US indicts Kenyan for 9/11-style, Somali-based terror attack, amid questions about the plot

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – The US Justice Department has charged a Kenyan national with involvement with the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab, in “a plot to hijack commercial aircraft and crash them into a building in the United States,” as the indictment states.

Prosecutors likened the plot to the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, the Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which will conduct the prosecution, proclaimed, “This chilling callback to the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001”—which occurred only blocks away from the federal courtroom in lower Manhattan—“is a stark reminder that terrorist groups like al-Shabaab remain committed to killing US citizens and attacking the United States.”

Yet earlier this month, President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of US forces from Somalia. If the threat from Somalia is that great, Trump is surely mistaken to end the US military presence there; alternatively, the Justice Department is exaggerating the significance of the plot.

Justice Department Charges

Only one individual, Cholo Abdi Abdullah, 30 years old, has been charged, although the indictment states that he acted at the direction of another person: an unnamed senior commander from al-Shabaab (“the youth”—the terrorist organization that arose out of the decades-long anarchy in Somalia that has followed the 1991 ouster of the dictator, Mohammed Siad Barre.)

Abdullah was arrested on July 1, 2019, in the Philippines, at the direction of US authorities. Some 18 months later, on Tuesday, he was brought to New York, where he appeared on Wednesday in court and pled not guilty to the charges, for which he faces a 20-year prison sentence.

According to the indictment, the plot began in 2016, as Abdullah began viewing Islamic extremist propaganda on the internet and received his first direction from the al-Shabaab commander.

Later that year, in December, Abdullah enrolled in a flight school in the Philippines—the All Asia Aviation Academy in Pasay, just south of Manilla. The idea was that he should receive training that would allow him to carry out a 9/11-style attack.

Questions about Cholo Abdullah’s Plot

According to the Filipino press, in the two-and-a-half years between his enrollment in the flight school and his arrest, Abdullah finished only 20 hours of the 40 hours required for a pilot’s license. However, the indictment states that he completed the tests necessary to obtain one.

Of course, the relevant question goes beyond whether Abdullah had the qualifications for a pilot’s license of an unspecified plane. The question is whether he would have been able to fly a commercial aircraft and drive it into a building.

When he was arrested, Abdullah was living in a hotel in Zambales, on the western coast of the island of Luzon, where Manila is located, and over 100 miles away from Pasay. As there was a flight school just 15 miles from his hotel, Filipino police asked why he didn’t enroll in that school.

When he was arrested, police found a pistol, ammunition, a hand grenade, as well as bomb-making material in Abdullah’s room.

According to the indictment, the al-Shabaab commander who directed Abdullah was responsible for planning the Jan. 15, 2019, attack on a luxury hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya, in which 21 people were killed, including a British citizen and an American who had survived the 9/11 attacks.

The May 2018 relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the prosecution claimed, led al-Shabaab and al-Qaida, with which it is associated, to launch a series of attacks, which they called, “Operation ‘Al-Qudsu Lan Tuhawwad (Jerusalem will never be Judaized.’”)

Somalia is a clan-based society. For most of the six decades in which it has been an independent country, it has been a failed state. There is little sense of national identity, and the clans fight viciously over status, power, and other resources.

Al-Shabaab was born out of a faction of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU.) A scholarly paper published last July and titled, “Militant Islamism and local clan dynamics in Somalia: the expansion of the Islamic Courts Union in Lower Jubba province,” explains how the ICU established itself in south-central Somalia: it “was largely a result of their ability to utilize local clan dynamics to divide” others “and draw on the loyalties of local clan groups.”

That al-Shabaab’s Islamic ideology might be a way to attract support, both local and foreign, is alien to the prosecution’s case. Indeed, in that respect, al-Shabaab resembles ISIS in Iraq.

As a lengthy article in the highly regarded German news magazine, Der Spiegel, explained, the core of ISIS is the former Iraqi regime. In other words, the terrorist group is really fighting over power—and not religion.

Similarly, the late Dr. Najmaldin Karim, who served as governor of Kirkuk Province from 2011 to 2017—essentially the entirety of the military campaign against ISIS—told Kurdistan 24 that ISIS is basically local, with the terrorist group using Islam as a cover.

Read More: Najmaldin Karim: Islamic State is resurgent, dominated by locals

How many People were Involved in Cholo Abdullah’s Plot? Where is the rest of the Conspiracy?

The indictment of Abdullah reads, as if he planned to act alone to hijack an airplane and crash it into a building. It claims that he “sought to obtain pilot training, test flaws in airport security, and take other steps for hijacking a civil aircraft to use in conducting a terrorist attack on behalf of al-Shabaab.”

He enrolled in flight school, the indictment explains, and “conducted research into the means and methods to hijack a commercial airliner,” including “how to breach a cockpit door from the outside,” as well as “information about the tallest building in a major US city and information about how to obtain a US visa.”

One man alone can’t really expect to hijack an airplane, however. In the 9/11 attacks, four-to-five hijackers were involved in taking over each plane. In addition, they had a support network, which included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind, who conceived and designed the plot, and Ammar al-Baluchi, who was based in Dubai, provided the funds, and taught the hijackers how to act in the US (both are imprisoned at the US facility in Guantanamo and have yet to stand trial—nearly 20 years after the 9/11 attacks!)

So it seems, if Abdullah’s plot was real, more people must have been involved, and they are still at large, and that would appear to be a serious danger.

Alternatively, there was no real plot—just Abdullah’s fantasy of being a big shot in the world of Islamic extremist terrorism.

This is an essential point, which touches directly on Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Somalia. If there was no real plot, it makes sense in order to consolidate America’s far-flung post-9/11 military interventions in what has been dubbed “the Forever War.” But if it was a real and dangerous plot, then Trump’s decision is folly.

This will become clearer as Abdullah’s trial proceeds, but for the time being, there seems to be a radical disconnect between what the White House is doing and what the Justice Department is saying.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany