article_snippet.sent: Al-Shabaab wants to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
article_snippet.sent: a Somali group that the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008 has been blamed for attacks in Somalia that have killed international aid workers, journalists, civilian leaders and African Union peacekeepers.
article_snippet.sent: a Somali group that the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008 has a history of striking abroad, too.
article_snippet.sent: In 2011, a U.S. official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the information said a Somali group that the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008 was estimated to control up to 1,000 fighters.
article_snippet.sent: Decades of weak government amid grinding poverty have long made Somalia a target for radical Islamist groups.
article_snippet.sent: an Islamist emirate in Somalia was partially funded by former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
article_snippet.sent: In 2011, the U.N. declared a famine in the southern southern Somalia regions of Bakool and Lower Shabelle, and Al-Shabaab reversed an earlier pledge to allow aid agencies to provide food in famine-stricken areas.
article_snippet.sent: That year, Al-Shabaab for Child Mortality Estimation said southern Somalia had the highest mortality rate in the world for children ages 4 and younger.
article_snippet.sent: About 258,000 Somalis died in a famine in the southern Somalia regions of Bakool and Lower Shabelle between October 2010 and April 2012, and half the victims were younger than 5 years old, according to a report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.