Qaeda-linked Shabaab in Somalia
MOGADISHU: Dozens of people were killed in a massive car bomb attack on a busy street in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Saturday. No group has claimed responsibility, but Al-Shabaab, meaning “youth” in Arabic, is the main militant group in Somalia, which has been mired in chaos since 1991.
Here is some background on the Islamist militant organization with links to Al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda links
The Shabaab stem from Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union that controlled central and southern Somalia including the capital Mogadishu for six months in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian troops.
In 2010 the Shabaab declared their allegiance to Al-Qaeda, to which they were officially integrated in 2012. They are estimated to have between 5,000 and 9,000 men. Since the death in September 2014 of Ahmed Abdi Godane, killed in a US strike, the group’s leader has been Ahmed Diriye.
The Shabaab were chased out of their last bastions in Mogadishu in 2011 by the 22,000-strong African Union peace-enforcement mission, AMISOM-in Somalia since 2007 — and since then they have had to abandon most of their strongholds.
They nevertheless control vast rural areas and remain the key threat to peace in Somalia. In October 2017 a truck bombing in a busy neighborhood of Mogadishu killed more than 500 people in the deadliest attack in Somalia to date. The Shabaab have intensified their activity since the start of 2016 and Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, elected in February 2017, has declared a state of war against the group.
In March 2017 US President Donald Trump authorized the Pentagon to take action against suspected militants in Somalia and since then US forces have conducted a series of air strikes against the Shabaab. On October 12, 2018 one of these strikes killed around 60 militants, according to the US army.
Moving abroad
In 2010, the Shabaab claimed responsibility for a twin attack in Kampala, the capital of Uganda and main contributor to AMISOM. The suicide bombings in two restaurants in Kampala on July 11 killed 76 people and injured more than 80. It was the first major Shabaab attack outside its borders.
On May 24, 2014 the Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack in Djibouti on a restaurant packed with Westerners, saying they had targeted French “crusaders” and that the strike was in retaliation for Djibouti’s hosting of the biggest US military base in Africa.
Shabaab targets Kenya
The Shabaab began a spate of bloody attacks in
neighboring Kenya since its troops intervened in Somalia in 2011. The deadliest took place on April 2, 2015 when the Shabaab killed 148 people at Garissa University in northeastern Kenya. In JuneJuly 2014 around 100 people were killed in raids in the coastal Lamu region in Kenya’s northeast, home of a once-popular tourist island.
In September 2013 the Shabaab claimed responsibility for a dramatic raid on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi that killed 67 people over a four-day siege.
In January 2019, a Shabaab attack on an upscale Nairobi hotel complex left at least 21 people dead in an hours-long siege. Foreign forces Somalia’s armed forces rely heavily on the 21,000-strong AMISOM troops, though the African Union last year said it is gradually scaling back its forces as local forces are trained up. Uganda has the most troops in the AMISOM Somalia million at 6,200 men followed by Burindi at 5,400 troops. Other contributors include Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. US special forces have been deployed in Somalia for years while US drone strikes have also been used against Shabaab commanders. Dozens of regular troops from the 101st Airborne Division have also deployed since 2017.
Strikes in Somalia also surged in 2017 after US President Donald Trump declared the south of the country an “area of active hostilities”. But the rate of air strikes rose sharply again in 2019 against AlShabaab and Islamic State in Somalia.