Despite military gains against Somalia’s Islamist group Al-Shabaab, the insurgents’ defeat will remain elusive until the Somali government and its international partners address long standing social – often clan-based – grievances through parallel local and national processes, as the basis for the revival of conventional governmental authority.
To combat the entrenched, highly adaptable extremist group Al-Shabaab, the Somali Federal Government and its allies must better imitate the group’s core political strengths. The focus on military campaigns with little emphasis on encouraging political settlements in liberated areas is handing the initiative back to the insurgents. In its latest briefing, Somalia: Al-Shabaab – It Will Be a Long War, the International Crisis Group looks beyond Al-Shabaab’s extremist face and explains why the group remains resilient in south-central Somalia.
- While Al-Shabaab remains the focus for international actors, it is just one of several obstacles on the road to peace and stability. And unlike many of its rivals in south-central Somalia, the group still offers practical solutions to clan conflicts and minority representation, simple but effective governance and justice structures, and basic social services, including religious instruction in areas with scant primary education.
- Al-Shabaab draws strength from an experienced cross-clan leadership that – despite internal tensions – continues to offer a consistent and well-articulated vision, propagated at the ground level through close engagement with Somali society, particularly in rural areas.
- Before further military campaigns continue – especially in the large rural areas still controlled by Al-Shabaab – the Somali Federal Government, with its regional and wider international supporters, needs to begin national and local reconciliation efforts in liberated areas, as outlined in its National Stabilisation Strategy. Local consultative bodies should be encouraged to generate political consensus and leadership, in tandem with term-limited care-taker administrations focused on rehabilitation of basic services.
“For all its many mistakes, Al-Shabaab has managed to appear independent of external political timetables and non-Somali support. Its schooling and training activities as well as its human and media networks in the region have allowed Al-Shabaab to recruit new members, even in the face of greater security presence”, says Cedric Barnes, Horn of Africa Project Director. “That’s been key to the group’s continued control of both money and minds in many parts of Somalia”.
“At this stage, another military surge might be counterproductive, especially if foreign troops are leading the way”, says EJ Hogendoorn, Africa Program Deputy Director. “The Somali Federal Government and its allies need to strike at the root of Al-Shabaab’s strength by imitating its grassroots political success and providing for local needs”.
Somalia: Al-Shabaab – It Will Be a Long War
Africa Briefing N°9926 Jun 2014
OVERVIEW
Despite the recent military surge against Somalia’s armed Islamist extremist and self-declared al-Qaeda affiliate, Al-Shabaab, its conclusive “defeat” remains elusive. The most likely scenario – already in evidence – is that its armed units will retreat to smaller, remote and rural enclaves, exploiting entrenched and ever-changing clan-based competition; at the same time, other groups of radicalised and well-trained individuals will continue to carry out assassinations and terrorist attacks in urban areas, including increasingly in neighbouring countries, especially Kenya. The long connection between Al-Shabaab’s current leadership and al-Qaeda is likely to strengthen. A critical breakthrough in the fight against the group cannot, therefore, be achieved by force of arms, even less so when it is foreign militaries, not the Somalia National Army (SNA), that are in the lead. A more politically-focused approach is required.
Even as its territory is squeezed in the medium term, Al-Shabaab will continue to control both money and minds. It has the advantage of at least three decades of Salafi-Wahabi proselytisation (daawa) in Somalia; social conservatism is already strongly entrenched – including in Somaliland and among Somali minorities in neighbouring states – giving it deep reservoirs of fiscal and ideological support, even without the intimidation it routinely employs.
An additional factor is the group’s proven ability to adapt, militarily and politically – flexibility that is assisted by its leadership’s freedom from direct accountability to any single constituency. From its first serious military setbacks in 2007 and again in 2011, it has continually reframed the terms of engagement. It appears to be doing so again.
Countering Al-Shabaab’s deep presence in south-central Somalia requires the kind of government – financially secure, with a common vision and coercive means – that is unlikely to materialise in the near term. More military surges will do little to reduce the socio-political dysfunction that has allowed Al-Shabaab to thrive; in certain areas it may even serve to deepen its hold. The Somalia Federal Government (SFG), supported by external allies, should consider the following political options:
- implementing, as outlined in the “National Stabilisation Strategy” (NSS), parallel national and local reconciliation processes at all levels of Somali society;
- imitating Al-Shabaab’s frequently successful techniques of facilitating local clan dialogue and reconciliation (as per the National Stabilisation Strategy, NSS), as well as religious education;
- developing a new approach to establishing local and regional administrations that privileges neither SFG appointees nor clients of neighbouring states; and
- making the local (Somali) political grievances that enable Al-Shabaab to remain and rebuild in Somalia the paramount focus, not regional or wider international priorities.
Nairobi/Brussels, 26 June 2014
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