This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague, Caleb Weiss in Africa, about Somalia.

Who is it that the Al-Qaeda is able to recruit, called Al-Shabaab in Somalia?

It's a mixture, but there is, as Caleb identifies, part of Somalia that wants to unite the greater Somalian against what he

calls the Ethiopian crusaders. So it's not all Al-Qaeda all the time. There's what we call

in America nationalism, patriotism. Iridentism is the gathering together of all people of one kind under a single roof.

It comes to Europe, it comes to America, it comes to Africa. Here's Caleb to describe what some of

the recruits are that fight the central government in Mogadishu.

More of this tonight.

Well, there's a, this is sort of true for all Somalis to an extent, but there is a large

Somali irredentist ideology of this greater Somalia that includes parts of Djibouti, large parts of Ethiopia, Kenya.

So many clans in Somalia kind of believe in that erudentism of that this is the greater Somalia.

It doesn't really pay attention to modern borders or they advocate to abolish modern borders

in favor of this greater Somalia.

I bring that up because Shabab, even though it is al-Qaeda, even though it's jihadi,

even though it believes in the caliphate, it also plays on the small eruditism idea.

They also advocate, you know, hey, we're fighting for this greater Somalia.

You know, you want to bring

back the Ogaden and Ethiopia back under Somali control. You should join us. We're fighting for

that. We're fighting the Ethiopian crusaders to kick them out of this. So, again, it's all targeted

on what they think would be the most effective message of whether or not this recruiting is done ideological, whether it's done religiously, whether it's done politically through this small erudentism, or whether it's forceful, or whether it's through clanties, whatever.

But they play on all of this, even though, again, they are al-Qaeda and believe in the caliphate.