[Reader-list] Why al-Shabaab Would Attack in Uganda

[Pawan Durani]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/07/why-al-shabaab-would-attack-in-uganda/59551/

The Somalian insurgency al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the
bombings that killed 74 civilians, including at least one America, in
Kampala, Uganda, on Sunday. Though global attention is focusing on the
attacks' ferocity, the most curious detail is that al-Shabaab struck
in Uganda at all. The group has never before attacked outside of
Somalia and its decision to target Uganda is very unusual for several
reasons. There are two likely explanations for this act of terrorism,
both with dark implications for Somalia and East Africa.

Though militants did not begin using the name al-Shabaab until 2006,
they are part of the same Islamist insurgency that has plagued, and at
times partially ruled, Somalia since the 1990s. Al-Shabaab is often
compared to al-Qaeda, but the two groups have little in common. While
both are violently Islamist, only al-Qaeda is ideology-driven,
espouses global ambitions, and a has history of terrorism simply for
the sake of killing. Al-Shabaab seeks only to rule Somalia and to
impose an extreme form of Islamic law. The group has long privileged
its fight for control of Somalia over ideology. As many have pointed
out, the attack on Uganda makes sense as part of al-Shabaab's fight
against the African Union forces, to which Uganda contributes troops.
Only days earlier, the East African block of the African Union voted
to increase its peacekeeping force, which seeks to expel al-Shabaab
from Somalia's south, from 6,000 to 8,000 troops.

But Uganda's participation in the African Union force does not fully
explain Al-Shabaab's attack. After all, several countries contribute
to the peacekeeping mission. Uganda does not even border Somalia. If
al-Shabaab wanted to expand the borders of its territorial control, it
would have pushed into Kenya or Ethiopia. If the militant group was
simply seeking revenge against the African Union, it would have
targeted Ethiopia, the country most responsible for its removal from
power in 2006, when it was known as the Islamic Courts Union.
Ideologically, Uganda is also an unusual target. Al-Shabaab's ideology
is primarily concerned with fellow Muslims, on whom the group wishes
to impose Taliban-like law, but Uganda is over 80 percent Christian.

The decision to bomb civilian gatherings in Kampala was almost
certainly tactical. Al-Shabaab is not like the Taliban of 2000, which
had secure control of Afghanistan and thus felt comfortable spreading
violence and ideology outside the country's borders. But al-Shabaab is
still struggling in Somalia's ongoing civil war. There are two likely
tactical explanations for the attack. The first is that al-Shabaab is
feeling increasingly threatened by the African Union force and is
desperate to forestall or prevent the planned addition of 2,000
peacekeepers. In that case, this attack was a defensive act.
Insurgents typically turn to terrorism when they are no longer able to
challenge their opponents on the battlefield. While this may appear to
be good news because it would mean that the group is weaker, a
threatened al-Shabaab would become a threat to not just southern
Somalia but all of East Africa. As Graeme Wood explained in his
chronicling of the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency in the Central
African Republic, "the smaller and more resoundingly defeated the
rebels are, the more brutally they fight." This is how insurgencies,
which can be negotiated or even reconciled with, become terrorist
groups, which do not accept political compromises and can persist for
many years. This attack on civilians outside Somalia would not be the
last.

The other possibility is that al-Shabaab is stronger than we think and
that this attack is the beginning of a push to expand its reach.
Al-Shabaab only operates in Somalia's south. If it feels confident in
its control there, it may be planning to assault north into the
contested horn of the country or even into the relatively calm
Somaliland region in the north, which has been called an "oasis of
stability." This act of terrorism would be al-Shabaab way of opening a
new front in a campaign to expel the peacekeepers from the regions
al-Shabaab does not yet control. If the insurgency is indeed growing
stronger, this would help explain why the African Union felt the need
to increase its force strength by one third. It's difficult to know
how long the peacekeepers could hold back al-Shabaab from taking more
of the country.

Both of these possibilities should be of grave concern to the U.S.
Violence in Somalia destabilizes all of East Africa, risking the
tenuous stability in Kenya and worsening the conflict in Yemen. As
Yemen struggles, its al-Qaeda offshoot becomes a greater threat to the
U.S. Were Kenya to succumb to the terrorism that has long worsened its
political fragility, it could become a threat to global security
rivaling Yemen or even Afghanistan. After all, al-Qaeda's first major
attack against the U.S., second in damage only to September 11, was
its 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Whether
al-Shabaab is adopting international terrorism out of defensive
desperation or as an act of strategic assault, there is no clear and
easy response