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April 20th, 2024 | 12:42 AM ET

Kenya’s Battle with al-Shabaab

Posted: April 3rd, 2016

One year after the April 2015 attack that left 148 people dead at a university in Garissa, Kenya, a combination of forces is strengthening the militant Islamist organization that carried out the attack, al-Shabaab.

The al-Qaeda-affiliated group came to prominence in neighboring Somalia in 2006 after the collapse of the country’s Islamic Courts Union government. The group is financed mostly through the charcoal trade and taxation in regions where it controls territory. “Al-Shabaab is once more on the rise and has recovered its financing from charcoal, sugar, and other smuggling in southern Somalia, and from taxing traffic and businesses throughout its area of operation, including in Mogadishu,” says Cipher Brief expert and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown.

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