Al-Qaeda was sooooooo 2000s.

Somalia’s premiere Islamic extremist rebel group, al-Shabab, may be switching teams.

According to one of its commanders, speculation stemming from two recent defections from the militant band — an American and a United States resident, interestingly enough — has fired up guesses that al-Shabab will soon cross over and affiliate themselves with the terror organization that’s making all the bloody headlines these days: ISIS (i.e. the Islamic State, ISIL, Daesh, IS, etc. — as Shakespeare once said, a scumbag by any other name is still just as scummy).

The rift is so apparent that the foreign fighters who wish to jump on the ISIS bandwagon are willing to die for their “ambitions” at the hands of their fellow militants who still wish to stay true to Osama bin Laden’s old gang.

This from The Guardian:

An American who had been fighting with al-Shabab left the rebels and was arrested by Somalia’s security forces on Monday. Abdimalik Jones, who said he is from San Diego, was arrested in the southern port of Barawe, said African Union spokesman Col Paul Njuguna.

Jones claimed he fled al-Shabab because of rifts within the group, said an official with Somali security forces who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press. Jones is missing the index finger of his right hand, said the official.

Separately an American resident, a Minnesota man named Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan who joined al-Shabab in Somalia more than seven years ago, surrendered to Somalia’s federal government on 6 November, the US State Department said in an email. Hassan was a lawful permanent resident of the US but not an American citizen.

Hassan had been fighting with al-Shabab but recently went online to urge others to carry out violence on behalf of Isis. He was among those wanted by the FBI for allegedly providing material support to al-Shabab, and he faces several terrorism charges in the United States.

Hassan also added, in a phone interview while sitting in a Somali prison, that the tension ISIS is fueling within the crowd of mujahedeen fighters “is messing everything up here.”