U.S. COUN­TERT­ER­ROR­ISM AGEN­CIES have long been pre­oc­cu­pied with the threat posed by the re­cruit­ing suc­cesses of the So­mali ter­ror­ist group al Shabaab in West­ern coun­tries. The group has man­aged to lure hun­dreds of for­eign fight­ers — in­clud­ing some 40 Amer­i­cans — to So­ma­lia through on­line pro­pa­ganda videos and word-of-mouth in dis­af­fected im­mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties.

In re­cent years, how­ever, al Shabaab has turned on the for­eign fight­ers in its own ranks, wag­ing a bru­tal cam­paign to purge the per­ceived spies from its midst. An in­ti­mate ac­count of the Shabaab civil war was pro­vided to The In­ter­cept in a se­ries of in­ter­views con­ducted with a cur­rent mem­ber of al Shabaab and a source who has main­tained close con­tacts with the group.

Al Shabaab has as­sas­si­nated sev­eral for­eign fight­ers on the CIA’s kill/​cap­ture list over the past few years and cur­rently runs a net­work of se­cret pris­ons that hold, on charges of spy­ing, U.S., British and other West­ern cit­i­zens who came to So­ma­lia to join Shabaab, The In­ter­cept has found. Shabaab op­er­a­tives tor­ture de­tainees us­ing tech­niques such as wa­ter­board­ing, beat­ings, and food and sleep de­pri­va­tion, and con­duct pub­lic ex­e­cu­tions of sus­pected spies, in­clud­ing by cru­ci­fix­ion.

Ibrahim* is a cit­i­zen of a West­ern coun­try who trav­eled to So­ma­lia sev­eral years ago to join Shabaab. He is cur­rently liv­ing in a Shabaab-con­trolled ter­ri­tory, and the group be­lieves he is a loyal mem­ber. The In­ter­cept, which has con­firmed his real iden­tity, granted him anonymity and agreed not to iden­tify his coun­try of ori­gin be­cause crit­i­ciz­ing Shabaab can re­sult in im­pris­on­ment or death. “I’d be ar­rested and tor­tured,” Ibrahim said when asked what would hap­pen if he spoke out against the group.

Like other young West­ern­ers of So­mali ori­gin, Ibrahim de­cided to move to So­ma­lia af­ter watch­ing Shabaab’s videos on the In­ter­net and fol­low­ing the news of bat­tles be­tween So­mali mil­i­tants and the U.S.-backed African peace­keep­ing force, AMI­SOM. “At that time there was a lot of stuff go­ing on and I felt like it was my re­li­gious duty to par­tic­i­pate in the holy ji­had that was go­ing on in So­ma­lia. And I felt that it was my re­spon­si­bil­ity as a Mus­lim youth to sup­port my broth­ers and sis­ters in So­ma­lia against the en­emy,” he says. “I felt like the call of So­ma­lia had to be an­swered.”

Ibrahim says he be­lieved that Shabaab was fight­ing to es­tab­lish a Shariah law sys­tem that would al­low him to live ac­cord­ing to his deeply held re­li­gious con­vic­tions. Join­ing the ji­had, he be­lieved, would help to make that a re­al­ity in So­ma­lia. “It was at the be­gin­ning. At that time they were happy to see what you call for­eign fight­ers — they wel­comed them big time,” he says. “We took part in train­ing, small train­ing, ba­sic train­ing, small weapons and such. Every­thing was easy.” He adds: “Ac­cord­ing to the me­dia, some­how they over-ex­ag­ger­ate about Shabaab train­ing. The train­ing is ba­si­cally just sim­ple, small arms and phys­i­cal train­ing and dis­ci­pline.”

That pe­riod of rel­a­tive har­mony within the group would not last. And now Ibrahim wants to tell his story so that oth­ers will know not to fol­low in his path. For Keith El­li­son, a Min­nesota con­gress­man who rep­re­sents the largest So­mali com­mu­nity in the United States, in the Min­neapo­lis/​St. Paul area, Ibrahim’s cau­tion­ary tale is an ex­am­ple of the kind of story alien­ated mem­bers of Shabaab should be en­cour­aged to tell, rather than sim­ply lock­ing them up or killing them, which is the cur­rent U.S. gov­ern­ment ap­proach. “I think some­body who has been in­side Shabaab telling the truth about how Shabaab is re­ally a crim­i­nal ter­ror­ist group and not about the lib­er­a­tion of So­ma­lia is prob­a­bly more likely to pro­mote safety and se­cu­rity than just throw­ing that same kid in jail,” El­li­son says. “We need to learn from these peo­ple and we need to use them to mes­sage to young peo­ple who might be lured by a mes­sage from al Shabaab.”