al-Shabaab

al-Shabaab, Somali-based Islamist militant group with links to al-Qaeda. Beginning in 2006, the group waged an insurgency against Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Al-Shabaab originated as a militia affiliated with the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a federation of local and clan-based Islamic courts that had been founded in southern Somalia in 2004 to combat the lawlessness and banditry afflicting the area since the collapse of the government of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. From about...