Al-Shabaab Attack on Peacekeepers Cannot Hide Groups' Disarray

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The Somali Islamist militant organization al-Shabaab carried out one of its most lethal attacks in years on September 1, when it bombed a Ugandan military base in the Janale district of the lower Shabele region, southwest of the capital Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab claimed that the attack killed around 50 Ugandan soldiers, who are in the country as part of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission, although official AU statements have not announced the casualty toll (AU, September 1). The attack began when a suicide bomber drove an explosive-packed car into the base's entrance, after which a large number of other militants stormed the facility (Horseed Media, September 1). A statement issued by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said that the Ugandan troops "undertook a tactical withdrawal" and later regained control over the base (AMISOM, September 1). Following the attack, AMISON troops, backed by helicopters, undertook searches in the region to locate both missing troops and any of the al-Shabaab attackers (Horseed Media, September 2). Following the attack, security was strengthened in the capital, particularly at the presidential palace (Horseed Media, September 2).

The attack underlines that al-Shabaab remains capable of conducting occasional devastating attacks in Somalia, as well as in neighboring countries like Kenya. However, there is also a risk of reading too much into the heavy casualties apparently inflicted by the latest attack, which seems more likely to indicate that while the group remains capable of mounting deadly attacks when circumstances permit, it is not necessarily making a longer-term comeback. In addition, such high-profile attacks are now relatively rare, and the group's attacks are more commonly conducted against soft targets as shown, for instance, by the group's killing of an off-duty female government official on the evening of August 29, near her home in Mogadishu (Horseed Media, August 30). The attack also does not materially alter the fact al-Shabaab currently controls only limited amounts of Somalia, having been driven out of all its major urban centers in the country during the last several years. Moreover, AMISON and its Somali and international partners continue to undertake projects intended to build up the capacity of the Somali security services, which should in time reduce al-Shabaab's operational freedom further. For instance, on August 22, AMISOM announced the training of 200 additional Somali police who will be deployed to towns in the country's southwest, which largely lacks any formal law enforcement presence (AMISOM, August 22). In other regions, AMISOM has launched community policing initiatives, although these are likely to take time to bear fruit (AMISOM, August, 30).

At the same time, however, abuses committed by AU troops in Somalia continue to stir popular resentment of foreign forces and to potential create new support for al-Shabaab. For instance, on August 21, AMISOM publicly acknowledged that its forces had killed seven civilians in an incident in the port town of Marka on July 21 (Horseed Media, August 21). In the incident, AMISOM troops had stormed a wedding party, separated the men from the women and then shot dead the men. AMISOM originally denied that the incident had occurred, but was later forced to back down amid growing evidence of its troops' actions. Separately, Somali elders in El-Qooxoole, in Galgaduud region in central Somalia, recently accused Ethiopian troops of killing four local teachers and 11 tribal elders, although the Ethiopian government has not yet acknowledged this accusation (Dalsan Radio [Mogadishu], September 1). Such abuses threaten to undermine the gains made against al-Shabaab, which, in Somalia at least, increasingly resembles a degraded insurgent group kept continuously on the back foot, rather than the formidable political and military machine that it was in former years.