which of the following insurgency elements do the actual fighting and provide security?

“The unifying idea of al-Shabab is opposition to the Western-backed government.” “People who are still calling themselves al-Shabab are more and more committed to the idea of sharia law,” she told CFR. Bronwyn Bruton, an expert on al-Shabab at the Atlantic Council, says hard-liners within the group have gained prominence in recent years. A major cleavage among the group’s leaders divides those known as nationalists, who largely seek to oust the central government, from militants with transnational aims. Many analysts say different factions within the group have different objectives, though al-Shabab as a whole continues to pursue its broad aim of establishing an Islamic state in Somalia. Radicalization and Extremism What are its objectives? According to a 2020 report, the group regularly forces civilians, including women and children, to enter its ranks other recruits join voluntarily, often for financial reasons. Al-Shabab’s leadership declared allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012.Įstimates of al-Shabab’s membership range between five thousand and ten thousand. The State Department designated al-Shabab a foreign terrorist organization in February 2008. Al-Shabab leaders praised the terrorist network and condemned what they characterized as U.S. The group’s ties to al-Qaeda emerged during this period. New Islamist-nationalist fighters swelled al-Shabab’s ranks from around four hundred into the thousands between 20. Al-Shabab and the ICU wrested control of the capital in June 2006, a victory that stoked fears in neighboring Ethiopia of spillover jihadi violence. The hard-liners eventually joined forces with an alliance of sharia courts known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and served as its youth militia. In the early 2000s, a rift developed between AIAI’s old guard, which had decided to create a political front, and younger members, who sought the establishment of a “Greater Somalia” under fundamentalist Islamic rule. AIAI’s core was a band of Middle East–educated Somali extremists that was partly funded and armed by al-Qaeda’s chief, Osama bin Laden.

Analysts say the forerunner of al-Shabab, and the incubator for many of its leaders, was al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI, or “Unity of Islam”), a militant Salafi group that peaked in the 1990s, after the fall of Said Barre’s 1969–1991 regime and the outbreak of civil war.

One of the most impoverished countries in the world, Somalia has seen militant groups come and go in its decades of political upheaval.

Securing the Sochi Olympics: Three Things to Know

Which of the following insurgency elements do the actual fighting and provide security?