Somalia: Al Qaeda and al-Shabab - WikiLeaks



Somalia: Al Qaeda and al-Shabab

(Editor's note: this is the first in a four-part series)

Teaser:

The Somalian militant group al-Shabab's relationship with al Qaeda -- and the implications of that relationship -- bears examination.

Summary

In the predawn hours of May 1, a U.S. AC-130 Spectre gunship dispatched from a nearby airbase destroyed a house in central Somalia where members of the Islamist militant group al-Shabab were meeting. Killed in the attack were Aden Hashi Ayro, a senior member of al-Shabab and al Qaeda's military commander in Somalia, and Sheikh Muhyadin Omar, a senior al-Shabab commander. The two have direct links to al Qaeda prime and a long history of terrorism in the Horn of Africa. The May 1 incident, in conjunction with a multitude of other factors, raises the question of how connected al Qaeda and al-Shabab have become in Somalia and what the implications of that relationship are.

Analysis

Early May 1, a U.S. AC-130 Spectre gunship destroyed a house in central Somalia where members of the Islamist militant group al-Shabab (Arabic for "the youth"), were holding a meeting. Two men with close ties to al Qaeda prime were killed in the attack.

With the U.S. government reporting recently that the al Qaeda node along the Afghan/Pakistani border is reorganizing, and with evidence surfacing recently that the al Qaeda node in Yemen is reorganizing as well, it seems that a select few al Qaeda groups have been undergoing a period of rebuilding. The same situation could be playing out in Somalia with al-Shabab. Although there have been some small-scale successes in targeting elements of al-Shabab's command and control structure, the link between the Somalian group and al Qaeda prime has been established, and al-Shabab's expansion in the near future is a very real threat.

 Al Qaeda and Somalia

Al Qaeda has a long operational history in East Africa; Osama bin Laden himself spent time there, operating out of Sudan from 1994 (when he was expelled from Saudi Arabia) to 1996 when he left for Afghanistan. The group's involvement in Somalia was first evident to the Western world in 1993 -- during Operation Gothic Serpent -- when al Qaeda sent operatives to Somalia to train the militias of Mohamed Farah Aided, a powerful local warlord and the main target of U.S. operations. In 1998 al Qaeda made its presence felt in East Africa with the embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. More recently al Qaeda has been implicated in the bombing of a hotel in Mombassa, Kenya, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner, both in 2002.

The group of al Qaeda operatives sent to aid the Somalian militias in 1993, which likely included Fazul Abdullah Mohamed is credited with instructing the Somalis on how to disable military helicopters by targeting them with rocket propelled grenades as they flew low over the city. This tactic was what allowed the Somalis to disrupt U.S. operations and ultimately contributed to the U.S. pullout in late 1993. This serves as the first known example of al Qaeda providing direct material support to the Somalian cause. Al Qaeda's motivation for supporting the militias at this time came partly from Somalis within al Qaeda prime's ranks wanting to support their brethren in Somalia and partly from the group's desire to take advantage of an opportunity to strike at the United States at a point of vulnerability.

As a predominantly Sunni country, Somalia has been a source of al-Qaeda fighters over the years, with a number of ethnic Somalis traveling to Afghanistan to train with al Qaeda prime and then returning to organize and command local al Qaeda nodes. Al Qaeda prime was known to have sent numerous operatives to East Africa in the early to mid-1990s to locate potential targets. In more recent years there have been numerous reports of Somalis fighting alongside members of the local al Qaeda nodes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Development of al-Shabab

After Ethiopian forces beat back the Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC) in 2007, the SICC's armed wings dissolved into the ungoverned savannah in the south, the Mogadishu underground and safe zones in central Somalia. They eventually re-formed under the leadership of Aden Farah Ayro (one of the men killed in the May 1 U.S. air strike) and Sheikh Hassan Turki (who is suspected to be along the border between Somalia and Kenya), assumed the name al-Shabab and sought to continue the fight against the new Somalian government and its Ethiopian backers with an insurgency-style approach. Portions of al-Shabab have also been known to call themselves the Mujahideen Youth Movement (MYM); this is largely suspected to be a twist on the name of the main group and not an indication that the MYM is a separate entity.

The group's core leadership comprises senior militants, some of whom trained directly and fought with al Qaeda prime in Afghanistan, while its rank-and-file membership is largely untrained Somalian youths. Al-Shabab is estimated to have 6,000 to 7,000 members, with cells having several hundred members. As a result of Somalia's turbulent past, the group's members have had no shortage of practice in asymmetrical warfare and small unit tactics, as well as experience using a wide array of weaponry.

From an operational standpoint the group is fairly new. As the SICC's militant wing, it gained notoriety before the SICC took over Mogadishu in June 2006 for its desecration of Italian graves and the killing of a British journalist. The U.S. State Department formally labeled al-Shabab as a foreign terrorist organization in March -- a mostly bureaucratic action, but nonetheless a demonstration of the extent to which the group had been able to develop and progress. The group actually publicly addressed its addition to the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, saying it would only help support al-Shabab's cause, as its justification as an official terrorist group would bring it more attention and subsequently more material support.

Helping to speed al-Shabab's growth is the fact that when it was SICC's militant wing, it had an organized command and control structure and many rank-and-file members already in place. The group was able to transfer that structure, and many of its members, to its new incarnation as al-Shabab. This, coupled with the leadership's operational experience and links to al Qaeda prime, has helped create a capable and fairly strong group.

From a tactical standpoint al-Shabab does not yet exhibit any of the trademarks commonly associated with al Qaeda prime. The group employs a tactical doctrine that places a strong emphasis on small-unit, hit-and-run-style assaults, mainly targeting lightly guarded towns and villages and subsequently retreating to the countryside before reinforcements arrive. While they have begun to employ more traditional tactics such as IEDs in more urban environments, the militants have been operating more as a traditional insurgent force than as a traditional terrorist organization as commonly defined.

(In part 2 of the series we will discuss the links between al-Shabab and al Qaeda)

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