Who Are the Al-Shabaab Militants Plaguing Kenya?

(Bloomberg) -- The Islamic militant group al-Shabaab, based in Somalia, has carried out a string of attacks on Kenyan soil. An American soldier and two U.S. defense contractors were killed in a Jan. 5 assault on a defense facility Kenya shares with the U.S. One year earlier, the group claimed responsibility for a coordinated attack on a hotel and office complex in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, that left 26 people, including five attackers, dead. Al-Shabaab warns that attacks will continue as long as Kenya maintains its soldiers in an African Union force that is helping prop up Somalia’s government.

1. What is al-Shabaab?

It’s an affiliate of al-Qaeda that grew in reaction to Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion of Somalia, which targeted the Islamic Courts Union’s brief control of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. The group swore allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012 and has vied with Islamic State for members and support. The group’s most violent operations include a 2015 raid on a university campus that claimed at least 147 lives and an assault on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall in 2013, which killed 67. Besides having staged more than 150 attacks in Kenya since the country intervened in Somalia, its members have carried out bombings in Uganda and Djibouti, which have also contributed personnel to the African mission. Al-Shabeeb is Arabic for “the youth.”

2. What does it want?

Al-Shabaab has sought to topple Somalia’s government and impose its version of Islamic law on the country. It has demanded that the African Union withdraw all its troops that are helping support the administration of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.

3. Why is the African Union involved?

The 55-nation organization launched a multinational peacekeeping operation in Somalia in 2007 with the authorization of the United Nations and the backing of the U.S. The mandate of the 21,000-strong African Union force, known as Amisom, has been extended several times. Kenya sent thousands of troops into Somalia, its neighbor, in 2011 to counter al-Shabaab. They were later integrated into Amisom.

4. How big is it?

The U.S. Council on Foreign Relations said in a January 2019 report that al-Shabaab had an estimated 3,000 to 6,000 members. It cited a 2017 U.S. State Department report as saying that al-Shabaab had experienced increasing defections due in part to negligence in paying low-level fighters.

5. How powerful is it?

At the peak of its power, al-Shabaab controlled large swathes of Somalia, including Mogadishu and the port of Kismayo. While it has been weakened by the African Union intervention and driven out of the capital and other urban strongholds, it still wields control over some rural parts of central and southern Somalia and intermittently attacks Somali government facilities and civilians.

6. How involved is the U.S.?

The U.S. listed al-Shabaab as terror organization in 2008. A U.S. drone strike in 2014 killed al-Shabaab’s then-leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane. Since 2016, under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has stepped up airstrikes, drone strikes and ground raids on the group inside Somalia. In September, al-Shabaab attacked a U.S. military training base near Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and detonated a car bomb targeting a European Union military convoy.

The Reference Shelf

• The U.S. Council on Foreign Relations report on al-Shabaab.
• BBC country profiles of Kenya and Somalia.
• All about the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

To contact the reporters on this story: David Malingha in Nairobi at dmalingha@bloomberg.net;David Herbling in Nairobi at dherbling@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Mike Cohen, Laurence Arnold

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.