In the face of major territorial, military, and economic setbacks, the Somali insurgent-jihadi group al-Shabaab has proven remarkably resilient thanks to pragmatic decision-making and skilled tactical maneuvering. With strong interpersonal ties and a capable internal security network, the group’s senior leadership continues to maintain overall unity and to ward off a strong challenge from Islamic State sympathizers. Despite its transnational rhetoric and affiliation with al-Qa`ida, al-Shabaab remains rooted in domestic Somali issues and clan politics. This domestic focus has contributed to a pragmatic battlefield strategy of classic guerilla warfare interspersed with high-profile, well-coordinated attacks on “soft targets,” such as hotels and restaurants, in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

Since withdrawing from Mogadishu in August 2011 under intense military pressure from a combined offensive by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the Somali Federal Government (SFG), and their allied local militias, al-Shabaab has suffered a series of military and territorial setbacks. This pressure has intensified over the past two years with the entrance of Kenyan military forces and the reentrance of Ethiopian troops into the fight, also supported by allied Somali militiamen. The result has been the slow but steady loss of insurgent-held territory across the country. In early October 2014 al-Shabaab lost control of its last major urban stronghold and access point to the Indian Ocean, the coastal town of Baraawe.[1] Despite having had to withdraw from lucrative urban centers such as Baidoa, Kismaayo, and Baraawe, al-Shabaab has proven remarkably resilient in the face of mounting local, regional, and international pressure, including from the United States, as well as rising jihadi competitors and rivals, chief among them the Islamic State.

This article examines the evolution of al-Shabaab’s tactical, recruitment, and media strategies and its continued attempt to exercise a form of insurgent governance over territory in the wake of battlefield setbacks, loss of territory including key economic centers, and growing challenges from jihadi rivals sympathetic to the call of the Islamic State. The article will explore the reasons for the Somali insurgent group’s continued resilience. These factors include the weakness of the SFG, continued fighting between competing clan militias as well as between nominally SFG-aligned militias and the national army, and the flexibility shown by al-Shabaab leaders and field commanders in shifting back to classic guerilla warfare.

A Tactical Shift?

On February 2, an al-Shabaab suicide bomber detonated his explosives on the Somali-owned Daallo Airlines flight 159, headed from Mogadishu to Djibouti. Seventy of the 74 passengers, including the bomber, had been recently re-booked from a canceled Turkish Airlines flight. Two passengers were injured but only the bomber was killed. According to SFG officials, who reviewed CCTV footage, a laptop rigged with explosives given to the bomber by two men who appear to have been airport workers was used in the attack.[2] A source close to the investigation told CNN that the laptop bomb was sophisticated and went undetected by an airport X-ray machine.[3]

In a statement released on February 13, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for carrying out the bombing and declared that it had been targeting “Western intelligence officials” and the “Western and apostate [Somali] intelligence infrastructure.” The attempt to down the flight was, the insurgents claimed, part of an ongoing series of military and counter-intelligence operations targeting both local and foreign intelligence agents and operatives in Somalia since May 2014. On March 7, another laptop bomb wounded six people at an airport security screening area in the airport of Beledweyne in the Hiraan region bordering Ethiopia, and two other explosive devices, including one installed inside a printer, were defused. Although it did not issue a claim of responsibility, al-Shabaab is the main suspect.

Some have posited that al-Shabaab’s decision to carry out spectacular and attention-grabbing terrorist attacks on major civilian targets such as Nairobi’s Westgate Mall and Garissa University College marked a “shift in focus” for the group from insurgency to terrorism against “soft targets.”[4] This risks over-simplifying matters. Al-Shabaab leaders, rather than “shifting” their focus completely toward terrorism and attacking largely civilian targets, continue to incorporate these types of attacks as an integral part of the group’s evolving military strategy that mixes both high-profile operations against largely civilian targets, guerilla warfare, and surprise mass attacks on vulnerable AMISOM and SFG positions. Large-scale attacks on soft targets such as hotels and restaurants have been a particularly important part of al-Shabaab’s military and political strategies since the beginning of renewed AMISOM-led offensives in 2011. Attacks on soft targets are usually justified through claims that SFG, African Union, or international officials frequent the attacked locations. In some cases, such as the Sahafi Hotel in central Mogadishu, the targeted location was known as a popular gathering place for SFG, AMISOM, and foreign government personnel and contractors.

A Return to Guerilla Warfare

The vast majority of al-Shabaab’s military operations and attacks are not on civilian soft targets. The group focuses instead on carrying out waves of hit-and-run, small-unit attacks on opposing forces as well as carrying out well-planned, coordinated assaults on AMISOM, SFG, and opposing militia bases and positions. This marks not so much an adoption of new tactics by al-Shabaab but rather a return to its 2007-2008 guerilla roots. Rather than continuing to telegraph and then launch mass frontline attacks on AMISOM and SFG positions as al-Shabaab did during the failed and costly “Ramadan Offensive” in Mogadishu in 2010, insurgent leaders publicly announced in August 2011 that they would shift back to guerilla tactics once they withdrew from the capital city. Outnumbered and outgunned by AMISOM and SFG forces aided by U.S. drone and Special Forces strikes, al-Shabaab commanders realized that the asymmetric realities of the conflict required a different approach if they were to prolong the viability of their insurgency and ambitions of governance. This pragmatic approach is explained by the fact that al-Shabaab, despite its transnational rhetoric and affiliation with al-Qa`ida, remains rooted in the Somali milieu and clan politics, despite its leaders’ criticisms of clannism. Put more simply, the group’s number-one ambition is restoring its power base in Somalia, and its strategy serves this aim.

Since 2012 and 2013, al-Shabaab has focused primarily on carrying out lower-risk attacks, many involving IEDs, on selected targets such as AMISOM, SFG, and allied militia checkpoints, camps, and along roads and supply routes. The insurgents have also carried out cross-border attacks inside Kenya, particularly in the Somali-majority North Eastern Province and Lamu County along the Indian Ocean. By carrying out deadly raids, ambushes, and other military and terrorist operations inside Kenya, including the high-profile and politically embarrassing sieges of Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in September 2013 and Garissa University College in April 2015, al-Shabaab leaders have tried to increase domestic pressure on the Kenyan government to withdraw its troops from Somalia by inflicting a high number of casualties and creating domestic instability.

Al-Shabaab’s shift, since 2012, toward favoring lower-risk, guerilla-style operations is evidenced by its public communiqués and operational reports. Since 2012, the most popular types of attacks include IEDs; ambushes on convoys and patrols; hit-and-run attacks, including the throwing of grenades and targeted mortar fire on checkpoints; the use of snipers; and the assassination of individual officials or members of the SFG, AMISOM, or their allied militias. The insurgents have supplemented these mostly small-scale operations, meant to “bleed” and destabilize its enemies, with sophisticated, well-planned, multi-pronged strikes carried out by multiple attackers on high-profile targets such as hotels and restaurants. Al-Shabaab also reports on how it counterattacks attempted advances by AMISOM, SFG, and allied militia forces as well as details on its arrest, trial, and execution of suspected spies. In carrying out this combination of attacks, al-Shabaab leaders hope to prevent AMISOM and the SFG from stabilizing the country, thus enabling the insurgents to continue to play spoiler and one day reclaim territorial control.

In mid-January, after an insurgent special operations unit, the Commander Saleh al-Nabhani Battalion,[5] overran a Kenyan AMISOM camp at El-Adde in Somalia’s Gedo region, killing or capturing as many as 100 Kenyan soldiers,[6] al-Shabaab’s sophisticated media department produced a slick propaganda film about the attack featuring Ahmad Iman Ali, the chief ideologue and leader of al-Shabaab’s Kenyan foreign fighters, aimed directly at a Kenyan audience.[7] He declared that the El-Adde attack was carried out to avenge persecuted Muslims in Kenya and in particular in Eastleigh, the large Somali district in Nairobi. He alleged that Kenyan security forces have conducted kidnappings, rape, and extrajudicial killings and murders of residents, particularly women, and promised further attacks if the Kenyan government continued to ‘oppress’ its Muslim citizens. Repeating a similar media strategy as they previously used with the Ugandan and Burundian publics, al-Shabaab leaders are once again trying to force governments providing troops to AMISOM to withdraw from Somalia by increasing domestic pressure on them.

A Regional Media Strategy

Al-Shabaab’s media department continues to maintain its focus on attracting regional foreign fighters to Somalia from around East Africa, particularly Swahili-speakers, as well as establishing ties with local militant groups in countries such as Kenya and Tanzania. East African foreign fighters have been actively involved in al-Shabaab since it emerged as a fully independent insurgent organization in 2007 following the December 2006 Ethiopian invasion. They have also been featured prominently in the group’s propaganda films, including a 2010 recruitment film subtitled in Swahili, Arabic, and English. The number of Swahili-speaking East Africans in its media operations campaign began to increase dramatically beginning in 2013. This recruitment effort includes media operations messaging that highlights discrimination and claims that Kenyan Muslims are being persecuted by their own government, such as extrajudicial killings allegedly carried out by Kenya’s anti-terrorism police. Al-Shabaab, despite its claim that it places its “Islamic” identity over any other form of identity, has even made appeals in some of its media releases to Somali nationalism and pride, for example by highlighting the persecution of ethnic Somalis inside Kenya and the inclusion by the British colonial rulers of large, historically Somali regions inside the new Kenyan nation-state.

A Push Again for Territory

Despite being pushed out of major urban centers, al-Shabaab continues to control and govern territory. Previously, the group’s regional and local administrations, which included offices and committees for education, missionary propagation (dawa), taxation and revenue collection, the judiciary, and the collection and distribution of religious charity and taxes (zakat and sadaqat), ran a multi-layered form of insurgent governance of the type that its rival, the Islamic State, has expanded upon in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Al-Shabaab continues to administer and govern territory, including through the continued operation of shariacourts, zakat and taxation collection and distribution, clan outreach, and the running of schools, shariainstitutes, and programs providing agricultural, medical, and food aid, though on a notably diminished scale due to its territorial losses since the spring of 2011.

Al-Shabaab’s leadership is keenly interested in seizing back territory, seeking to take advantage of AMISOM and SFG re-deployments and failures by publicly retaking, even if temporarily, villages, towns, and other areas that their enemies’ claim have been fully “liberated.” In early February, for example, al-Shabaab units temporarily reentered parts of the important port city of Merca and issued statements and photographs of the event in a bid to broadcast an image of rejuvenation and strength. Though insurgent forces only captured parts of the city and were forced to withdraw soon after reentering, they achieved a media, if not a tactical, victory through their presence and the raising of their flags in parts of the urban, economic hub. Al-Shabaab also recently temporarily recaptured areas in Afgooye to the south of Mogadishu after launching a surprise offensive.

Abu Ubayda Ahmad Omar, al-Shabaab’s emir and successor to Ahmed “Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr” Godane, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike on September 1, 2014, has publicly announced the group’s continuing desire to expand its territorial control through military and intelligence operations. He also stated that the group continues to carry out of social services, religious and ideological education, and judicial affairs through affiliated sharia courts. Al-Shabaab officials and affiliated as well as pro-insurgent media outlets also continue to publicize the insurgent group’s exercise of governing authority and its attempt to monopolize violence as a means of both social control and revenue extraction. This media operations effort includes the dissemination of messages and interviews with al-Shabaab officials, local clan elders, and residents, the announcement of the recapture of territory, reports on insurgent social services, and the work of its various offices, in particular the judiciary.

Competition from the Islamic State

Al-Shabaab’s newest domestic challenge is from disgruntled members attracted to the clarion call of the Islamic State for jihadi groups to affiliate with its “caliphate.”[8] Al-Shabaab experienced a period of significant internal discord between 2012 and 2013 when a number of prominent leaders and foreign fighters from within its ranks began criticizing Godane and his allies publicly.[9] Despite the public nature and embarrassment caused, Godane triumphed, and most of the organization’s regional governors, officials, and commanders remained loyal. However, the rapid rise of the Islamic State coupled with the death of Godane has presented al-Shabaab’s current leadership with major, new challenges to its continued unity and strength.

The multi-tiered media apparatus of the Islamic State, in a bid to encourage defections from al-Shabaab and attract new Somali recruits to its own ranks, has produced a number of propaganda films aimed primarily at Somali audiences. The first was released in late May 2015 and featured four Somali foreign fighters and one Ethiopian foreign fighter in Iraq who urge Somalis to join the “caliphate upon the Prophet [Muhammad’s] methodology,” referring to the Islamic State, which they claim was the only organization “truly” avenging their humiliation and oppression at the hands of the “Ethiopian Christians.” This initial propaganda shot at al-Shabaab has been followed by a slate of releases between early October 2015 and January 2016 featuring Islamic State fighters, both Somali and non-Somali, who are stationed in different locations, including Syria, Libya, and Yemen. In these films, the fighters call on Somalis generally and al-Shabaab members specifically to join the Islamic State, the banners of the “caliphate,” and the only “true defenders of Islam.” This official Islamic State media output has been aided by similar calls from pro-Islamic State jihadi media outlets in the form of essays and films produced in Somali, Arabic, and English.[10]

The Islamic State and pro-Islamic State recruitment pitches have thus far met with limited success on the ground in Somalia and have elicited strong responses from al-Shabaab’s leadership. The most high-profile defection, however, from the latter to the former was that of Abd al-Qadir Mu’min, a prominent al-Shabaab preacher and religious authority previously based in the Golis Mountains in northern Somalia, along with an unknown number of rank-and-file fighters in late October 2015. A frequent speaker at al-Shabaab’s public events, including its official celebration in the Lower Shabelle region in February 2012 to mark its formal affiliation with al-Qa`ida Central, Mu’min is symbolically important to the group and has significant scholarly credentials, for example giving a lengthy series of oral exegesis of the Qur’an. Small groups of other disgruntled fighters and commanders have also defected since the autumn of 2015, but most have either reportedly had to flee the country for Islamic State strongholds such as Libya or been arrested, killed, or otherwise suppressed by al-Shabaab’s internal security network.[11] Al-Shabaab’s official spokesman, Ali Rage (Ali Dheere), issued a lengthy and stern warning at a press conference in early November 2015 that attempts to “divide the Muslims and the mujahidin” in Somalia will not be tolerated.[12] Al-Shabaab’s emir, Abu Ubayda, who previously served as a key aide to Godane and as al-Shabaab’s governor of the Bay and Bakool region, was reportedly involved in overseeing the crackdown on internal dissidents by al-Shabaab’s intelligence and security unit, Amniyat, and he has maintained close ties to other senior al-Shabaab leaders, which has likely strengthened his hand against pro-Islamic State elements. The insurgents’ regional affiliates and allies, including the Kenyan Al-Muhajiroun group, which seems to be connected to al-Shabaab through an affiliation with Ahmad Iman Ali (the leader of al-Shabaab in Kenya), have also remained loyal, calling for unity and condemning defections such as Mu’min’s.

Pro-Islamic State defectors from al-Shabaab seem to be particularly strong in the northern Somali autonomous region of Puntland, where Mu’min was previously based, and clashes have erupted there between al-Shabaab forces and defectors. However, there have also reportedly been defections and arrests of defectors, both local Somalis and foreign fighters, by al-Shabaab’s Amniyatnetwork in southern Somalia, including in the Lower and Middle Juba and Lower Shabelle regions. The Islamic State has also attracted Somali-American youth from Minnesota to fight in Syria and Iraq, youth who otherwise may have been drawn to al-Shabaab. The battle between al-Shabaab and the Islamic State is being fought not only on the ground inside Somalia but also online as supporters of both groups engage in fierce debates and mutual exchanges of insults and allegations.[13]

On April 15, the Islamic State upped the ante by releasing a video showing a dozen or so masked fighters performing military maneuvers in a barren, rural area of Somalia as part of the “Military Camp of Shaykh Abu Nu’man,” probably named after the former al-Shabaab commander Abu Nu’man al-Yentari, who was killed by the Amniyat shortly after pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with a small group of his fighters in the autumn of 2015. Some of the fighters, speaking in Somali, urge their audience to join the Islamic State. At the end of the nearly 17-minute video, the small group of fighters is addressed by an individual who appears to be ‘Abd al-Qadir Mu’min, the prominent al-Shabaab preacher who pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi in October 2015. Mu’min had not been seen or heard from since a poor-quality audio recording of his bay`a was released last fall.

Though the Islamic State’s ideology, or aspects of it, are attractive to some members of al-Shabaab, the emergence of such a competitor also provides those disgruntled members a way to challenge the status quo on the ground in Somalia within the anti-SFG insurgency in a challenge to al-Shabaab’s dominance. However, the Islamic State faces an uphill battle if it wants to establish a strong foothold in Somalia. Domestically, the country has historically proven to be a difficult operating space for non-Somali militants, who are often bewildered by the complexities of local clan politics and find that many of its Somali allies are unreliable at best, extorting or otherwise siphoning money away from foreign groups while providing little in the way of local support. This was the case in the 1990s when al-Qa`ida was seeking to enter the country. Ultimately the group’s leadership decided that other regions in the Horn of Africa, particularly areas suffering from weak governance such as the Swahili Coast of Kenya, were more conducive arenas for its operations. Al-Shabaab’s leadership is primarily concerned with establishing an insurgent state inside Somalia, a goal that requires support from local Somali actors and segments of society, the same supporters who are likely to be suspicious and hostile to the largely foreign Islamic State. If the Somali insurgent group was to pledge allegiance to the latter, it would likely lose the already diminishing domestic support that it still possesses and could much more easily be branded by its enemies as a foreign tool. This, in addition to maintaining its own monopoly on anti-government violence and insurgent rule and loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri, is likely one of factors at play in al-Shabaab leaders’ decision to resist so far calls from the Islamic State to join its ranks.[14]

Conclusion

Al-Shabaab, in the face of significant territorial losses and military and economic pressure, has proven to be remarkably resilient. The Somali insurgent group has survived leadership decapitation at multiple levels, including the killing of its emir, Godane, in September 2014 and numerous other senior leaders and field commanders since 2007, thanks to robust and capable senior and regional leadership networks.

Al-Shabaab is also able to absorb significant military losses and setbacks, such as a series of deadly airstrikes by the U.S. military on March 6 on the “Raso” insurgent training camp where insurgent fighters were allegedly amassing in preparation for a major attack.[15] The Pentagon claims it killed 150 insurgents and a local Somali government official has claimed it killed at least 200. Al-Shabab’s military spokesman, Abd al-Aziz Abu Mus’ab, denied the Pentagon’s claims, saying that the insurgent group does not gather in such large numbers as a security precaution against precisely such a catastrophic airstrike.[16] Although the details of the attack planning at the Raso camp are unclear, it is possible that the insurgents had grown overly bold following the success of their attack on AMISOM’s El-Adde base. This would represent a rare departure from the cautious battlefield strategy that has allowed the group to survive and rebound.

Al-Shabaab’s media capabilities, though impacted by the group’s on-the-ground setbacks, remain strong and multi-faceted. In addition to its video, audio, and written releases, the insurgent group also maintains local media capabilities within Somalia, including domestic radio broadcasts. It is also capable of responding quickly, within a matter of days, to counter claims by the SFG, AMISOM, or the U.S. government, as it did regarding the Raso airstrikes.

Finally, al-Shabaab leadership has successfully navigated, thus far, dangerous periods of internal discord and bitter infighting. It has survived and ultimately quashed internal challenges from disgruntled foreign fighters such as Omar Hammami as well as dissident founding leaders such as Mukhtar Robow, Ibrahim al-Afghani, and Mu’allim Burhan. Despite the public criticisms of Godane from senior figures such as these, the majority of al-Shabaab’s regional governors and officials remained loyal to him. The current challenge posed by the Islamic State and its Somali sympathizers has also been limited thanks to the control capability of the Amniyat and the strength of the ties between the group’s emir and its administrative and regional leaders.

Though the threat of further defections to pro-Islamic State groups remains high, al-Shabaab will likely continue to be able to prevent mass defections thanks to its resilience in Somalia and East Africa and the steady decline of the Islamic State’s fortunes, and thus its appeal to jihadis both inside and outside of Somalia. U.S. military strikes on al-Shabaab, such as the recent reported killing of Hassan Ali Dhoore, a member of the Amniyatand key operational planner involved in organizing several major insurgent attacks on soft targets inside Mogadishu in 2014 and 2015, will continue to weaken the organization but are unlikely to deal it a fatal blow. Despite suffering casualties and in spite of the targeted killings of individual commanders, al-Shabaab will continue to benefit from the weakness of the SFG, which still relies on thousands of AMISOM troops as a bulwark against the insurgents, forces supplied by regional powers with often divergent interests inside Somalia.