The run-up to Somali elections, slated to begin in less than a month, has Somalia watchers concerned that the terrorist group al-Shabaab will seize the opportunity to wreak havoc on the process.
Sources in Somalia report al-Shabaab troop buildup outside of the capital Mogadishu, raising concerns that the terrorist group will launch attacks to disrupt the elections, according to Jesper Cullen – a Cipher Brief expert and the lead sub-Saharan Africa analyst for Risk Advisory’s Intelligence and Analysis practice.
Today (August 30), at least 10 people died in a suicide bombing near the Somali president's palace in the capital Mogadishu, in an attack claimed by al-Shabaab. On August 25, Al-Shabaab militants detonated a car bomb and then raided a restaurant at Lido beach in Mogadishu, killing at least 10 people. A few days before that (on August 21), more than 20 people were killed when al-Shabaab suicide bombers detonated two car bombs around local government headquarters in the semi-autonomous Puntland.
The terrorist group believes Somalia should be one country ruled under al-Shabaab leadership, says Cullen, and, thus, has mounted attacks over the past year-and-a-half on Mogadishu and other areas of the country, “trying to undermine the Somali federalization process.”
Somalia has essentially been a failed state for more than two decades, ever since the Somali Civil War broke out in 1991. The country has been unable to unite behind a central government. In 2004, the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was established but soon found opposition in a group called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Al-Shabaab is a spin-off of the ICU, which was decapitated in 2006 in part due to the U.S.
“The U.S. has done a million different things to try to counter al-Shabaab. It’s done a million different things to create al-Shabaab as well,” remarks Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center and Cipher Brief expert Bronwyn Bruton.
Al-Shabaab merged with al-Qaeda in 2012 and remains al-Qaeda’s affiliate in East Africa, although some of its members have broken off and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL). The group has maintained its primary base in southern Somalia but has carried out several attacks across the country, as well as in the self-declared republic of Somaliland and in neighboring Kenya, Uganda, and Djibouti.
A recent report by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eight country trade bloc in East Africa, claims al-Shabaab is an expanding transnational security threat, pointing to elements of the group in five other nations: Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, and Tanzania.
But some security experts disagree with that contention. Bruton notes that IGAD is Ethiopia-driven. Therefore, one should be skeptical about the report, she says, because Ethiopia has many incentives to claim that protests and opposition movements within its own country are al-Shabaab. Ethiopia is a “police state,” Bruton continues, and it’s better for the government to attribute police crackdown on the Ethiopian opposition to crackdown on al-Shabaab.
Tom Keatinge, who is Director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies at RUSI, tells The Cipher Brief, “Al-Shabaab presents a threat through affiliates or sympathizers in Kenya – like al-Hijra – but beyond that, it’s not clear that it’s really making any impact at all […] It’s links to Tanzania and the like are extremely limited.”
Still, the U.S. remains heavily involved in the campaign to defeat the terror group. America launches drone attacks against al-Shabaab targets, trains and advises Somali forces and accompanies them during ground assaults (earlier this month, U.S. and Somali troops took down several al-Shabaab militants in a raid in Saakow), and since 2006, has given the country $1.5 billion in humanitarian assistance.
Ambassador John Campbell – a former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, senior fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Cipher Brief expert – notes that the U.S has been involved in Somalia for a long time, and, thus, interests evolve. The current U.S. interest, he says, is “al-Shabaab’s potential for destabilizing its neighbors and essentially becoming a center for international terrorism.”
Indeed, the U.S. Department of State, on June 30, outlined its objectives in Somalia, one of which is to “prevent the use of Somalia as a safe haven for international terrorism.”
But the jury is out on whether U.S. efforts are working. Former Somalia Special Envoy to the U.S. Abukar Arman comments, “On one hand, the U.S. forces have helped train a small contingent of Somali special operations forces. On the other, they are still freewheeling on the same failed policy that relies mainly on private contractors, aerial predators, and clandestine operations that may score high prize killings but almost always create more terrorists.”
As Somalia moves toward a federal democracy, with plans to implement universal suffrage in 2020, al-Shabaab can be expected to continue to launch attacks to undermine Mogadishu in an effort to attain its goal of unifying the country under its rule.
Kaitlin Lavinder is a reporter at The Cipher Brief.
