| Somalia’s Islamist insurgents are “honoured” to have been included on the United States’ list of terrorist organisations, a senior official from the militant group said on Wednesday. “We are very pleased on the decision of the United States to put us on their list of so-called terrorists,” Mohamed Ali, a high-ranking member of the Shabab organisation, told reporters in Mogadishu. “The freedom fighters of Kashmir, the heroic people of Palestine and the liberation army of Chechnya are all on the so-called US list of terrorist organisations,” he said. The US state department on Tuesday announced it had added the Shabab to its list of terrorist organisations, describing it as “violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda”. Officially, the Shabab is the youth branch of the Islamic Courts Union that briefly controlled large parts of the Horn of Africa country before being ousted by government troops and the Ethiopian army last year. While the Islamists’ political leadership has scattered into exile, fighters from the Shabab have stayed behind, mainly in the capital Mogadishu, to wage a deadly insurgency against Ethiopian, Somali and African Union forces. |