Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and a vice president at the New America Foundation. He is the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin LadenFrom 9/11 to Abbottabad.”
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 isn’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.
–
Read CNNOpinion’s new Flipboard magazine.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.
Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion.
