Al Shabaab Targets Political Conference, Reminder of Need for Counter-Messaging

On June 18, the Somalian army foiled a suicide bomb plot in the central town of Adado. The plot was claimed by Al Shabaab, whose men were driving a car laden with bombs in an attempt to attack a conference. The conference is trying to create a constitution for a new state in the Galguduud and Mudug regions in central Somalia.

Four of the attackers were killed after security forces opened fire while attempting to enter the residential compound where the conference delegates were being held . Three Somali soldiers were killed in the ensuing fire fight.

The conference, attended by over 400 regional leaders and government officials, started in mid-April. The attack came on the first day of Ramadan, a time when Al Shabaab typically increases its activity. The fighters believe that if they die in battle while fasting during the holiday, they will enter “heaven without even taking their shoes off.”

Al Shabaab is an Al Qaeda-affiliated group fighting against the UN-backed Somalian government and carrying out attacks in Kenya. It formed as an extension of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia when the ICU was defeated by the Somali and Ethiopian governments. In Arabic, its name means “The Youth” and it has somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 fighters. It has been pushed out of many cities that it once held, and it imposes Sharia law in the mostly southern, rural territories it still controls. Former leader Ahmed Abdi Godane officially “pledged obedience” to Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2012, but some reports also link the group to Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in the Sahara desert.

Although most of Al Shabaab’s attacks are in Somalia, its scope extends beyond just a local focus. It is linked to Al Qaeda, an international organization, and it has conducted large attacks in countries outside of Somalia. In April 2015, gunmen killed nearly 150 Christian students at Garissa University College in Kenya. In June 2014, it attacked a United Nations compound in Mogadishu and killed 22 people. In 2013, it attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than 60 people. It has since called for similar attacks on the Mall of America in Minnesota, where a large Somali population resides. Many Somali immigrants from Minneapolis have gone to Somalia to fight for Al Shabaab, leading to fears that an Al Shabaab sympathizer will carry out an attack in the area.

Al Shabaab’s strategic use of the media to recruit foreign fighters demonstrates the importance of fighting terrorist organizations’ media capabilities in addition to fighting them militarily. Its media wing, the al Kata’ib Foundation, runs numerous websites that frame Al Shabaab’s struggle in Somalia as part of the larger conflict between Al Qaeda and the West. Al Qaeda’s online presence generally aims to promote lone-wolf terrorism in the West, and it has had major successes (for example, the Boston Marathon Bombing). Similarly, Al Shabaab’s messages have become more focused on destroying the West and Western institutions beyond Somalia’s borders.

As terrorist organizations become more active and self-promoting on social media, the West must keep up and become just as self-promoting. As quickly as terrorist-run websites and social media accounts are shut down, new ones spring up promoting jihadist ideology. However, the internet can also be effectively used to support counterterrorism.

Following the infamous January attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in France, the social media campaign #JeSuisCharlie quickly sprung up to show solidarity with the victims and to defend the concept of free speech. The campaign not only quickly raised awareness of the shooting, but also showed internet users that people around the world condemned the violence and identified with the victims’ rights. Its success suggests that similar media campaigns responding to attacks can play a role in the war of ideas.