section_path: Foreign recruitment/Early surge
section_name: Early surge
paragraph_text: Early surge
  
  Foreign recruitment peaked in the period between 2011 and 2013, which was also the period in which the phenomenon received the most attention. The 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia attracted foreign volunteers to al-Shabaab's cause, and, as of 2010, al-Shabaab included an estimated 200–300 foreign fighters, not including a further 1,000 ethnic Somalis from the diaspora. In subsequent years, al-Shabaab recruitment became a concern for the governments of both the United Kingdom and the United States. At a security conference in London in 2010, the former head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, said that "a significant number of U.K. residents" were training with al-Shabaab; the precise number of British recruits was estimated at between 50 and 100 persons. There was also evidence that the group had received funding from Somali residents in Britain. Between 2012 and 2013, several British citizens faced control orders or even criminal charges related to association with al-Shabaab.
  
  Sweden, Denmark, Canada, and the United States similarly encountered evidence of citizens' affiliation with al-Shabaab. In the United States, the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee heard as early as 2009 – from Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center – that American and other foreign fighters were being recruited and trained by al-Shabaab. In 2011, the House Committee on Homeland Security reported that more than 40 Muslim Americans and 20 Canadians had fought with al-Shabaab, and that at least 15 of those volunteers had been killed in Somalia. Later that year, a U.S. military official told the New York Times that about 30 U.S. citizens were al-Shabaab fighters. This was a resumption of an earlier trend of al-Shabaab recruitment among Americans, which previously had peaked in 2007–08. Also in 2011, two Somali Americans in Minnesota were convicted of illegally financing al-Shabaab. By mid-2013, observers believed that recruitment of U.S. citizens had subsided.
  
  In general, foreign activity in al-Shabaab has decreased, first, and perhaps most importantly, because the Syrian civil war became the focal point for foreign jihadist recruitment networks. Other factors, however, are more specific to al-Shabaab. One factor was the group's internal struggle of 2011–2013: as tensions between Somali and non-Somali members increased, Godane scapegoated the foreigners as the cause of the group's disunity and, during his 2013 purge, executed various foreign recruits. In addition to serving as a disincentive to foreign fighters, this shift reduced the influence of the group's remaining foreign leaders. Moreover, whereas the ascendancy of Godane and his faction had partly internationalized al-Shabaab, in subsequent years, al-Shabaab became (re-)"domesticated": as it made territorial gains, its attention was increasingly consumed by local governance and the management of clan dynamics, activities in which foreign fighters – frequently mistrusted by local populations – lacked utility and influence. As the conflict, and al-Shabaab's priorities, became more localized and clan-based, they also held less appeal for foreign fighters themselves. Foreign fighters also attracted the counterterrorism efforts of foreign countries, and were sometimes suspected of disloyalty and spying by their Somali peers.