The Strategic Challenge of Somalia's Al-Shabaab

Abstract

Since emerging from an era of colonialism under Italy and Britain, Somalia has passed through military dictatorship, famine, and civil war to regional fragmentation. In the modern period, Americans best remember the loss of U.S. military personnel that followed attempts to secure order in the country as part of a United Nations operation. More recently, the hijacking of ships by pirates operating from the Somali coast has attracted considerable attention globally. But the biggest threat emanating from Somalia comes from a different source: An ongoing lack of internal order has left the country vulnerable to the rise ofhard-line Islamist groups, of which the latest is Al-Shabaab (the youth), which rose from obscurity to international prominence in less than two years. Al-Shabaab 's ideological commitment to global jihadism, its connections to AI-Qaeda, its military capabilities, and its ability to capture and control territory suggest that it will continue to pose a strategic challenge to both the U.S. and Somalia's neighbors. Since its emergence, Al-Shabaab has played a major role in the insurgency that pushed Ethiopian forces out of Somalia; it also received the endorsement of Osama bin Laden and has seen large numbers of Somalis living in the West flock to its camps. Somalia has become, like Pakistan, a significant AI-Qaeda safe haven.1 Due to the relatively large number of Americans who travel to Somalia for military training, individuals linked to Al-Shabaab are among the top U.S. domestic terrorist threats. Al-Shabaab emerged from two previous Somali Islamist groups, the Islamic Union (Al-Ittihad al-Mamiya, IU) and the Islamic Courts Union (Ittihad al-Mahakim al-Islamiya, ICU). There are three strands of evolution from the IU to the ICU and finally to AlShabaab. The first is ideological, in which the groups go through a tunneling process and slowly become less ideologically diverse. Though all three strove to implement Shari'a (Islamic law), a significant faction of IU and ICU leaders had a vision that focused on the Somali nation itself-that is, inside the borders of Somalia and in neighboring territories where Somalis are the predominant ethnic group, such as Ethiopia's Ogaden region. In contrast, key Al-Shabaab leaders are committed to a global jihadist ideology. They view the group's regional activities as part of a broader struggle. The second strand lies in the groups' relations with AI-Qaeda. Bin Laden's organization has long had a presence in Somalia. It dispatched trainers to liaise with the Islamic Union prior to the 1993 battle of Mogadishu when eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed.2 Despite that connection, some scholars have questioned how deep the ties between AI-Qaeda and IU really are.3 In contrast, after Al-Shabaab emerged as a distinct entity, its leaders reached out to Al-Qaeda's senior leadership, and its chief military strategist openly declared his allegiance to bin Laden.4 The final strand is the groups' opportunity and ability to govern. Since all three have been dedicated to implementing Shari'a, they would ideally like a governing apparatus through which to apply Islamic law and mete out God's justice. The Islamic Union could not control any territory for a sustained period apart from the town of Luuq. In contrast, the Islamic Courts and Al-Shabaab came to control broad swaths of Somalia, and the governing strategies they put in place indicate that both groups thought hard about how to maintain and expand their power. AL-SHABAAB'S ORIGINS The practice of Islam in Somalia has traditionally been dominated by apolitical Sufi orders.5 Islamist movements did not emerge until the late 1960s when Somalis gained greater exposure to less moderate currents of Islam in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere. In 1969, Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre executed a military coup that made him president of the young state,6 which had won its independence nine years earlier. …