullah became devout during his teenage years and joined Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist organisation that called for the return of the Caliphate. As an activist, he invited many of its members to his secondary school to give speeches to the Muslim pupils.
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