The MI6-Al-Shabaab Connection | Critical Analysis |Axisoflogic.com

British security analysts fear that the militant Islamic Somali group Al-Shabaab, which has admitted to carrying out acts of terrorism, may attack the London Olympic Games. The military and its secret services count on the media to “set the agenda” (Chatham House)¹ and to “shape perceptions” (Ministry of Defence).² It is not surprising, then, that the government’s terrorism claims are repeated uncritically by the media, which specialise in “white propaganda” (an official term for establishment messages).³

Al-Shabaab foreign forces are recruited and trained by MI5 agents.

In reality, Al-Shabaab was infiltrated by old MI6 assets long ago, and its foreign forces are recruited and trained by MI5 agents (see below). If there is an attack on the Olympic Games carried out by Al-Shabaab, it will almost certainly be a false-flag designed to propel a war-weary public into supporting yet more bloodshed in the Pentagon’s quest for Full Spectrum Dominance.⁴ With one million Somalis dependent on Red Cross food aid (and not by accident), a British-led invasion could lead to mass starvation.

Shell and BP have long-standing oil contracts in Somalia, which the country’s socialist Islamic Courts Union jeopardised by permitting Chinese and Russian prospecting.⁵ A Chatham House study sponsored by BP recommended that because “Voters will not actively call for a more effective foreign policy,” the unelected Tory-Liberal government “should define its international mission as managing risks on behalf of British citizens.”⁶

The review laid the basis for the national security and strategic defence reviews, which named Somalia and adjacent Yemen, as “threats” to Britain’s “security.”⁷ In reality, Britain has been a major threat to Somalia and Yemen since the days of Empire, killing 200,000 Yemenis in the 1962-1970 war.⁸ If you want to know the military-industrial-complex’s real interest in Somalia and Yemen, look at a map. No amount of propaganda (except perhaps major cartographical revisions) can disguise the fact that 16,000 trade ships a year pass through the Gulf of Aden on their way to Europe and the US.⁹ Counterterrorism is a necessary pretext for militarising the zone.

BACKGROUND

The Red Cross warned that nearly one million Somalis are dependent upon aid.¹⁰ The foundations of the crisis were laid in 2006, when the Ethiopia-based Transitional Federal Government (TFG)—financed, armed, and trained by British special forces—invaded Somalia to depose the Islamic Courts Union. The TFG’s interior minister, Guled Ghamadeere, held up World Food Program (WFP)-delivered aid. The WFP refused to act because it was being used to funnel Department for International Development money (given by the British taxpayer) to the TFG.¹¹

The mass-murder, rape, looting, and torture inflicted by the TFG sparked a refugee crisis in which one million Somalis fled Mogadishu. Hundreds of thousands of Somali and Ethiopian “boat people” flee across the Gulf of Aden each year to seek refuge in Yemen,¹² where the British-trained and armed security services murdered demonstrators during the Arab Spring.¹³ A quarter of a million Somalis also live in dire conditions in Kenyan camps, where the British-trained and armed Kenyan forces rape and extort the women. Other refugees live on the Somalia-Ethiopia border.¹⁴

The dire situation put 4 million Somalis on the brink of starvation in a “famine caused by men, not by global warming,” in the words of the only journalist in Britain to cover the story (Aden Hartley). The US Congress described the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) as a non-violent, non-extremist socialist government which achieved poverty reduction. A Chatham House paper noted the ICU’s near-total eradication of piracy.¹⁵ But a stable, socialist government which allowed Russia and China to prospect for oil was not to be tolerated by Britain.

Al-Shabaab spokesman,
Sheikh Rageh

The TFG finally dismantled the ICU in the three-year war. From the wreckage emerged Al-Shabaab, the armed, militant wing of the ICU. In contrast to its predecessor, Al-Shabaab is an extremist organisation which has committed human rights violations—though nothing on the scale of the British-created TFG.¹⁶ Ugandans, whose military forces are part of the international occupation of Somalia, paid a bitter price in 2010, when Al-Shabaab committed its first external act of terrorism, targeting a soccer World Cup game. The act was confirmed by Al-Shabaab spokesman, Sheikh Rageh.¹⁷ What was not reported, however, is that Rageh’s superior, Ahmed Abdi Godane, has CIA-MI6 links:

THE SHABAAB-MI6 CONNECTION

In June 2011, the head of UK Counterterrorism, Campbell McCafferty, testified to a committee that “There has not been any evidence of a link between the [Somali] pirates and al-Shabab.” However, such a “link to terrorism would change entirely the international community’s view … I think people are looking hard for those links.”¹⁸ The inference being that if terrorism doesn’t exist, it has to be invented.

A few months later, People newspaper reported “fears that al-Shabaab will attempt to strike at the [London Olympic] Games, as well as growing concern over piracy and kidnappings.” Providing no evidence, the author Nick Dorman said that “Fanatics from the [Shabaab] group were responsible for 21/7, the botched plot to set off bombs in London in 2005.”¹⁹ There is just one slight problem with this analysis: Al-Shabaab didn’t even exist in 2005. Congressional sources trace its origins to 2007.²⁰

MI5 Chief Jonathan Evans

Dorman’s article ended with a quote from a Ministry of Defence official who claimed that Somalia may be next in line for British occupation. This was followed by an unprecedented statement from MI5 chief Jonathan Evans, that “Somalia has become the next destination after Pakistan for terrorist training due to the presence of al-Shabaab, an extremist group with links to al-Qa’ida.”²¹ According to the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, “al-Qaeda” is a CIA term used by the agency to describe “the computer data-base” of fighters that it—together with MI6 and the SAS—funded, armed, and trained in 1979²² in order “to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap,” as Jimmy Carter’s then-National Security Advisor explained.²³

Haroon Rashid Aswat

Parliamentary documents reveal that MI6 “mobilised” the terrorist group Al-Muhajiroun in the 1990s in order to fight in Kosovo.²⁴ FBI agent and former prosecutor John Loftus, speaking on behalf of the FBI, revealed that the British extremist Haroon Rashid Aswat is an MI6 double-agent, and that through Al-Muhajiroun has recruited fighters for Somalia from the UK. Far from being “Al-Shabaab” that tried to commit terrorism on 21/7, it was actually Aswat who was behind the 7/7 and 21/7 attacks, Loftus said.²⁵ It should be noted, however, that most British Somalis do not support Al-Shabaab, “al-Qaeda”, or terrorism.²⁶

Abu Qatada, MI5-MI6 Agent in a safe house in England cared for by British Intel Services.

Abu Qatada, whom the Daily Mail describes as “Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Britain,”²⁷ is another MI5-MI6 agent, which explains the reason for his slow extradition. According to a Time Magazine article from 2002, “senior European intelligence officials tell TIME that Abu Qatada is tucked away in a safe house in the north of England, where he and his family are being lodged, fed and clothed by British intelligence services.”²⁸

MI5 double-agent Reda Hassaine stated: “I saw Qatada brainwash young Muslims, living in Britain from Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Morocco and my own country of Algeria.”²⁹ On Al-Shabaab, the Guardian reported that “Britons are believed to make up about a quarter of the 200 or so of its foreign fighters, according to the Royal United Services Institute.”³⁰

It is surely no coincidence that Somalia and Sudan are now listed as the most dangerous places in the world by the Maplecroft Terrorism index?³¹ After Somalia’s first mosque bombing in 2010, many Somalis suspected foreign involvement.³² It was later revealed that SAS killers had been in Somalia for many years assisting the TFG and the Puntland police force.³³

Ahmed Abdi Godane,
Al-Shabaab Leader

One of Al-Shabaab’s leaders is Ahmed Abdi Godane (also known as Abu Zubayr). Godane joined Al-Itihad al Islamiya (AIAI) in the 1990s. According to the US State Department, AIAI “was an Islamist militant group founded by Somali Salafis in the 1980s. Many of its fighters trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, and returned to Somalia after the war.”³⁴ The US State Department defines “al-Qaeda” as: “Established by Usama Bin Ladin in the late 1980s to bring together Arabs who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.”³⁵ In other words, its own creation.

The MI5-MI6-Al-Shabaab links appear to cross “virtual” barriers. Al-Shabaab's website alqimmah.net reaches Somalis from its registered base in Sweden. It has posted anti-negotiation statements, written under religious pretexts, in order to encourage Al-Shabaab members to dismiss peace settlements, such as the Djibouti Round (2009). The website also schools young recruits in bomb-making and even attempts to incite Kenyan Muslims. The website is run by Musa Said Yusuf Godir, who in 2008, was arrested in London with his colleague Ahmed Said Mohamed Faarax-Deeq, who runs other Al-Shabaab-affiliated websites. They were charged with terrorism offences.

However, “Both men were subsequently cleared of the charges and released,” the UN reported. “On the night of 28 July 2009, participants in an Al-Shabaab online forum celebrated the release of Faarax-Deeq,” the agency added, concluding: “On 9 August 2009, a group of Somalis … hosted a reception for Faarax-Deeq and Godir in Leicester [UK],”³⁶ all under the nose of MI5.

Notes

Chatham House, “Are our media threatening the public good?” February, 2010, London: Institute for Government
Ministry of Defence, “The Strategic Trends Programme: Out to 2040”, London: MoD
See, for instance, Stephen Dorril, 2000, MI6, London: The Fourth Estate
US Space Command, “Vision for 2020,” February, 1997
Senlis Council, “Chronic Failures in the War on Terror”, 2009
Alex Evans and David Steven, “Organizing for Influence”, June, 2010, Chatham House
Cabinet Office, “A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy”, October, 2010, and Cabinet Office, “Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review”, October, 2010
For the shocking details, see Mark Curtis, 2003, Web of Deceit, London: Vintage and Stephen Dorril, MI6
Roger Middleton, “Piracy in Somalia: Threatening global trade, feeding local wars”, Africa Programme, October, 2008, Chatham House Briefing Paper, AFP BP 08/02
Red Cross, “Somalia: food aid distributed to over 900,000 people”, No 11/04 16, December, 2011
See my, "Somalia Still Suffers", Z Magazine, July-August, 2010
See my, “Somalia: 'A famine caused by men, not global warming” Axis of Logic, 27 November, 2011
House of Commons, “Yemen: Military Aid”, 30 November, 2011, Column 919W
See my, “Somalia: 'A famine caused by men, not global warming'.”, Axis of Logic, 27 November, 2011
See my, "Somalia Still Suffers", Z Magazine, July-August, 2010
Human Rights Watch, “Harsh War, Harsh Peace: Abuses by al-Shabaab, the Transitional Federal Government, and AMISOM in Somalia”, April, 2010, London: HRW
Al-Jazeera, “Al-Shabab claims Uganda bombings,” 13 July, 2010
Campbell McCafferty, “Piracy off the coast of Somalia”, Foreign Affairs Committee, 29 June, 2011
Nick Dorman, “2012 Terror Threat - Al Quada [sic] Offshoot Targeted In Somalia”, 6 November, 2011, The People
Ted Dagne, “Somalia: Current Conditions and Prospects for a Lasting Peace,” Congressional Research Service, Order Code RL33911, 12 March, 2007, pp.9-15
Kim Sengupta, “Britain's new year resolution: intervene in Somalia”, Independent, 22 December, 2011
Robin Cook, “The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means”, The Guardian, 8 July 2005
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, “Zbigniew Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen”, 15 January, 1998
Supplementary memorandum from Institute for Policy Research & Development (PVE 19A), undated
Loftus interviewed on Fox News
Ted Dagne, “Somalia: Current Conditions and Prospects for a Lasting Peace”, Congressional Research Service, Order Code RL33911, 12 March, 2007, pp.9-15
Sue Reid, “The brave agent who exposed Hamza only to be betrayed by MI5”, Daily Mail, 10 April, 2012
Bruce Crumley, “Sheltering a Puppet Master?”, Time, 7 July, 2002
Sue Reid, “The brave agent who exposed Hamza only to be betrayed by MI5”, Daily Mail, 10 April, 2012
Sandra Laville, “Unpredictable ‘lone wolves’ pose biggest Olympic security threat,” Guardian, 9 March, 2012
Maplecroft, “Newly formed South Sudan joins Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan at top of Maplecroft terrorism ranking – attacks up 15% globally”, 3 August, 2011
See my "Somalia Still Suffers," Z Magazine, July-August, 2010
Jason Lewis, “Secret SAS mission to Somalia uncovers British terror cells”, Daily Mail, 23 June, 2007
Nathaniel Horadam, “Profile: Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys,” Critical Threats, 14 November, 2011, footnote 6
Department of State (US), “Background Information on Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations Contents” Appendix B, no date
United Nations Security Council, “Letter dated 10 March 2010 from the Chairman of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea addressed to the President of the Security Council”, S/2010/91, 10 March, 2010