THE DECLINE AND FALL OF AL-SHABAAB? THINK AGAIN

In the early hours of 2 April 2015, Al-Shabaab militants raided the Garissa campus of Moi University College in
northeastern Kenya, killing at least 148 and wounding 79 more, mainly students. It was the worst terrorist attack
in Kenya since the bombing of the U.S. embassy by Al-Qaida in 1998, surpassing even the Westgate Shopping Mall
carnage of September 2013.
Some commentators have been quick to portray the Garissa operation as an act of ‘desperation’ by an organisation
in decline.1
Others have suggested that Al-Shabaab has changed tactics in order to emulate foreign jihadist groups
(“deliberately evoking Boko Haram”)2

or is positioning itself to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Such impromptu analysis is not entirely without foundation: Al-Shabaab is undeniably on the military defensive in Somalia
and there are very real pressures on the organisation to consider an afliation with ISIS. But the Garissa operation was
neither a sign of Al-Shabaab’s desperation, nor a new departure in terms of strategy or tactics: on the contrary, it was a
manifestation of the group’s resilience, adaptability and strategic continuity.3
In recent years Al-Shabaab has been steadily ceding ground to African Union forces (AMISOM) and its Somali allies,
while the ranks of its senior leadership have been depleted by deaths and defections – including the loss of ‘Amir’ Ahmed
Abdi ‘Godane’ in an American airstrike in September 2014. Al-Shabaab’s new leader, Ahmed Omar Diriiye ‘Abu Ubeydah’,
has taken the reigns of a movement that remains overmatched on the battlefeld and deeply divided over strategy and
tactics. Yet Al-Shabaab’s operational tempo inside Somalia, and its ability to strike beyond Somalia’s borders appears to
remain intact.
Al-Shabaab’s resilience during this difcult period testifes to the group’s internal cohesion and discipline, as well as the
new leadership’s commitment to organisational stability and strategic continuity – at least in the near term. Moreover,
afer roughly a decade of continuous operations, Al-Shabaab has developed sufcient leadership at all levels to be able

to continue functioning under adverse conditions and to regenerate even afer losses among its senior ranks. And Al-
Shabaab’s decentralised command structure, together with its expanding regional presence, means that a successful strike

against one branch of the movement does not necessarily impact its operations elsewhere.
Perhaps most importantly, Al-Shabaab is now well on its way to becoming a truly transnational organisation, merging
with its Kenyan afliate, Al-Hijra and attracting a growing number of followers and recruits from across East Africa.
Although Somalia still remains Al-Shabaab’s geographic centre of gravity, its identity and its aspirations have transcended
the movement’s Somali origins, transforming both the theatre and the nature of its ‘jihad’. Governments determined to
counter Al-Shabaab’s expansion should resist the temptation to look for answers in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria, and focus
instead on the stresses and fssures in their own societies – precisely the vulnerabilities that Al-Shabaab will seek to exploit
as it propagates its toxic ideology throughout the region.