When Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is brought up to most Americans (and westerners in general), the first image which springs to mind is the hideous spectacle of the bloodied corpse of U.S. Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland being dragged through the streets by supporters of Somali warlord Mohammed Aideed to the ecstatic cheering and jeering from a braying and ululating crowd. Jackal-like.
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More specifically, when the subject of Somalia is raised, those of us who toil in the Jihadi muck veer in the direction of the multi-headed Islamic terror hydra Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (حركة الشباب المجاهدين) – more commonly known as al-Shabaab, when unspeakable horrors are perpetrated in the region.
Briefly, it was founded in 2006 in East Africa. In 2012, its members pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. Its ideology is based upon Salafi Jihadism, a/k/a Wahhabism, within Sunni Islam.
So it is with said backgrounder in
