Al Shabaab’s massacre at Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya last week is evidence that despite recent military setbacks in its Somali heartland the Islamist group has lost none of its ability to hurt its enemies abroad.
The attack, which authorities say claimed the lives of 148 people, was the al Qaeda-linked group’s deadliest on Kenyan soil. It is further evidence that al Shabaab, which is fighting to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state inSomalia, is a versatile organisation that remains a regional threat despite international strikes targeting its Somali heartland.
“What they’ve proven is that they’re adaptable. They are a small but disciplined organisation,” Cedric Barnes, Horn of Africa Project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, told FRANCE 24.
Al Shabaab’s rise and decline in Somalia
Al Shabaab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, first formed in Somalia in 2006 as the youth militia of a now defunct alliance of sharia courts known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).
By 2007 it was considered enough of a threat that the African Union approved a major mission (the African Union Mission in Somalia or AMISOM) to protect Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. At the height of its power, the Islamist militant group controlled almost two-thirds of Somalia, including the capital, Mogadishu.
In 2010, al Shabaab carried out its first attacks outside Somalia’s borders, coordinating near simultaneous suicide bombings at two different venues in Uganda’s capital Kampala, where crowds had gathered to watch the World Cup. Seventy-four people were killed. Uganda was the first country to send troops to Somalia under AMISOM in 2007.
The following year marked a turning point in al Shabaab’s battle for control of Somalia. Weakened by AMISOM forces and famine, the group announced that it was withdrawing from Mogadishu in August, 2011.
Since then, al Shabaab has seen its forces and territory steadily decline. In 2012, it lost the port of Kismayo, the last major town under its control and a key source of revenue for the group.
Last year its leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was killed in a US air strike.
Change of tactics
Despite significant territorial and military losses, the group still controls swaths of southern Somalia and has launched several attacks in Kenya in retaliation for its role in AMISOM, the largest of which, up until last week, was on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
According to Barnes, al Shabbab’s recent actions in Kenya are a sign of the group’s changing tactics.
“The fact that they hit the university and that they’re hitting more Kenyan targets is relatively new in terms of al Shabaab’s history,” he said. “Whilst you can say that they suffered setbacks in Somalia they’ve taken advantage of other countries’ weaknesses.”
By attacking targets in Kenya, Barnes said that al Shabaab hopes to build up regional support and expand its reach by appealing to the country’s minority Muslim population.
“It’s very cynically targeting majority groups in the hopes that it will further encourage minority groups to support them,” Barnes explained, pointing out that the vast majority of those targeted in last week’s attack on the Garissa University College campus were Christians. “They’re very deliberate in terms of the targets they attack.”
Barnes added that while al Shabaab may lack the financing needed to carry out the kind of attacks they have launched in the past, the group’s ability to adapt has made it difficult for governments like Kenya to fight them effectively.
“They’re fighting an enemy that finds it much more difficult to change their tactics,” he said. “It’s very asymmetrical.”
