Relatives of Johnny Mutinda Musango, 48, weep after identifying his body at the city morgue in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday, September 24. Musango was one of the victims of the Westgate Mall hostage siege. Kenyan security forces were still combing the mall on the fourth day of the siege by al Qaeda-linked terrorists.
Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a director at the New America Foundation and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." David Sterman is a graduate student at Georgetown University's National Security Studies Program.
(CNN) -- Of all al Qaeda's affiliated groups, the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab has over the past several years had the deepest links to the United States. Some 15 Americans have died fighting for Al-Shabaab, as many as four of them as suicide bombers in Somalia, and an American citizen even took up a leadership role in the group.
Al-Shabaab has also found supporters in places as diverse as Seattle, St. Louis, San Diego, Minnesota, Maryland, Ohio and Alabama.
Al-Shabaab had particular success recruiting Somali-Americans to its cause after the Ethiopian army invaded Somalia in 2006, which Al-Shabaab cast as Somalia being taken over by a "crusader" army. Ethiopia is a majority Christian nation.
The largest group of American citizens and residents who have provided manpower and money to Al-Shabaab reside in Minnesota. According to a count by the New America Foundation, 22 residents of Minnesota have funded or fought with Al-Shabaab during the past four years.
Opinion: How Al-Shabaab picks its targets
Three of them provided funds to Al-Shabaab, and 19 have been indicted for traveling to fight in Somalia or have died in the war there.
The story of Minnesotan support for Al-Shabaab began in late 2007, when Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax, an American citizen of Somali descent in his early 30s, and several other men met at a Minnesota mosque and discussed traveling to Somalis to fight for Al-Shabaab.
Faarax told the group that he had "experienced true brotherhood" while fighting in Somalia and that "jihad would be fun" and they would "get to shoot guns," according to the U.S. Justice Department.
That meeting resulted in seven men traveling from Minnesota to Somalia to fight for Al-Shabaab in late 2007.
A deeper look at Al-Shabaab
Victims of the Kenya attack remembered
Behind the Kenya mall massacre
Escaping the Nairobi massacre
One was Shirwa Ahmed, a 26-year-old naturalized American citizen. Ahmed became the first American to conduct a suicide attack when he drove a truck loaded with explosives toward a government compound in Puntland, northern Somalia, blowing himself up and killing 20 other people in October 29, 2008. He is buried in a cemetery in Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis.
Other American suicide attackers would follow. In early June 2011, Farah Mohamed Beledi, 27, of Minneapolis detonated a bomb, becoming one of two suicide attackers responsible for killing two African Union soldiers in Somalia, according to the FBI.
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 the Somali capital of 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 the Mogadishu airport, killing more than a dozen peacekeepers of the African Union. The FBI suspects that 18-year-old Omar Mohamud of Seattle was one of the bombers.
For those Americans who have traveled to Somalia to fight for Al-Shabaab, it has often proved to be a one-way ticket. A 2011 report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security found that at least 15 Americans had died while fighting for Al-Shabaab (as well as three Canadians).
Opinion: What threat do foreign jihadists pose?
Some of the young men who volunteered to fight in Somalia had grown up in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, which is one of the poorest places in the United States. In recent years, Somali-American family incomes there averaged less than $15,000 a year, and the unemployment rate was 17%.
Al-Shabaab's American support network also extended well beyond Minnesota.
Basaaly Saeed Moalin, a cabdriver in San Diego who was in contact with an Al-Shabaab leader, was convicted of sending funds to the group along with three co-conspirators this year.
In St. Louis, Mohamud Abdi Yusuf pleaded guilty in 2012 of providing funds to Al-Shabaab.
A resident of Ohio, Ahmed Hussain Mahamud, was indicted in 2011 for funding Somali-Americans traveling to join Al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab's support network in the United States has reached beyond the Somali-American community. Ruben Shumpert, an African-American convert to Islam from Seattle, was killed in Somalia in 2008.
A former U.S. soldier, Craig B. Baxam, 24, of Laurel, Maryland, was arrested by Kenyan authorities in December 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.
Omar Hammami of Daphne, Alabama, grew up Baptist and converted to Islam when he was in his teens. In a lengthy autobiography that Hammami posted online last year entitled "The Story of an American Jihadi," he explained his long journey from growing up Christian in a small town in Alabama to fighting on the front lines in Somalia with Al-Shabaab.
The journey began with a life-changing trip to Syria, the homeland of his father, when he was 15 that sparked his interest in Islam. Hammami wrote in his autobiography (PDF), "when I came back from that vacation, I had become a different person."
Over the past several years, Hammami rose up the ranks in Al-Shabaab, becoming an important leader. Disputes with other Al-Shabaab leaders led him to split off from the group. He was killed this month, probably by members of Al-Shabaab, according to Islamist websites.
In the wake of many of these developments, for the past three years, the Justice Department and the FBI have engaged in a serious effort to crack down on U.S. support for Al-Shabaab, in particular in Minnesota, in an effort codenamed Operation Rhino.
This seems to have had some success, as the number of Americans indicted for supporting Al-Shabaab on the front lines or with their wallets has dropped sharply since the launch of Operation Rhino.
Al-Shabaab breaks new ground with complex Nairobi attack
Over the weekend, Al-Shabaab issued a list of nine names it claimed were among the attackers who carried out its deadly assault on the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Al-Shabaab alleged that three of the attackers were from the United States. The FBI is looking into whether these claims are true.
Whether or not any Americans played a role in the massacre in Nairobi that has claimed 62 lives, there is a deadly history of American support for Al-Shabaab.
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Ann Gakii reacts at the Nairobi City Mortuary after identifying the body of her father, who was killed in the mall attack on Saturday.
A Kenyan soldier runs through a corridor on an upper floor at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on September 24, shortly before an explosion was heard. Sounds of heavy gunfire erupted from the mall Tuesday, even as authorities said they had the building under their control. But four days after Al-Shabaab terrorists stormed the swanky mall, several gunmen -- including snipers -- were still inside, two senior officials said.
Kenyan Defense Forces walk near the mall on Monday, September 23.
Kenyan Defense Forces leave the mall on September 23.
Stephen, center, is comforted by relatives as he waits for the post mortem exam of his father, who was killed in Saturday's attack at the mall.
A Kenyan police officer guards the entrance of a building near the mall on September 23.
A Kenyan security officer takes cover as gunfire and explosions are heard from the mall on September 23.
Heavy smoke rises from the Westgate Shopping Mall on September 23.
Medics take cover behind a tree as gunfire and explosions are heard from the Westgate Mall on September 23.
A Kenyan police security officer runs for cover as heavy smoke rises from the mall on September 23.
A paramedic runs for cover outside the mall on September 23.
People run for cover outside the mall after heavy shooting started on September 23.
Kenyan security forces crouch behind a wall outside the mall on September 23.
Soldiers take cover after gunfire near the mall on September 23.
Kenyan paramilitary police officers patrol the area near the mall on Sunday, September 22.
Soldiers from the Kenya Defense Forces arrive outside the Westgate Mall on September 22.
A woman shields a baby as a soldier stands guard inside the Westgate Mall on Saturday, September 21.
A rescue worker helps a child outside the mall.
People who had been hiding inside the mall during the gunfire flee the scene.
An armed official takes a shooting position inside the mall.
An armed official crouches on September 21.
Bodies lie on the ground inside the mall.
Men help a wounded woman outside the mall.
Officials carry an injured man in the mall.
Soldiers move up stairs inside the Westgate Mall.
Armed police leave after entering the mall. At least one suspect has been killed, a government official said. Police have said another suspected gunman has been detained at a Nairobi hospital.
Armed police take cover behind escalators as smoke fills the air. Witnesses say tear gas was thrown in the corridors.
A woman who had been hiding during the attack runs for cover after armed police enter the mall.
A body is seen on the floor inside the smoke-filled four-story mall.
An injured person is helped on arrival at the Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi after the attack at the upscale mall.
A soldier directs people up a stairway inside the Westgate on September 21.
An injured man is wheeled into the Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi.
People run from the Westgate Mall.
A Kenyan woman is helped to safety after the masked gunmen stormed the upscale mall and sprayed gunfire on shoppers and staff.
Crowds gather outside the upscale shopping mall. The interior ministry urges Kenyans to keep off the roads near the mall so police can ensure everyone inside has been evacuated to safety.
A policeman carries a baby to safety. Authorities said multiple shooters were at the scene.
Bodies lie outside the shopping mall.
A security officer helps a wounded woman outside.
Elaine Dang of San Diego is helped to safety after the attack. The military asked local media not to televise anything live because the gunmen are watching the screens in the mall.
Paramedics treat an injured man outside the mall.
Medical personnel carry a body away.
A body lies outside the mall. Gunmen shot people outside the mall as they entered it
A woman is pulled by a shopping cart to an ambulance.
A wounded man is escorted outside the mall.
A police officer carries a baby as people keep low and run to safety. Crowds dashed down the streets as soldiers in military fatigues, guns cocked, crawled under cars to get closer to the mall.
People run away from the scene.
Armed Kenyan forces take position to secure the area around the shopping mall as ambulances move in to carry the injured.
A woman reacts after she is rescued from the mall.
A couple flee the area. As night fell, authorities said they had cornered the gunmen in the mall.
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