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TheCouncilonForeignRelations.org: Al-Shabab

Posted by: Berhane Habtemariam

Date: Sunday, 14 January 2018

Al-Shabab

A military spokesman for al-Shabab issues a statement south of Mogadishu. Feisal Omar/Reuters

Al-Shabab remains capable of carrying out massive attacks in Somalia and surrounding countries despite a decade-long African Union offensive against the Islamist group. 

January 14, 2018

How did the group take shape?

Ethiopia, a majority-Christian nation, invaded Somalia in December 2006 and ousted the ICU from Mogadishu with little resistance. The intervention, which came at the request of Somalia’s transitional government, radicalized al-Shabab, analysts say. After much of the ICU fled to neighboring countries, al-Shabab retreated to the south, where it began organizing guerrilla assaults, including bombings and assassinations, on Ethiopian forces. Some experts say it was during these years that the group morphed into a full-fledged insurgency, gaining control over large pieces of territory in central and southern Somalia.

The Ethiopian occupation was responsible [PDF] for “transforming the group from a small, relatively unimportant part of a more moderate Islamic movement into the most powerful and radical armed faction in the country,” writes Rob Wise, a counterterrorism expert. Addis Ababa said the intervention was a “reluctant response” to calls by the ICU for jihad against Ethiopia and its renewed territorial claims against both Ethiopia and Kenya. It has stressed that the intervention was supported by the United States and the African Union, among others.

New Islamist-nationalist fighters swelled al-Shabab’s ranks from around four hundred into the thousands between 2006 and 2008. The group’s ties to al-Qaeda emerged during this period. Al-Shabab leaders praised the terrorist network and condemned what they characterized as U.S. crimes against Muslims worldwide. The State Department designated al-Shabab a foreign terrorist organization in February 2008. Al-Shabab’s leadership declared allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012.

What are its objectives?

Many analysts say different factions within the group have different objectives, though al-Shabab as a whole continues to pursue its broad aim of establishing an Islamic state in Somalia. A major cleavage among the group’s leaders divides those known as nationalists, who largely seek to oust the central government, from militants with transnational aims. Bronwyn Bruton, an expert on al-Shabab at the Atlantic Council, says hard-liners within the group have gained prominence in recent years. “People who are still calling themselves al-Shabab are more and more committed to the idea of sharia law,” she says. “The unifying idea of al-Shabab is opposition to the Western-backed government.”

The unifying idea of al-Shabab is opposition to the Western-backed government.
Bronwyn Bruton, Atlantic Council

In areas it controls, al-Shabab enforces its own harsh interpretation of sharia, prohibiting various types of entertainment, such as movies and music; the sale of khat, a narcotic plant that is often chewed; smoking; and the shaving of beards. Stonings and amputations have been meted out to suspected adulterers and thieves. The group bans cooperation with humanitarian agencies, blocking aid deliveries as famine loomed in 2017. This forced some eight hundred thousand to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.

Who leads al-Shabab?

Ahmed Umar, also known as Abu Ubaidah, is the current leader of al-Shabab. He was installed in 2014, after his predecessor, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was killed in a U.S. done strike. Some experts believed Godane’s removal would prompt a power struggle, as Umar appeared to lack Godane’s strategic savvy, and was unlikely to maintain control of the fractious group. More recently, experts have said that al-Shabab remains a largely unified organization.  

How is al-Shabab funded?

Counterterrorism experts say al-Shabab has benefited from several sources of income over the years, including revenue from other terrorist groups, state sponsors, members of the Somali diaspora, charities, piracy, kidnapping, and the extortion of local businesses and farmers. The governments of Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Qatar, and Yemen have been accused of financing the group—although most deny these claims.

Al-Shabab has built up an extensive racketeering operation, with illicit trade of charcoal bringing in an estimated $10 million a year despite a UN ban on Somali charcoal exports that has been in place since 2012. In recent years, al-Shabab has increased its reliance on smuggling contraband sugar across the border into Kenya, bringing in tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually. Kenyan forces have been accused of involvement in the scheme since 2015.

What has been the regional impact?

The UN Security Council authorized the African Union to lead a peacekeeping force in Somalia, which is known by its acronym, AMISOM, in early 2007. Its primary mandate was to protect the country’s transitional government, which was set up in 2004 but had just returned to power in Mogadishu. Uganda was the first nation to send forces into Somalia under AMISOM, and, as of early 2018, it maintains the largest contingent in the regional force, at more than six thousand troops. Other forces come from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Sierra Leone. In total, AMISOM comprises around twenty-two thousand troops.

Al-Shabab struck outside of Somalia for the first time in 2010, when coordinated suicide bombings killed seventy-four people in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. “We are sending a message to every country who is willing to send troops to Somalia that they will face attacks on their territory,” said the group’s spokesman at the time.

In 2013, al-Shabab fighters claimed responsibility for an attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that killed 67 people, and in 2015 the group killed 148 in an attack on a university in the city of Garissa. The latter was the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, in which more than two hundred people died.

While al-Shabab maintains a strong presence in Somalia a decade after AMISOM’s creation, the UN-backed mission has begun the first phase of a drawdown, withdrawing a thousand troops by the end of 2017. The African Union and United Nations have said the withdrawal will allow Somali security forces to take the lead, but some experts say Somalia’s government could face collapse as AMISOM pulls out.

Where is al-Shabab?

Al-Shabab’s territorial control is fluid. The group typically leaves an area ahead of an AMISOM offensive, but experts say that UN-backed forces do not have the capacity to hold recaptured territory and note that militants usually return. Al-Shabab largely retreated from Mogadishu by late 2011, following offensives by AMISOM and Somali forces. Counterterrorism forces regarded the group’s exit from the capital as a major victory, though some experts say that al-Shabab’s withdrawal was a strategic decision and that the group has returned to the guerrilla tactics of its earlier days.

Somalia Map

The group has suffered several setbacks in recent years, including losses of the port cities of Kismayo and Barawe, after which it made the southern city of Jilib its de facto capital. Meanwhile, it has stepped up its presence in the north, particularly in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, where it battles fighters affiliated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State for primacy. Al-Shabab experts Stig Jarle Hansen and Christopher Anzalone say the group controls more territory than at any point since 2010, though the Somali government insists the group faces collapse.

“Even in areas they hold, the central government and federated states struggle to administer territory, provide basic services, and overcome a decades-long legacy of corruption and mismanagement of state institutions,” says James C. Swan, a former U.S. special representative for Somalia. “These weaknesses create openings that al-Shabab continues to exploit.”

In October 2017, the capital city suffered its worst terrorist attack to date when twin truck bombings killed more than five hundred people and injured more than three hundred. Though al-Shabab never claimed responsibility, the group is widely believed to have carried out the attack. The group claimed an attack at a hotel two weeks later that killed several senior government and military officials.

Estimates of al-Shabab’s membership range between three thousand and six thousand, though the U.S. State Department reported in 2017 that defection rates have increased in the last two years due to U.S. air strikes and the group’s negligence in paying low-level fighters.

What is U.S. policy in Somalia?

Washington’s primary interest in Somalia has been preventing the country from becoming a refuge for terrorist groups to plot attacks on the United States and destabilize the Horn of Africa, where longstanding disputes among Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia fester. In recent years, U.S. officials have been wary of collaboration among militant Islamist organizations in the region, including al-Shabab, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

U.S. authorities also remain concerned about the jihadi group’s ability to recruit members of the Somali diaspora living in the United States. Al-Shabab has attracted dozens of American volunteers to fight in Somalia, many from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The United States has largely relied on proxy forces in Somalia to fight al-Shabab, and has hired private contractors to supply some of them, according to the New York Times. Since 2007, Washington has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to train and equip AMISOM and Somali security forces, but it announced in late 2017 it was suspending aid to most Somali units over corruption concerns. In April of that year, President Donald J. Trump authorized the first deployment of regular U.S. troops to the country since 1994, joining a small number of counterterrorism advisors already there. Defense officials say some five hundred U.S. personnel are now stationed there.

U.S. air strikes in Somalia have spiked under the Trump administration. The United States carried out twenty-nine strikes by late November 2017, according to the Pentagon, compared with fourteen ordered by the Obama administration in 2016. A single strike on a training camp northwest of Mogadishu in November 2017 killed more than a hundred militants, according to U.S. Africa Command.

The United States recognized the Somali government in 2013, following a hiatus of more than twenty years. However, the U.S. mission to Somalia remains based in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

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