Al-Ittihad al-Islami (Islamic Union) is Somalia’s largest Islamic terrorist organization. The group gained power in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship. AIAI originally sought to form an Islamic state in Somalia and force the secession of the Ogaden region in Ethiopia, which it believed was wrongly seized during Somalia’s colonialist period. It has since concentrated on establishing an Islamic state in Somalia.