The recent horrendous terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, carried out by al-Qaeda’s Somali partner, al-Shabab, should serve as a wakeup call for the international community.
Al-Qaeda has not gone away, despite Osama bin Laden’s death; if anything we have seen somewhat of a revival in the organisation in various parts of the Muslim world.
Al-Shabab’s bloody siege in Kenya that killed 67 people raised its profile in the jihadist world and placed it firmly among the many terrorist al-Qaeda groups around the world. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was in Washington when al-Shabab attacked in Nairobi, told the US press that al-Shabab was foreign-financed, packed with foreign fighters, and has wide international reach.
“Al-Shabab is not a Somali agenda, it’s an international agenda. Al-Shabab is working with an international capacity in terms of trading and financial resources. Al-Shabab is more of an international problem than a Somali problem. It [a terrorist attack] can happen here in the United States as it is now happening in Nairobi,” he said.
Al-Shabab was formed out of the anarchy and chaos that gripped Somalia after warlords ousted President Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, which turned the country into a failed state. By 2006 it had taken control of most of the country and the capital Mogadishu.
As a result the first UN-backed African Union force to combat al-Shabab, consisting of Ethiopian soldiers, and financed by the US, was sent to Somalia. This venture was a limited success, and it was probably a mistake to send troops from Ethiopia, Somalia’s long time enemy, to fight al-Shabab.
However a second UN-backed African Union force, which included soldiers from neighbouring Kenya and Uganda, managed to push al-Shabab out of the capital and parts of the country in 2011. Nevertheless, al-Shabab still rules over vast rural areas of Somalia and it regularly conducts deadly suicide bomb attacks in areas not under its control.
In July 2010 al-Shabab claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, that killed over 70 people watching the World Cup Final. This atrocity was al-Shabab’s first attack outside Somalia and was in retaliation for Uganda’s participation in the African Union force that ousted it from Mogadishu and much of the country.
Likewise, the recent attack by al-Shabab in Nairobi was in retaliation for the leading role played by Kenya in sending troops to Somalia in 2011 which greatly reduced the militant group’s control of vast areas of Somali territory.
Al-Shabab announced its formal alliance with al-Qaeda in February 2012, pledging its allegiance to the global jihadist terrorist organisation. However, even before that, there are clear indications that al-Qaeda was already actively involved in Somalia.
Al-Shabab is not a Somali agenda, it’s an international agenda
The 2002 al-Qaeda attacks on an Israeli-owned resort and the attempted attack on a plane carrying Israeli tourists in Mombassa, Kenya, are believed to have been planned by an al-Qaeda cell in Somalia. The US is also of the opinion that some of the al-Qaeda terrorists who bombed the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 were given refuge in Somalia.
As Somalia struggles against an al-Shabab insurgency – which threatens the entire region – it requires all the help it can get from the international community.
Significantly, the country now has its first elected government in more than 20 years (which governs over the territory it controls) and some progress has been made in getting the country back to ‘normality’, yet many problems remain.
Earlier this month, EU leaders pledged a very welcome €650 million for Somalia to help support its fragile democracy and economy. The US alone promised €50 million; Malta, which receives many irregular migrants from Somalia (many of the migrants who tragically drowned off Lampedusa last Thursday were Somalis) pledged €150,000 over three years. Last May foreign leaders at a London conference also committed hundreds of millions of euros for Somalia. It is essential that such commitments are kept and that the international community, particularly the US, does all it can to help Somalia defeat al-Shabab and to get back on its feet.
Al-Shabab is unfortunately just one of the many regional al-Qaeda regional groups that have sprung up in the world. These include al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, the Yemen-based group which was responsible for the closure of 19 US embassies in the region and a global travel alert last August; al-Qaeda in Iraq which is killing up to 1,000 civilians a month; the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the main al-Qaeda branch in Syria, which according to IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly now accounts for at least half of all the rebel fighters; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which operates mainly in Algeria; other jihadist groups in countries such as Mali, Niger, Libya and Nigeria; and of course al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan where it is allied to the Taliban.
The battle against al-Qaeda has not been won, and while some progress has been made on some fronts, there remains much to be done. It is important for the US and EU to support weak governments facing a threat from al-Qaeda, to back moderate Muslim movements in the region (the failure of the Arab Spring in a number of countries have greatly complicated matters) and to do whatever can be done to eliminate the conditions that lead to popular support for jihadist groups in the Muslim world.
• Austria’s general election has produced another ‘grand coalition’ between the main parties of the centre-left and the centre-right. The Social Democrats, led by Chancellor Werner Faymann, have been governing together with the People’s Party since 2008; this coalition has just been narrowly re-elected, and both parties saw their share of their vote decrease.
The result is perturbing because eurosceptic and anti-immigrant parties have continued to gain ground. The duopoly of the Social Democrats and the People’s Party, which until the 1980s used to together receive over 90 per cent of the vote, is on the decline. In last week’s election, the Social Democrats got 26.9 per cent of the vote (down from 29.3 per cent in 2008), while the People’s Party got 24 per cent, down from 26 per cent.
The right-wing parties’ share of the vote was as follows: Freedom Party (anti-immigrant, eurosceptic 20.6 per cent (an increase from 17.5 per cent); Team Stronach (eurosceptic, financed by an Austrian Canadian billionaire 5.7 per cent; Future of Austria (anti-immigrant, eurosceptic 3.5 per cent (a decrease from 10.7 per cent). This amounts to a total of 29.8 per cent, an increase from the combined 28.2 per cent in 2008.
The opposition to the grand coalition parties was not exclusively channelled through right-wing parties, however. The Greens increased their share of the vote from 10.4 per cent to 12.3 per cent, while a new pro-European liberal party, New Austria, received a surprising 4.9 per cent of the vote.
The election, however, should serve as a warning to Austria’s mainstream parties about voters’ concerns over bailouts in the eurozone as well as immigration.
Furthermore, a series of scandals during this last legislature certainly did not help the ruling parties. These issues obviously need to be addressed. In Germany’s election two weeks ago, for example, a new anti-euro party, Alternative for Germany, won 4.7 per cent of the vote, highlighting a worrying trend in European elections.