The United Arab Emirates foreign minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan cautioned Wednesday that the Islamic State militants might collaborate with the al Shabab group in Somalia in the near future although they operate separately for now.
The al Shabab is a jihadist terrorist group based in Somalia with allegiance to the al Qaeda. The Islamic State group, which controls large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, has al Qaida connections too. The IS group, also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh, originally aimed to establish a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. However, it now strives for establishing a worldwide caliphate.
"What really scares us now is what we see from Daesh, and are we going to see in the future any sort of collaboration between different terrorist groups like Daesh and al-Shabab?" Sheik Abdullah said at a conference on counter-piracy in Somalia.
"I think we should start to ask ourselves: how ready we are as countries, companies and international organizations in facing these big threats," he added, reports the Associated Press.
Though the U.A.E. foreign minister did not mention any particular intelligence report suggesting collaboration between the two militant groups, there have been rumors that al Shabab would shift their loyalty from the al Qaida to the Islamic state.
Meanwhile, General Ray Odierno, the U.S. Army chief of staff, said Wednesday that he believes the Syrian Kurds could defend the Syrian border town of Kobani from the Islamic State militants.
"With the airstrikes and with potential Peshmerga reinforcements, I think the potential there is for it to be successful." Odierno told CNN, reports the New York Times.
General Hussein Mansour Karam, a Peshmerga commander who helped in assembling Iraqi Peshmerga fighters to fight the Islamic State militants in Kobani, said that the fighters arrived in the town on Wednesday.
However, he added that Peshmerga fighters, who had reached Turkey by air, were still at an outpost near the Turkish border.
