AL-SHABAAB DOWN BUT NOT OUT

The Somalia-based Islamist group known as al-Shabaab will emerge stronger and more unified after its terrorist attack in Nairobi, and could provide other extreme groups with an example to follow, counter-insurgency analysts warned.

Al-Shabaab’s message is that it is “down but not out” — that it is “losing territory but not people”, said David Kilcullen, a former adviser to David Petraeus, then US commander in Iraq. The purpose of the mall attack was to send Kenyans a message — it was the consequence of sending troops to Somalia, said Kilcullen, during his book launch, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla.

He suggested that alShabaab wanted to provoke overreaction by the Kenyan security forces and gain more support, especially in Eastleigh, the eastern district of Nairobi where most of the 250,000 Somalis in the Kenyan capital live.

Kilcullen said al-Shabaab, which announced last year that it had allied itself with al Qaeda, was supported by about 5,000 fighters, many of them Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans, but also that there were about 40 westerners, most of whom were American with a few British. British security sources estimate that 50 or so Britons have joined al-Shabaab in Somalia. But that figure is believed to have fallen. British counterintelligence officials say that Syria is now the “jihadist destination of choice”.