The Life of an American in Somalia’s Jihad: An In-Depth Portrait of al-Amriki
The Life of an American in Somalia’s Jihad: An In-Depth Portrait of al-Amriki
A U.S. citizen born in 1984 in Alabama, Omar Hammami (a.k.a. Abu Mansoor al-Amriki) is a key recruiter and propaganda specialist for the al-Qaeda affiliated group, al-Shabaab, in Somalia. Al-Amriki, the son of a Syrian Muslim father and an American Southern Baptist mother, was raised in a Baptist family but started to practice the religion of Islam in high school after returning from a family trip to his father’s birthplace in Damascus.
He attended the University of South Alabama before dropping out and later marrying a Somali-Canadian woman. In 2005, he moved to Egypt with his wife. In his 127-page autobiography released on May 16, al-Amriki said that he had met with a fellow American jihadist named Daniel Maldanado (a.k.a. Abu Muhammad Al-Amriki) when he arrived in Alexandria, Egypt.
His autobiography is a striking window into his early journey in the study of Islam and jihad:
Al-Amriki said that the issue of Somalia started to grow larger in his view as the Somali Union Courts rose to power. He and Maldanado planned to join the Somali Islamic movement as jihadi fighters against the U.S.-backed Somali government. Although going to Somalia was risky for him, al-Amriki decided to use his wife’s Somali background as a cover story and initiated efforts to get his daughter Somali citizenship and a passport. He later decided against taking his family to Somalia after his wife refused, citing her fear of the turmoil amidst the civil war.
Maldanado, on the other hand, did move his family to Somalia. During the time of his departure, his father, Shafik Hammami and his mother, Debra Elizabeth Hadley, were with him in Alexandria. He told them that he was going to Dubai to seek a better job.
After a long, fearful journey from Cairo to Dubai to Djibouti to Hargeisa and then to Mogadishu, al-Amriki arrived without any previous contacts with the jihadists in Somalia. At the beginning, he was held at the airport and threatened with deportation. He was only released after his wife’s family vouched for him and took him to their home.
In al-Amriki’s words: “I was extremely excited and I started hugging them in joy. […] Most of the brothers I met on that day, have all either been martyred or imprisoned by the disbelievers (may Allah hasten their release).” [2]
Al-Amriki then joined with a cadre of foreign fighters including Ethiopians, Eritreans, Americans and British as well as others, who were lured to the al-Shabaab stronghold in Kismayo with the promise of training. The foreign jihadists were being prepared to take part in the Islamic Union Courts offensive against Somali government soldiers around the Bay and Bakool region. Al-Amriki was among those lured to the frontlines of the war between a coalition of Ethiopia-Somalia soldiers and the Islamic Union Courts.
During the war, al-Amriki quickly rose through the ranks by attracting senior foreign jihadist leaders. He was useful for his translation skills between English and Arabic and his knowledge of technology. He later become very close to the al-Qaeda veteran leaders Fazul Abdullah Muhammad and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the masterminds of the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel and the unsuccessful attempt to shoot down an Israeli charter jet in Mombasa, Kenya. A U.S. Special Forces raid killed Nabhan in September 2009 in Somalia, while Somali soldiers killed Muhammad in June 2011.
The Islamic Union Courts of Somalia failed and Somali soldiers, with the backing of the Ethiopia military, started to take over the whole of southern Somalia including Mogadishu. After the defeat, the foreign jihadists including al-Amriki, started rebuilding and mobilizing the al-Qaeda-inspired military wing of the Islamic Union Courts, al-Shabaab, which later broke away from the union courts to ally with al-Qaeda.
Al-Amriki began to lead a war through the internet, what would later be called a propaganda war. For the first time, al-Amriki publicly appeared on al Jazeera in October 2007, less than a year after he joined the militants in Somalia. A green scarf covered half of his face as he stated: “Oh, Muslims of America, take into consideration the situation in Somalia. After 15 years of chaos and oppressive rule by the American-backed warlords, your brothers stood up and established peace and justice in this land.” [3] This was the beginning of his efforts to use media and technology to recruit English-speaking Muslim Western youth through video and audio messages.
He became one of three American-born jihadists—the others being Anwar al-Awlaki (deceased), born in New Mexico, and Adam Yahiye Gadahn, born in California—whose propaganda is considered to be a very real and growing concern that the United States must deal with as mentioned by a December 2009 FBI statement. Since al-Amriki started his propaganda clips, distributed on a variety of online platforms since 2007, at least 30 Somali-American boys between the ages of 17 and 27 as well as other jihadists from Canada, Britain and Australia have been confirmed to have traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. America’s first known suicide bomber, Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis (26) blew himself up in 2008 during a series of suicide attacks with four others against the United Nations compound, the Ethiopian Consulate and the presidential palace in Hargeisa.
In January 2008, al-Amriki wrote a letter, “A Message to the Mujahideen in Particular and Muslims in General,” describing the difference between the Islamic Courts of Somalia and al-Shabaab. He said the Courts has a goal limited to the boundaries placed by the Taaghoot (false deities) while Shabaab has a global goal, including the establishment of the Islamic Khilaafah [Caliphate] from East to West after removing the occupier and killing the apostates.
A 31-minute al-Shabaab video, which was dated on July 2008 but released on March 2009, showed al-Amriki with a group of fighters preparing to ambush Ethiopian Troops as a jihad rap song plays in the background. “The only reason we’re staying here, away from our families, away from the cities, away from ice, candy bars, all these other things, is because we’re waiting to meet with the enemy.” He then sent a call to the Muslim viewers: “If you can encourage more of your children and more of your neighbors and anyone around you to send people like him to this jihad, it would be a great asset for us.” [4]
His next audio recording released on July 2009 was in response to U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech, “A New Beginning,” delivered in Cairo the previous month. In his rebuttal, “A Response to Barack Obama: The Beginning of the End,” Al-Amriki announced al-Shabaab’s loyalty to al-Qaeda and justified the September 11th terror attacks. He went further and criticized the U.S. support for Israel, which he said is “the most vicious evil nation of this modern era.” In the same year, he released another video, “We Are at Your Command, O Osama.”
Al-Amriki was seen in another video, released in April 2010, celebrating with the children of Al-Shabaab martyrs who are playing with plastic guns and shooting toy AK-47s. In the video, al-Amriki encourages a group of mothers to tell their children “to try to be like their hero fathers who were martyred.” In March 2011, when Western media outlets, quoting Somali government officials, published that he was killed in February 2011, al-Amriki sent a new jihad rap songs titled “Send Me a Cruise” and “Make Jihad with Me” in which he glorified death as martyr by asking to die like other al-Qaeda commanders in Somalia, Iraq and Pakistan: “Send me a cruise like Maa’lam Adam al Ansari, and send me a couple of tons like Zarqawi, and send me a drone like Abu Laith al-Libi, and Special Forces like Saleh Ali Nabhan,” the opening chorus of al-Amriki’s nasheed begins. “Send me all four and send me much much more, I pray for that on my way to heavens door.” [5]
At a public rally in May 2011 at al-Shabaab’s previous stronghold of Elasha Biyaha, al-Amriki along with other al-Shabaab leaders vowed to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden: “We are sending a message to [Barack] Obama and [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton that we will avenge the death of our leader Shaykh Osama bin Laden very soon,” he said. “Osama is dead but the holy war is not dead. Mujahedeen fighters all over the world are fully prepared to revenge the death of our leader [sic].” [6]
However, on March 16, a bizarre and unexpected video surfaced on the internet in which he stated that he thought that due to differences in “matters of the Shari’a…and strategy” with Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahideen his life may be in danger. Al-Shabaab dismissed these concerns through its Twitter feed (@HSMPress) by stating: “We assure our Muslim brothers that al-Amriki is not endangered by the mujahideen, and our brother still enjoys all the privileges of brotherhood.”
Al-Amriki has since maintained a low profile and was arrested by al-Shabaab who intends to “investigate” his claims. Somalia Report maintains that al-Amriki has not been killed by al-Shabaab and cites sources close to Abu Mansoor al-Amriki. Prior to his arrest, al-Amriki succeeded in revealing the hidden rift over ideological and strategy differences amongst al-Shabaab members—there is suspicion that al-Amriki is in fact a secret agent for the United States rather than the holy warrior he has always proclaimed.
On May 16, jihadist websites published al-Amriki’s autobiography including his family history and childhood, which could be an attempt to further discredit him or an early obituary for a jihadi whose life ended at the hands of his former allies.
Notes
1. Al-Amriki’s Autography book , “The Story of an American Jih?d?, Part 1”, written by Omar Hammami, May 16, 2012 https://www.somaliareport.com/index.php/post/3364.
2. Ibid.
3. Memri TV, “A Leader of the Al-Qaeda-Affiliated Somali Islamic Courts Union Vows to Annihilate Ethiopia in an Al-Jazeera Report Showing an American Citizen Training Islamist Militants”, https://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1574.html.
4. Youtube Video of Abu Mansoor al-Amriki , March 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzHGBgBa6oQ.
5. Long War Journal, “American Shabaab commander Omar Hammami releases tape that mocks reports of his death”, April 10, 2011, https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/04/american_shabaab_com.php.
6. AFP, “Somalia’s Islamists vow to avenge bin Laden’s death”, https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j72pDq923zgLPsv1NK-me0y089gg?docId=CNG.67223d9bde54fd50f17c3160a0ed4d59.501.
