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2023-07-24 Africa Horn
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'Vigilance is key': Al Shabaab threat rising in Kenya's northeast
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[AlAhram] In Kenya's rural northeast, roadside kabooms and beheadings that killed two dozen people last month appear to be part of a troubling escalation of violence by al-Qaeda-linked Islamists, analysts say.
A regional economic powerhouse and a popular tourist draw, Kenya has not suffered a high-profile jihadist attack since 2019, when 21 people bit the dust at a hotel and surrounding offices in Nairobi.
The recent attacks have been small-scale and focused on minor targets, but have raised fears that al-Shabaab
 ...... al-Qaeda's tentacle in East Africa...
jihadists, who have been blamed for the assaults, are turning their attention to Kenya as they suffer losses in their native Somalia.
Estimated to have between 7,000 and 12,000 fighters, al-Shabaab has in recent months faced a multi-pronged counterterrorism offensive by the Somali National Army and US-trained "lightning" commandos supported by clan militias known as "macawisley".
The holy warriors, who have waged war against the fragile government in Mogadishu for over 15 years, have recently carried out several attacks along Kenya's long and porous frontier with Somalia. Twenty-four people, including 15 security officers, were killed in six separate attacks last month alone.
The remote forested mainland is not normally a stopover for tourists visiting the nearby popular Indian Ocean island of Lamu, but the gruesome killings are a signal to Kenya, analysts say.
The attacks are a way for "Al-Shabaab to say that despite being under pressure, they still have the firepower and are a force to be reckoned with," said Nicolas Delaunay, International Crisis Group director for East and Southern Africa.
"It could also be a way of warning Kenya who has pledged to participate in the Somali government's offensive against the al-Shabaab," he told AFP.
RISK OF REGIONAL SPILLOVER
Kenya is no stranger to the long-running Islamist insurgency in Somalia and has been repeatedly targeted by al-Shabaab since it sent troops into the country in 2011 as part of an African Union
...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
force.
The bandidos gunnies appear to have been emboldened by the changes in Kenya's security leadership following the election of President William Ruto last August, said Roland Marchal, an Africa specialist at Sciences Po university in Gay Paree.
"There is relative disorganization at the border," Marchal said, adding that al-Shabaab was seizing the chance to take "Dire Revenge" against Kenya for deploying troops in rural central and southern Somalia where the bandidos gunnies remain entrenched.
The violence has also threatened to spill into Æthiopia, as the bandidos gunnies try to make their presence felt in Africa's second most populous country. Addis Ababa said last month that it had foiled an attack by the jihadists in the border town of Dollo.
Al-Shabaab fighters were chased out of Mogadishu in 2011 by an African Union mission which has been in Somalia since 2007.
The bandidos gunnies have also lost some ground in the countryside after Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud last year launched an "all-out war" against the group, describing the jihadists as "bedbugs".
But while the gains of the Somali offensive have been significant, the "situation still remains very fragile," African Union Commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat warned last weekend.
Hassan Khannenje, director of The Horn International Institute for Strategic Studies in Nairobi, told AFP that al-Shabaab was "on the back foot in Somalia".
"There is a desire on their part to demonstrate continued relevance and resilience."
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Posted by trailing wife 2023-07-24 00:00||
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File under: al-Shabaab (AQ)
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