Since the horrific attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, there has been a flood of coverage, with thorough analyses unfortunately few and far between. I wanted to share a few things that I’ve found worthwhile to read in one place.
- Mats Utas, at the Nordic Africa Institute, has written a good piece, highlighting how little is really known about the workings of al-Shabaab, and trying to put the attacks in that context.
- Cedric Barnes, the Horn of Africa Project director at Crisis Group, wrote an excellent op-ed for the New York Times that explored the implications for Kenya.
- Bronwyn Bruton, at the Atlantic Council, also writing in the New York Times highlights the flaws in Western, mainly US, counter-terrorism policy with regard to Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and considers the implications for future policy.
- Ken Menkhaus, at Davidson College, wrote one of the first coherent analyses of the implications of the attack for ThinkProgress, a blog run by Center for American Progress, a liberal US think tank, arguing that it reflects al-Shabaab’s growing desperation.
- Cleophus Tres Thomas, an analyst of Somalia and PhD candidate at George Mason University, wrote an insightful analysis of the state of play between al-Shabaab and African Union forces (including Kenyans) in Somalia, and the implications for Kenya’s policy towards Somalia, on his website, Somalia Newsroom.
- Mukhtar Ibrahim, a journalist who has been covering the situation in Somalia for some time, wrote an excellent critique of the local and global media coverage of the attack, highlighting the ease with which misinformation was fed into the global chatter stream, and the implications this has had for Somalis in Kenya and the diaspora.
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A common theme running through most thoughtful analysis of the impacts of the Westgate attack is the real risk of a backlash against ethnic Somalis in Kenya (including Kenyan Somalis), and perhaps even a broader wave of resentment towards Muslims in general in Kenya. This is genuine concern, although the initial public discourse is focused on national unity, centred in social media around slogans such as We Are One (#WeAreOne). Unfortunately, the experience of the past two years fuels a sense of caution among Somalis, and there is a legitimate fear of being scapegoated for the attacks.
This has raised the question of why al-Shabaab would choose to make an attack that it surely understood carried the risk of triggering such a backlash — which would threaten both ‘ordinary’ Somalis and the Somali business elite, who maintain business links across the region, between parts of Somalia, Kenya, other parts of Eastern Africa, the Gulf States and further afield, including Europe, North America and Asia. One argument would be that the attack thus signals the desperation of a militant group in decline, taking its most extreme option in an effort to demonstrate its continued relevance to the future of Somalia, after months of military setbacks and a recent bout of intense (and deadly) leadership infighting.
At this point, still very early in the process of understanding the import of the attack, my own initial impression is that the attack rather sends a different signal. Despite the recent infighting, the group’s emir, Ahmed Godane, has retained control. Moreover, the Nairobi attack comes in the wake of a string of high-profile attacks in Somalia — including the assault of the UN compound in Mogadishu in June; attacks on President Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud in Merca and ‘interim Jubba administration’ leader Ahmed Madobe in Kismayo in early September — alongside the usual range of targeted killings and attacks on AU peacekeepers and Somali National Army troops.
In this context, the Nairobi attack seems to be as much a signal for Kenya to withdraw from Somalia, as it is a signal to Somalis that al-Shabaab can wait. It can wait for the AU forces, and their international donors, to exhaust the political will to maintain the financial support for the military intervention in Somalia. Moreover, it is a signal to Somalis that in the context of an ongoing civil war, al-Shabaab’s political and societal vision is their only viable choice in the long term, that eventually any other choice cannot guarantee their security. In this way, al-Shabaab appears to be betting that, if a backlash against Somalis is forthcoming in Kenya, the result will be for those Somalis to conclude that, in the end, al-Shabaab’s rule would be better than continued conflict and persecution.
This may well be a seriously flawed strategy, but in the context of a long civil war, I think it goes some way to explaining the logic of this Islamist movement’s continued attacks, and the significant escalation of the stakes that the Nairobi attack represents.