Mall attack reveals strong Al-Shabab

Al-Shabab’s bloody siege of a mall in Kenya confirms the Somali group’s successful transformation from a guerrilla army into a leaner organization focused on terrorist attacks, analysts said.
The Sept. 21 raid and ensuing hostage crisis that killed at least 67 people was the most spectacular in the group’s seven years of existence.
The group’s supremo Ahmed Abdi Godane on Wednesday described the carnage at the upscale mall in which several foreigners and some of the Kenyan president’s relatives died as a “historic achievement”.
The movement’s co-founder warned of more bloodshed if Kenya failed to withdraw the troops that it sent in two years ago who are now part of the African Union force (AMISOM) propping up the pro-Western Somali government. The Shabab’s raid on a civilian target such as a mall packed with families in neighboring Kenya was seen by some as a sign of the group’s weakness on the home front but other analysts said it has never been more effective.
“When it abandoned fixed positions in Mogadishu two years ago... the Shabab decided it should no longer seek to confront AMISOM head-on. It decided to become a terrorist organization,” said a Western expert whose research focuses on Al-Shabab, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
He said Al-Shabab knew they couldn’t afford a fully-fledged conventional war against AMISOM and were also confident that government forces were not even close to becoming a credible Somali alternative.
Cedric Barnes, Horn of Africa project director at the ICG think tank, said the attack was evidence of the group’s growing strength.
Over the past six months, Al-Shabab carried out devastating attacks in Mogadishu targeting the main courthouse, a UN compound and Turkish interests, as well as an ambush on the president’s convoy. And in January the group fought off a hostage-rescue attempt by French commandos.
“It’s been around one ‘complex’ attack a month lately, it’s a pace we’ve never seen before,” said the anonymous Western analyst.
A UN security report echoed witness accounts suggesting that most of the gunmen who stormed the upscale mall were ethnic Somalis, including several Kenyans, who may belong to an outfit calling itself Hijra.
Barnes said Hijra was “a convenient name for long-standing networks in East Africa” that can be tapped into by Al-Shabab.
Godane has recently sidelined commanders who were also Somali tribal leaders to beef up the Amniyat (secret service), which he uses as a kind of Praetorian Guard that answers only to him.

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