On December 22, 2025, Cholo Abdi Abdullah was sentenced by the United States government to two consecutive life terms. His crimes included providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiring to murder American citizens, and conspiring to commit international terrorism. The Kenyan-born 35-year-old’s plot was directly inspired by the 9/11 attacks and demonstrates the persistent threat to the U.S. homeland posed by al-Shabaab.
The Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin, more commonly known as Al-Shabaab, meaning “the youth” in Arabic, emerged in the early 2000s amid Somalia’s chaos. Espousing a strict interpretation of Sharia law, the Salafi-jihadi group rapidly gained control of much of southern Somalia, including the capital, Mogadishu. In 2008, the United States designated Al-Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization. In 2012, Al-Shabaab swore allegiance to al-Qaeda. Many of Al-Shabaab’s founders had long ties to al-Qaeda and had trained with the group in Afghanistan. For the past decade and a half, despite multiple strategic setbacks, Al-Shabaab has proven resilient and remains one of al-Qaeda’s strongest affiliates. The alliance has benefited Al-Shabaab by providing access to al-Qaeda’s weapons, funding, and prestige, while the group has remained highly autonomous.
Over the years, Al-Shabaab has outlasted multiple enemies, including a 2006-2008 occupation by Ethiopian forces, the 2007-2022 African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) intervention, and the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia from 2022-2025. Beginning in 2025, the United States has placed greater emphasis on counterterrorism in Somalia, and both the Islamic State in Somalia and Al-Shabaab have been the targets of an increasing tempo of airstrikes by US Africa Command (AFRICOM). AFRICOM has conducted dozens of strikes on Al-Shabaab, including a sustained series of airstrikes as recently as March and April 2026.
While the group has suffered significant losses in territory and manpower, it has proven remarkably resilient. Al-Shabaab remains capable of generating up to $100 million annually through roadblocks, illicit smuggling, and taxation of occupied territories. It can also produce IEDs domestically and has smuggled significant amounts of military hardware from Yemen. The terrorist organization has also been shown to rapidly replenish its manpower pool through the forced recruitment of child soldiers. The organization’s emphasis on recruiting foreign fighters has also provided strategic support; in a recent attack on Godka Jilacow Prison in Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab publicly announced that it had employed fighters recruited from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
The group has also focused more on spreading as an intangible entity throughout Eastern Africa, particularly emphasizing its presence in Kenya. As the group has extended its geographic reach across Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, it has increasingly employed economic pressure against urban populations. Its status as an al-Qaeda affiliate within the global jihadi movement continues to confer significant prestige and the ability to leverage partnerships with other al-Qaeda affiliates in Africa, particularly Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) in the Sahel. Both Al-Shabaab and JNIM “dominate” al-Qaeda’s current successes and are increasingly entrenched as its most powerful affiliates. Other partnerships include the Houthis of Yemen, with Al-Shabaab exchanging arms and expertise for piracy operations off the Somali coast. Al-Shabaab has also expressed interest in adapting drone technology; in 2024, the organization called for recruits “…with engineering expertise to assist with drone modifications…” So far, Al-Shabaab’s limited supply of drones appears to have been used largely for intelligence and propaganda rather than attacks, though it remains to be seen how long that will last.
Al-Shabaab has historically placed a strong emphasis on mass-casualty attacks. In 2015, the group orchestrated an attack on a Kenyan university that killed more than 147 people, followed by the well-coordinated 2019 DusitD2 Hotel attack in Nairobi. The group’s largest attack was a 2017 truck bombing in Mogadishu that killed more than 500. In addition, Al-Shabaab has expressed interest in imitating al-Qaeda’s success with the 9/11 hijackings and turning civilian airliners into a weapon of terrorism. In 2016, an Al-Shabaab suicide bomber detonated a bomb hidden in a laptop on a flight from Somalia to Djibouti. Although the damage was limited, tearing a “door-sized gap in the plane’s fuselage,” it demonstrated the innovative ways Al-Shabaab suicide bombers have evaded security forces – through stolen uniforms and vehicles, disguises, and cunningly hidden bombs.
In this regard, Cholo Abdi Abdullah’s plot should be viewed as an escalation of Al-Shabaab’s prior interest in mass-casualty attacks and in using airplanes as weapons of terrorism. In 2015, the 25-year-old Kenyan national joined Al-Shabaab in Somalia and spent about a year with the organization, during which he received extensive firearms and explosives training. There, senior operatives recruited him for an audacious mass-casualty attack intended to directly emulate 9/11.
From October 2017 to July 2019, Abdullah moved to the Philippines, where he spent hundreds of hours in flight school training to become a commercial pilot. His training was directly financed by Al-Shabaab. Abdullah regularly supplemented his training with online research, seeking transit visas that would allow access to the US, information on airplane cockpit doors, and information about the tallest building in Atlanta, Georgia. Abdullah also studied other post-9/11 hijacking attempts and concluded that the only successful hijacking he could find was “…because it was hijacked by the pilot himself.” “For a very successful mission,” he wrote, “we need a pilot in the cockpit (which means I should apply for the airlines).” Throughout flight school, he remained in close contact with his Al-Shabaab handler, the same operative who had successfully orchestrated the 2019 DusitD2 Hotel attack.
Abdullah was arrested by the Philippines in July 2019. At the time, he had completed nearly all the requirements for his pilot’s license and had nearly completed the application process to secure a job as a pilot with a major airline. He had also selected his target: the Bank of America Plaza in Atlanta, a 55-story building.
Although Abdullah failed to achieve his stated goal of crashing a commercial airliner in the United States, the creativity and inventiveness of his plot should be cause for concern. Al-Shabaab successfully planned and orchestrated Abdullah’s training thousands of miles away, and the initial steps of the plot were nearly complete by the time Abdullah was arrested.
Although it is primarily viewed as a regional threat, Al-Shabaab has proven to be an inventive organization. As the then-commander of AFRICOM, General Stephen Townsend, stated in 2020, Al-Shabaab “…is a very real threat to Somalia, the region, the international community and even the U.S. homeland.” As the threat from jihadi groups in Africa steadily increases and the region continues to become a global hotspot for jihadism, it is imperative that policymakers remain wary of the region’s persistent and often underestimated threat to the American homeland.
