Boko Haram's Somalia Connection Withal-Shabaab : Regional Analysis - East Africa

Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud dropped a bombshell during a trip to Germany on 13 February 2016 when he reported that recruits from Nigeria's Boko Haram terror insurgency were training on the other side of the continent, in his country. He gave little detail, which was consistent with the paucity of official information available in Somalia, from war intelligence to ordinary economic data. The information vacuum contributes to Somalia's inscrutability. However, Mohamud's claim, while unsubstantiated by details, carried credibility because of the assumption that the president would have no reason to invent the development. Somalia's slow progress in rising above its failed state status has been impeded by Somalia's home-grown terror insurgency, al-Shabaab. Any influence on al-Shabaab by Boko Haram,a group whose pathological cruelty rivals the depravities of the Islamic State (ISIS), is alarming.