Denial of access by al Shabaab militants, and in some cases by other armed militias, is the single greatest obstacle to the provision of humanitarian assistance in Somalia.

The structure and leadership of al Shabaab are of paramount importance to understanding how this radical Islamist group operates in Somalia.

A partitioning of southern and central Somalia between al Shabaab and Hizb al Islam has weakened the opposition to al Shabaab and increased the Islamist threat to the western-backed Transitional Federal Government.

As the international community and the US discovered in the early 1990s, getting humanitarian aid to needy Somalis is not an apolitical undertaking. It may not even be possible without being drawn into conflict in the Horn of Africa once again.

If it was indeed al Shabaab that trained the Boko Haram militants, then Somalia has become a training center as well as a safe haven for radical Islamist groups. This new role means that al Shabaab is something more than simply an insurgent group; it is also an enabler in al Qaeda’s "far" war against the West and its allies.

If there is one success story since 9/11, it has been the efforts to combat terror finance. If military action is sometimes akin to conducting surgery with an axe, efforts to dry up sources of funding are like wielding a scalpel.

At this event, panelists discussed Al Qaeda's expansion beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan and the growing threat to the United States.

The United Nations has recently ratcheted up its criticism of the United States' decision to withhold humanitarian aid to parts of Somalia controlled by the Islamist terror group al Shabaab.