Nairobi attack marks a change in al-Shabaab’s tactics
SOMALI Islamist militant group al-Shabaab’s attack on a shopping mall in the heart of the Kenyan capital has thrust it to the forefront of the global jihadist movement after years of internal feuding over the group’s aims.
The apparent sophistication of the weekend raid, involving 15 or so heavily armed fighters who held off Kenya’s military for four days, suggests careful planning and a trained strike force that goes beyond the group’s hallmark hit-and-run tactics.
Regional intelligence experts said they believed the raiders, who killed 67 people in an assault that shocked Kenya and the world, were members of a crack unit loyal to the group’s leader, Ahmed Godane, who has been seeking to rebrand al-Shabaab as a significant international jihadist group.
Al-Shabaab had threatened revenge against Kenya since its troops joined the war against Islamist militants in its chaotic northern neighbour two years ago in an operation code named “Linda Nchi”, or “Protect the Country” in Swahili. The group had created funding, recruiting and training networks in Kenya, security agencies say.
The mall attack bears out western fears that the insurgents would use Somalia, a hotspot in the US-led war on Islamist militants across the globe, as a launch pad for strikes on regional countries, even as African troops put them on the defensive in the Horn of Africa state.
Al-Shabaab has been weakened by an African Union-led offensive that has expelled the group from urban strongholds over the past two years, but they remain a dangerous threat.
“They have not been dying in the past two years. They have developed guerrilla tactics instead of face-to-face fighting,” said a Somali intelligence officer.
“There are still many foreign fighters with Godane.”
Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said the gunmen who burst into the Israelibuilt, upscale Westgate mall around midday on Saturday were “well-trained special forces”. Their exact identity, though, remains unknown.
A Nairobi-based diplomat said it was possible Mr Godane’s own secret service — the Amniyat, an elite unit which has its own chain of command, logistics network and financial resources — carried out the raid. Another Somali intelligence agent said he understood the Westgate attackers were a crack al-Shabaab unit known as the Iktihaam, after the Arabic term meaning to storm in. The Kenyan military said the assailants were a “multinational collection”, but they had not confirmed reports that the raiders, whom President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Tuesday had been “defeated”, include some Americans and a British woman.
Al-Shabaab is a militia that emerged from Somalia’s Union of Islamic Courts movement that pushed US-backed warlords out of the capital Mogadishu before being ousted by Somali and Ethiopian forces.
Al-Shabaab went on to seize large swathes of territory. Foreign combatants from the US, Europe and the Gulf states have steadily gained influence within alShabaab, many drawn by Mr Godane’s ambition to take the group’s militant campaign beyond Somalia’s borders.
Al-Shabaab’s first strike abroad came in 2010 when coordinated explosions killed more than 70 people in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
Repeated threats of a big strike on Kenyan soil failed to materialise, however, denting the aspirations of the hardliners to be a prominent affiliate within the alQaeda franchise. But Saturday’s attack on the Westgate mall, a symbol of Kenya’s economic power, has changed that.
“A lot of people have been thinking of al-Shabaab as a Somali issue but (after) this attack they are going to be viewed more as a part of al-Qaeda and the global terrorist network,” said Ali Soufan, whose Soufan Group provides security intelligence to governments and businesses.
This could help al-Shabaab to win new supporters and resources among militants committed to anti-western jihad.
It also follows deep rifts within the group that saw a power struggle between those who wanted to keep its jihad within Somalia — the “indigenous faction” — and those led by Mr Godane, who wanted to take the campaign further afield.
While al-Shabaab has pressed the narrative of a crack strike unit, capable of hitting across international borders, analysts said Kenya would also need to look closer to home to hunt down those who helped plan and orchestrate the raid. Reports from Kenya’s military that the gunmen moved covertly through Westgate’s air ventilation system indicated a high level of planning requiring a detailed knowledge of the mall.
“I would be very surprised if alShabaab carried out this attack on its own,” said Abdi Aynte, director of the Mogadishu-based Heritage Institute for Policy Studies.
“They might have contracted a local Kenyan group to do some of the logistics and reconnaissance,” he said.
Al-Shabaab’s most important affiliate in Kenya is al-Hijra, a group formerly known as the Muslim Youth Centre, based in Nairobi’s rundown Majengo neighbourhood.
Kenya’s 2011 military foray into Somalia led to a surge in shootings, grenade and bomb attacks across Kenya. The Kenyan government blamed the attacks on al-Shabaab, while security experts said local sympathisers were more likely responsible.
“You’ve got a home-grown problem in Kenya with links to combat training and fighting in Somalia and longstanding recruitment networks operating in Kenya,” the Nairobi-based diplomat said. “The ingredients are all there.”