Al-Shabab poses no threat to U.S. interests: Column
The grisly siege last week of Garissa, a Christian university in Kenya, has a familiar ring to it: Over 140 students slain and hundreds more missing. An extremist Somali group, al-Shabab, with ties to al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility. We've seen this horrific movie before.
Yet is this another example of religiously motivated terrorism that threatens U.S. interests? Or is this a more local or regional problem?
Popular accounts of terrorist attacks like this one suggest they have international causes and thus require international solutions. In fact, Thursday's attack — much like terrorist massacres at Nairobi's Westgate Mall in 2013 or the Beslan school in Russia in 2004 — have much more local causes.
Recent terrorism research suggests that two big factors explain where attacks occur. First, vulnerable targets — schools, malls and such — are more attractive to militants because they will likely be easy to hit and they are plentiful. Second, valuable locations, like a glitzy mall or a glassy skyscraper, provide symbolic value. While militants may not be able to reach the seat of power, they can destroy a symbol.
These attacks communicate both these groups' strength and signal resolve to cajole their enemies — typically the government— to meet their demands or else. Vulnerability and value are more useful to explain where attacks occur rather than factors like religion or ethnicity.
Impact of U.S. policy
This has important implications for U.S. counterterrorism policy, which at the moment resembles a whack-a-mole strategy that reacts to crises. About every year or so we read about a top al-Shabab commander or bomb specialist liquidated by a U.S. airstrike in Somalia. But the group shows little signs of weakening, even if it has not captured Americans' attention the way Boko Haram or the Islamic State has. There is no Somalia equivalent of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign on social media demanding greater action.
Al-Shabab's attacks are both strategic and local. Beyond Somalia's borders, the group has mainly targeted soft targets in Kenya. They resent Kenyan "meddling" in Somali affairs — a few years ago Kenyan forces carried out a cross-border operations against al-Shabab bases — yet they have not shown capacity or a willingness to strike beyond the Horn of Africa.
Al-Shabab seeks to rule Somalia with a reactionary interpretation of Islamic law. But ascribing this conflict to religion misses the point. Yes, it's been reported that militants may have released Muslim students in the current Garissa attack, much like they did during the siege of the Westgate mall. But al-Shabab has not restrained itself from killing anyone it felt was interfering with its primary goal of creating a state in Somalia. Even Muslim foreign recruits, like the American jihadist, Omar Hammami, were eliminated when they clashed with leaders of the group.
Another concern is foreign recruits from the U.S. fighting in Somalia, and then returning home. But unlike theaters in Iraq or Syria, foreign fighters number in the dozens at most. They are primarily used as cannon fodder to carry out jihad locally, and so are unlikely to come back alive. The U.S. should be supportive of Kenya, but understand this is a local or regional problem with local or regional solutions.
Drone strikes not answer
No amount of drone strikes will solve what ails Somalia. According to a recent International Crisis Group report, "military campaigns with little emphasis on encouraging political settlements in liberated areas is handing the initiative back to the insurgents."
While U.S. policy throughout Africa nominally supports the idea of bolstering weak states, some observers suggest that this focus on failing states as security threats is misguided. External funding of weak rulers and an occasional aerial bombardment provide a case in point. Building capable states takes time, patience, and resolving political and clan-based divisions at the local level. In Somalia, this means building a capable state that ends the economic misery that indirectly allows groups like al-Shabab to thrive.
We highly doubt Americans have the stomach or patience for this kind of campaign, given our nation-building credentials elsewhere. Nor is our own track record in Somalia remarkable (Remember Black Hawk Down?). Instead we should engage and support a capable state that, at a minimum, can prevent al-Shabab from carrying out terrorist attacks across its border and enable Kenya to better defend itself from such attacks.
But to realize this requires local and regional solutions to these awful attacks, not to lump al-Shabab in the same counterterrorism basket as ISIL and Boko Haram.
Joseph Young is an associate professor at American University. Lionel Beehner is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors and editor of Cicero Magazine.
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