MOGADISHU, Somalia — Senior leaders of the Shabab rebels promised Friday to send their fighters beyond Somalia to Yemen and wherever jihad beckoned.
In a military ceremony here, where the rebels publicly showed off hundreds of new recruits, Sheik Muktar Robow, a senior rebel official, said the group would “send fighters to Yemen to assist our brothers.”
He said that the fighters had been trained to fight the African Union peacekeeping force and the transitional federal government in Somalia but that Yemen was just across the Gulf of Aden and that “our brothers must be ready for our welcome.”
While it was not clear when or whether the rebels could carry out their threat, the avowed goals signaled a shift in strategy from an Islamist insurgency that has drawn foreign fighters here to one that aims to provide them to insurgencies abroad.
The Shabab have increased their ties with Al Qaeda, which has recently been fighting the American-backed military in Yemen.
A Shabab spokesman, Sheik Ali Mohamoud Rageh, said the fighters, who had just completed military training, would fight in every corner of the world that is ready for jihad, or holy war.
The Shabab and allied Islamist insurgent groups control most of Somalia, while the weak transitional government controls a small enclave in Mogadishu, the capital, under the protection of African Union peacekeeping troops.
At the ceremony on Friday at a rebel camp near the former animal market in northern Mogadishu, hundreds of jubilant fighters paraded before reporters and senior rebel leaders chanting, “God is great.” It was the first time the rebels had presented their recruits to the news media.
The officials rebuffed reports of a split among Shabab fighters and vowed that they would unite with a rival rebel group, Hizbul Islam.
Somalia has not had effective central government since the former government was overthrown by armed clan militias in 1991, leading to the current chaos.
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