Think Africa Press
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Last week, the Somali capital Mogadishu experienced a deadly truck bomb. It exploded outside the Hotel Sharifi on the city's busy K4 roundabout and is estimated to have killed at least 70 people, and injured more than 100 others. It came as no surprise when Al Shabaab quickly confirmed their responsibility for the blast, which had torn through a building containing the offices of seven government ministries.
The immediate media response was to draw comparisons with Al Qaeda, an organisation Al Shabaab are seen to be loosely affiliated with. The blast, after all, conjured up familiar images from Afghanistan and Iraq that have flashed across Western TV screens for over a decade.
On the surface it would seem to be an apt comparison for an insurgency which has certainly changed tactics following its announced withdrawal from Mogadishu in August. Media agencies have noted Al Shabaab’s marked shift towards 'guerilla' style tactics that target Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and AMISOM forces with little to no regard for civilian ‘collateral’.
Though this was the first successful high-profile bombing undertaken by Al Shabaab in Mogadishu, recent reports suggest it was not the first that insurgents have attempted. On the September 27, a Somalia Protection Cluster report claimed that TFG security officers seized a vehicle loaded with explosive devices during a search operation in the KM4 area. The device was believed to be an attempted bombing by Al Shabaab. Prior to that, on September 7 a report from a security analysis agency in Somalia claimed that TFG police and National Security Agency forces had uncovered a Toyota Mark III loaded with explosives in Mogadishu's Boondheere district. This has built upon a spate of beheadings that occurred over late August and early September, as Al Shabaab promoted their influence through disparate incidents of violence that provoked fear amongst the Somali population.
A force in the South
If bombing incidents in Mogadishu such as this are transmitted straight to television screens and news websites across the world, the protracted military campaign in the South of Somalia has gained far less coverage. Last week, Al Shabaab launched a large-scale ground attack against the so-called anti-Al Shabaab alliance, a group made up of TFG forces and local Ras Kambooni militias, at their base in Dhobley. The town is a key strategic point for the TFG; near to the border between Kenya and Somalia’s Lower Juba region, and a crucial access point for humanitarian agencies.
Al Shabaab forces managed to drive opposing forces across the Kenyan border, successfully seize the town for a short period, and, in the process of repelling an initial Ras Kambooni counter attack, kill several of the militia’s commanders. For the TFG, this represented a further setback in a floundering southern offensive. The battle for Dhobley took place barely two weeks after Al Shabaab briefly gained control of another key southern town, El Wak, during which the insurgents claimed to have killed around 70 TFG soldiers. Both attacks have seriously dented the TFG’s attempts to take advantage of the perceived weakness of Al Shabaab following its withdrawal from the capital, and have confirmed the group’s continued dominance in the South.
A splintered insurgency?
Speaking about Tuesday's blast, Ken Menkhaus described the divisions that he predicted would arise in Al Shabaab if they continued to use such extreme methods:
“This may be the last moment where a major defection on the part of a lot of Al Shabab leaders could occur”.
Recent statements from Al Shabaab leaders would suggest that they may already be at this breaking point. Two weeks ago, Al Shabaab leader Sheikh Muktar Abu Zubeir, condemned a 'hypocrite' group within the insurgency whilst announcing that the Al Shabaab 'faithful' would renew their campaign against the TFG and AMISOM.
There is no doubt that Al Shabaab is divided from within, but question marks remain over what this means for the insurgency in other parts of Somalia. Any assessment that Al Shabaab are on the verge of collapse may be off the mark. The group has continued to demonstrate an ability to conduct major military operations both in the South and in other regions of Somalia, and the logistical capacity to forcibly move large numbers of the Somali population. Al Shabaab may be divided internally, but these apparent this has had little impact on its ability to wage war on multiple fronts.
The International and the Local
Al Shabaab have often been compared to Al Qaeda, and, more recently, Boko Haram. However, there can be no excuse for broad-brush transnational interpretations of an insurgency primarily concerned with the situation within Somalia. Discourses surrounding the ‘internationalisation’ of the Somali conflict have remained popular since America's ill-fated intervention in the early 1990s, but more excavation is required to uncover how the globalisation of the Somali conflict has affected Al Shabaab's local concerns.
Tuesday’s blast seemed to specifically target students sitting exams to gain scholarships to Turkey, after its government announced that it would welcome hundreds of students to Istanbul. ‘I am not urging you to emigrate from Turkey to other European countries’, Somali Prime Minister Sharif Sheikh Ahmed announced, ‘complete your education and come back to Somalia so as to lead this country in the future’.
Al Shabaab fear the influence of an educated diaspora that is already returning to the country to set up NGOs and create businesses. It has been suggested that Al Shabaab attacked the Hotel Sharifi out of a probably misplaced fear that Somalis who embark to Turkey upon scholarships would convert to Christianity.
If Al Shabaab were indeed reacting to the internationalisation of higher education for young Somalis, analysts ought to be looking at the effects that global dynamics are having within Somalia, rather than taking a Somali phenomenon, like Al Shabaab, and explaining its motives in terms of a supposed global terror network.