"Americans among insurgent leaders in Somalia"

I'm quoted extensively in Sean D. Naylor's Army Times story. Here's the lede:

Americans occupy senior leadership positions in al-Shabaab, the Islamist insurgent group waging a brutal war in Somalia, according to U.S. Africa Command’s top intelligence officer.

Somalia, which has been without an effective central government for almost 20 years, is “perhaps the ultimate safe haven for Islamic extremists” and “must be a strategic concern for the United States,” said Terrance Ford, AFRICOM’s director of intelligence and knowledge development.

His concern was echoed by Ambassador David Shinn, former State Department director of East Africa and Horn of Africa affairs. Speaking of al-Shabaab, Shinn said: “Its appearance and its organization and the way its leadership is functioning is looking more and more like the Taliban looked back in the 1990s.”