Friday, October 18, 2013
One month after Somalia's Al-Shabaab fighters stormed Kenya's
Westgate shopping mall and massacred dozens of people, the threat from
regional sleeper cells or local sympathisers remains high, analysts
warned.
"If you haven't learnt the lesson Westgate,
more is coming," read posters put up this week at rallies in the
southern Somali port of Barawe, a stronghold of the Al-Qaeda linked
militants.
"For every Muslim killed in Kismayo, Kenya
will pay the price," another read, referring to a city Kenyan troops
captured last year.
The attack on the Nairobi mall
which left 67 dead marked a significant and worrying step up in
Al-Shabaab operations, and had required long periods of surveillance and
planning, security experts said.
Richard Dowden, head
of Britain's Royal African Society, has warned that the Westgate attack
suggests Al- Shabaab commanders have shifted from "Somali internal
politics and closer to Al-Qaeda's global agenda."
Tackling
the Al-Shabaab is on two key fronts: militarily inside Somalia where
African Union troops have been battling the Islamists since 2007, but
also in the wider region, especially those countries whose armies are in
Somalia, including Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.
Earlier
this month US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Linda
Thomas-Greenfield told the Senate Foreign Relations committee the
Westgate "attack suggests that violent extremism in the Horn of Africa
may be evolving."
Security remains on high alert, with
the US embassy in the Ugandan capital Kampala warning this week it
"continues to assess reports that a Westgate-style attack may soon
occur".
The AU force in Somalia has requested its size
be boosted by a quarter to 23,000 troops and President Hassan Sheikh
Mohamud urged "total war" on the Shebab "to deny them territory and the
space to train and plan".
But
territorial gains inside Somalia alone will not eliminate the
Al-Shabaab, or Islamist forces aligned to the extremists, across the
wider region.
Foreign fighters from Western or Arab nations with the Al-Shabaab in Somalia have gained much of the focus in recent years.
On
Friday, a Norwegian citizen of Somali origin, a 23-year old Hassan Abdi
Dhuhulow, was named by the BBC as being suspected of being one of the
attackers, although relatives in the Norwegian town of Larvik denied the
claim.
But dozens, if not hundreds, of young men from
countries across the Horn of Africa have also trained with theAl-Shabaab
inside Somalia, according to United Nations experts.
"There
are local sympathisers of the Al-Shabaab or aligned groups across
eastern Africa, but so far their actions have been limited to fairly low
scale attacks such as throwing grenades or shooting security forces,"
said a Western security source.
"The attack at Westgate
was of a different scale, requiring far more planning, funding and
training. The Al-Shabaab has the capability of sending specially trained
recruits, waiting for the order to carry out specific large scale
action."
The UN monitoring group on Somalia noted in
its latest report in July the dangers posed by Kenya's Islamist Al-Hijra
group, a radical organisation formerly known as the Muslim Youth
Center, linked to the Al-Shabaab as well as groups in neighbouring
nations.
Those include Tanzania's Ansar Muslim Youth Center, as well as groups in Rwanda and Burundi.
"Al-Shabaab
continues to pose a regional and international threat through its
affiliates," the UN report read, noting that as AU troops have seized
more territory in Somalia, there has been an
"increasing exodus" of foreign fighters, some of whom left "with the intention of supporting jihad in the region".
Exactly
who the attackers at Westgate were is not known, whether it was a team
specifically sent from Somalia or even if they were a "homegrown" team
recruited in Kenya itself.
The Al-Shabaab have carried
out large scale attacks in Somalia and the region before, such as an
attack on a UN compound in Mogadishu in June or bombings that killed 76
in Kampala in 2010.
"More than a dramatic jump in
capacity, the (Westgate) attack shows a change in focus and motivation
by Al-Shabaab's core planners," said Devon Knudsen, of the US-based
Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Some argue that
the Westgate masterminds hoped to spark reprisals against Somalis in the
country -- including both the half a million refugees and Kenya's
sizable ethnic Somali citizens -- that would radicalise more to join the
Al-Shabaab.
The Al-Shabaab emerged as a force in Somalia with attacks on Ethiopian troops during its 2006 invasion of Somalia.
"Al-Shabaab's
greatest recruiting tools are revenge, nationalism and exclusion,"
wrote EJ Hogendoorn of the International Crisis Group.
He
said the public claim of responsibility for Westgate was aimed to
"trigger a backlash against Somalis and Muslims in Kenya and in southern
Somalia."
For the Al-Shabaab, their propaganda message
at least is clear, warning in another placard paraded on trucks loaded
with heavily armed fighters: "Westgate was just the beginning."