Kenya: Al-Shabaab – Closer to Home
Africa Briefing N°102 25 Sep 2014
OVERVIEW
One year after the Westgate Mall terrorist attack in Nairobi, Al-Shabaab is
more entrenched and a graver threat to Kenya. But the deeper danger is less
in the long established terrorist cells that perpetrated the act – horrific
as it was – and more in managing and healing the rising communal tensions
and historic divides that Al-Shabaab violence has deliberately agitated,
most recently in Lamu county. To prevent extremists from further
articulating local grievances with global jihad, the Kenyan government –
including county governments most affected – opposition politicians and
Kenyan Muslim leaders, must work together to address historical grievances
of marginalisation among Muslim communities in Nairobi, the coast and the
north east, and institutional discrimination at a national level, as well as
ensuring that counter-terrorism operations are better targeted at the
perpetrators and do not persecute wider ethnic and faith communities they
have purposefully infiltrated.
The present context is serving only to lose further hearts and minds.
Instead of closing ranks as they managed – just – in the aftermath of
Westgate, Kenya’s political elites have bought into the deadly discourse of
ethnic and religious recriminations. Not only are there plenty of immediate
grievances to exploit, but nearly two decades of radicalisation and
recruitment in Kenya means that the threat is both imminent and deep. The
absence of a common Kenyan Muslim agenda and leadership has meant little
resistance to the extremist message.
The late 2011 military intervention in Somalia to create a buffer against a
spillover of insecurity has hastened the expansion of Al-Shabaab’s campaigns
into the homeland. The intervention’s strategic calculations in relation to
(southern) Somalia may, in the long run, be vindicated. But the impact on
domestic security has been severely underestimated, or at least the ability
of internal security agencies to disrupt and respond to terrorist attacks
without, as the April 2014 Usalama Watch operation did, further alienating
communities whose cooperation and support is vital in the fight against
terrorism. Yet the blame should lie less in the weaknesses of the country’s
institutions than in the unwillingness of political leaders to put aside
partisan divisions. And because partisan divisions almost inevitably
translate into communal strife, playing politics with terrorism compounds an
already volatile situation.
While the successful drone attack against the Al-Shabaab Emir Ahmed Abdi
Godane on 1 September has removed the organisation’s key strategist, not
least in extending the jihad beyond Somalia, the inevitable jockeying for
position within Al-Shabaab will have implications for Kenyan operatives as
they seek to maintain their relevance with the new leadership. A further
offensive by the Somalia government and African Union Mission in Somalia
(AMISOM), squeezing Al-Shabaab’s territorial presence in south-central
Somalia, also risks high-impact attacks elsewhere – including in Kenya – as
a demonstration of the insurgents’ continued potency.
This briefing updates and builds upon previous Crisis Group analysis and
recommendations especially in Kenyan Somali Islamist Radicalisation (25
January 2012). The briefing also refers to the transition to devolved
government and how longstanding issues relating to the provision of
security, regional marginalisation and accommodating minority representation
are yet to be fully addressed; these will be explored in a forthcoming
series of products on devolution in Kenya.
To prevent a further deterioration of security and deny Al-Shabaab an ever
greater foothold, the Kenyan government, opposition parties and Muslim
leadership should:
* clearly acknowledge the distinct Al-Shabaab threat inside Kenya
without conflating it with political opposition, other outlawed
organisations or specific communities;
* put further efforts into implementing and supporting the new county
government structures and agencies, to start addressing local grassroots
issues of socio-economic marginalisation;
* carefully consider the impact of official operations such as
Operation Usalama Watch, and paramilitary operations of the Anti-Terrorism
Police Unit (ATPU) when they appear to target whole communities, and allow
for transparent investigations and redress where operations are found to
have exceeded rule of law/constitutional rights and safeguards;
* implement the recommendations of the 2008 (“Sharawe”) Presidential
Special Action Committee (finally tabled with the 2013 Truth, Justice and
Reconciliation report) to address institutional discrimination against
Muslims (eg, issuance of identity cards and passports) and better
(proportional) representation of Muslims in senior public service
appointments; and
* facilitate Muslim-driven madrasa and mosque reforms, which should
entail review and approval of the curriculum taught; mosques vetting
committees need to be strengthened in areas where they exist and put in
place where they are absent.
Nairobi/Brussels, 25 September 2014
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Received on Thu Sep 25 2014 - 15:03:31 EDT