Kenya

  Bottom Line Up Front Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group in Somalia, is resurging again and demonstrating the ability to launch attacks with impunity. Since March 2017, al-Shabaab has launched close to 900 attacks on civilians and hundreds more against U.S., Somali, and Kenyan troops.  Al-Shabaab controls vast swaths of ...

  Bottom Line Up Front On January 15, Somali terrorist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack on a hotel frequented by Western civilians in Nairobi, Kenya. The attack was well-coordinated and included at least four gunmen involved in a sophisticated assault that featured firearms and explosives. This was not ...

Kenya will hold another presidential election after the country’s high court on Friday nullified the results of a contentious early August poll. That election brought longtime Kenya president Uhuru Kenyatta back to power, but the high court said the election board “failed, neglected or refused to conduct the presidential election ...

With al Shabaab orchestrating deadly attacks on a near-weekly basis, the terrorist group continues to pose a significant threat to regional stability in the Horn of Africa. Despite concentrated international efforts to root out al Shabaab from its areas of operation in southern Somalia, the al Qaeda affiliate remains a ...

The Cipher brief spoke with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, CEO of Valens Global and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, about the growing al Shabaab threat in the Horn of Africa. According to Gartenstein-Ross, al Shabaab’s “capabilities are probably at their strongest” since 2012 as demonstrated by the ...

Having carried out several attacks in the last couple of months, al Shabaab remains a “very high” threat to security in Somalia and surrounding countries, says Phil Carter, former U.S. Ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea. According to Carter, the broader effort to combat al Shabaab really “comes down to ...

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 ...

Terrorist groups like al-Shabaab, ethnic violence, petty criminals, and corruption threaten Kenya’s security. The East African country has relied heavily on an unregulated and partially corrupt private sector to maintain stability. The industry employs more than 400,000 men and women who act as guards for homes, compounds, malls, airports, and ...

Kenya’s new Private Security Regulation Act will regulate the private security industry and allow more cooperation between the private sector and the government on national security. The Cipher Brief spoke with the Amar Taylor, Director of AUA Industria Limited, a private security company in Kenya, about implications of the new ...

On May 18, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta approved the Private Security Regulation Bill, an act which is heralding in a new dawn for the private security industry in the country. The Bill, now an Act of Parliament, will see the formation of the Private Security Regulatory Authority, under the Ministry ...

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 ...

Terrorism has emerged as a global threat to security. We might not be able to fully grasp the complexity of the matter until we look at it on a global scale. Belgium is the latest country in Europe to be hit by cowardly acts of terror. The private security industry ...

April 2 marked one year since the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab attacked the Garissa University in Kenya and killed 148 people, galvanizing Kenya to intensify its counterterrorism efforts. Yet al-Shabaab’s operational capacities and intimidation power have grown in the past year. Many of Kenya’s counterterrorism policies have been counterproductive, and ...

The lack of good governance and the spread of terrorism seem to go hand in hand.   That is quite apparent in East Africa.  Just last month, al Qaeda’s affiliate, al Shabaab, attacked an African Union base in Southwest Somalia, the third forward operating base that al Shabaab has overrun in ...

Long before 9/11, Washington regarded East Africa as a fertile playing ground for terrorists. Osama bin Laden spent half a decade in the Sudan during the 1990s, and the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya highlighted the vulnerability of American targets in the region. But anarchic Somalia, whose government ...

Al Qaeda and the Islamic State thrive in lawless and ungoverned spaces where there is no rule of law to keep them in check.  Al Qaeda’s home base in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is the epitome of such a place, but the tide there has been turning against ...