Organizations and Terms Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Organizations and Terms - Essay Example In this case, I shall examine the group known as the Al Shabaab militia. Al-Shabaab`s headquarters is situated in the coastal city of Kismayo, Somalia with several bases of operations in southern Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda. Al-Shabaab got designated a terrorist organization by the Federal Bureau of Investigations after the bombing of the World Trade Center by Al-Qaeda (Kelley 36). The name Al-Shabaab means ’’youth’’ in Arabic. Al-Shabaab. Other names used to refer to it include, Ash-Shabaab or Hizbul Shabaab, which means a party of the youth. It belongs to a much larger group known as HSM that stands for â€Å"Harakat Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahidden.† Al-Shabaab originated from a faction that broke off from the Islamic Courts Union, following its defeat in 2006 by the joint forces of the Somali transitional government and their Ethiopian allies. The federal bureau of investigations had listed Somalia as failed state for almost twenty years due to the lack of peace due to the civil war. In 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigations officially recognized Al-Shabaab as a terrorist organization they attacked the United State`s embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Prior to these attacks, their fellow brothers in arms the Al -Qaeda had bombed the World Trade Center in September 2001. This was in retaliation for the United States had invaded the Middle East to quell the Taliban insurgency. Since Al-Shabaab is closest to both countries, carrying out these simultaneous attacks was rather easy. The Federal Bureau of Investigations states that for an organization to be classified as a terrorist organization, it must have crossed a few thresholds. Such as having weapons of mass destruction, have a few thousand followers, and it has to be well connected. Al-Shabaab also has ties with most of the other terrorist organizations all over the world. For