( CNN ) How big a threat is Al-Shabaab to the United States ? Despite the Somali terrorist group 's calls over the weekend for attacks on malls in the West , including the vast Mall of America in Minnesota , the group is n't much of a threat at all to Americans . The reality is that Al-Shabaab has shown scant abilities to conduct operations outside of Somalia or neighboring countries such as Kenya . Indeed , the only operation anyone associated with the group has attempted in the West is when a Somali man armed with an ax in 2010 forced himself into the home of Kurt Westergaard -- a Danish cartoonist who had depicted the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban -- and tried unsuccessfully to break into the fortified safe room where Westergaard was hiding . Danish intelligence officials said the suspect had links with Al-Shabaab . That said , the group has succeeded in recruiting a number of Americans to fight in Somalia , most of whom are from Minnesota . Seven Somali-American men traveled from Minnesota to Somalia to fight for Al-Shabaab in late 2007 , including Shirwa Ahmed , who graduated from high school in Minneapolis and then worked at the Minneapolis airport pushing passengers in wheelchairs . During this period , he became increasingly religious , and in his spare time , he would counsel drunken Somali kids in the impoverished area of Minneapolis known as `` Little Mogadishu , '' after the Somali capital , to embrace their own culture . Ahmed left Minneapolis for good on December 4 , 2007 , on a flight that took him to Saudi Arabia , from where he eventually made his way to Somalia . In Somalia , he was trained by Al-Shabaab on the use of a wide variety of guns and weapons . On October 29 , 2008 , he drove a truck loaded with explosives toward a government compound in Puntland , northern Somalia , blowing himself up and killing 20 other people , becoming what then-FBI director Robert Mueller described as the first U.S. citizen to conduct a terrorist suicide bombing . Ahmed 's suicide caused considerable consternation at the FBI . If an American citizen was willing to die in a suicide operation overseas , what might that say about the possibility of Americans conducting suicidal attacks in the States ? One only had to look at the British experience to understand how this could develop . In 2003 , a British citizen had conducted a suicide bombing at a jazz club frequented by Americans in Tel Aviv , Israel . This turned out to be something of a curtain-raiser for future terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom . Two years after the terrorist attack in Israel , four British citizens committed suicide in bombings on London 's transportation system on July 7 , 2005 . It was the most deadly terrorist attack ever on British soil , claiming 52 lives . Alarmed by Al-Shabaab 's campaign of suicide attacks across Somalia and its recruitment of Americans , the State Department designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008 , making it illegal for a person in the United States to knowingly provide Al-Shabaab with money , communications equipment , weapons or explosives or to join the group . By 2008 , the Somali-Americans traveling to their homeland to join the al Qaeda aligned Al-Shabaab seemed like a particularly threatening cohort . Codenamed Operation Rhino , the FBI started a serious effort to crack down on anyone traveling to Somalia to support Al-Shabaab . Adding to the alarm at the FBI , in early June 2011 , the agency announced that Farah Mohamed Beledi , from Minneapolis , had detonated a bomb , becoming one of two suicide attackers responsible for killing two African Union soldiers in Somalia . The third American to conduct a suicide attack was Abdisalan Hussein Ali , a 22-year-old from Minneapolis who took part in a strike on African Union troops in Mogadishu on October 29 , 2011 . There may even have been a fourth American suicide attacker in Somalia . On September 17 , 2009 , two stolen U.N. vehicles loaded with bombs blew up at Mogadishu airport , killing more than a dozen peacekeepers of the African Union . The FBI suspected that 18-year-old Omar Mohamud of Seattle was one of the bombers . But Al-Shabaab 's American support network has extended beyond Minnesota . Ruben Shumpert , an African-American convert to Islam from Seattle , was killed in Somalia in 2008 . And a former U.S. soldier from Maryland , Craig Baxam , was arrested by Kenyan authorities in 2011 as he tried to make his way to Somalia to join Al-Shabaab , which he told FBI agents he considered to be a religious duty . Still , despite these developments , for the Americans who traveled to Somalia to fight for Al-Shabaab , it has typically been a one-way ticket . More than a dozen Americans have died while fighting for Al- Shabaab , according to a U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security report , while none of the Americans recruited by Al-Shabaab is known to have subsequently planned or conducted a terrorist attack inside the United States , according to a survey of more than 250 jihadist terrorism cases since the 9/11 attacks conducted by New America . The possibility remains , of course , that Al-Shabaab 's calls for attack on malls in the West might inspire a lone wolf attack . But there is no sign so far that Al-Shabaab 's recruits have actually plotted to launch an attack in the United States . For now , at least , the group has also not shown that it is capable of carrying out attacks in the West .
Al-Shabaab has released a video calling for attacks on shopping malls in West . Peter Bergen : Group has succeeded in recruiting a number of Americans .