Kenya’s Fourth Generation War with Al Shabaab

The war between Al Shabaab Islamists and the conventional militaries of Kenya, Somalia, and the African Union is a fourth generation war.  It is part conventional, part terrorism, and part propaganda.  It is also primarily religious though it has political trappings.  Why such a distinction?  The religious goals and the violent goals will remain whether the political goals are ever met or not.  The media reports raids on Al Shabaab fighters as military operations.  Al Shabaab attacks against Kenyan civilians are reported as terrorist attacks.  However, the scope and dimension of the conflict also plays out in other forms such as legal, cultural, and religious.

The language of ‘generational warfare’ allows military strategists to have an approach for new categories as new dimensions to the nature of violent conflicts evolve.  Terrorism, political protest, information warfare, and ideology are some of the categories that emerge in the blurry lines between fourth and fifth generational warfare.  In an extensive breakdown of the present and future centers of gravity in warfare, Lt. Col. Stanton Coerr in the Marine Corp Gazette penned back in 2009 that radical Islam would be the unifying force for fifth generation warfare violence.  As the Islamist’s war plays out in Kenya, analysts and the media alike shouldn’t lose site of the fact that the broad context is still in the simplest category, a war.  Violence and killing will be countered.

In 2012, Aboud Rogo Mohammed was killed in a drive by shooting.  Rogo was a major figure in the Muslim community, sanctioned by the UN for supporting Al Qaeda militants, and the lead recruiter of Kenyan youth for Islamist violence whether for Al Shabaab or Al Qaeda.   Rogo was the primary ideological leader of Kenya’s al-Hijra group, or the Muslim Youth Centre, which is a close ally of al-Shabaab.   Kenya’s police don’t have a legal framework to identify those like Rogo as legitimate military targets and it is believed by his followers that his assassination was an extra-judicial killing.

In fact, Rogo’s successor Abubaker Shariff Ahmed (who went by the name Makaburi meaning ‘grave digger’) argued that Kenyan civilians are legitimate military targets and promoted the recruitment of Kenyan youth to Shabaab and Al Qaeda as both legitimate military activity and proper Islamic practice.  Makaburi believed there is no ‘moderate Islam’ and truly moderate clerics have been assassinated for preaching against violence in Kenya by Al Shabaab.  Makaburi met a similar fate to Rogo in April 2014.  The old Cold War term, ‘dupe’, best describes journalists whom, today, headline stories of this type as ‘death squads of a shadow war.’  Such characterizations are understandable but insufficient in context.

Recent, violence has broken out in Mombassa as police pursue a policy of raiding the late Rogo’s mosques, calling them crime scenes as the mosques serve to hide weapon caches.  One person was shot while trying to throw a grenade at the police.  In retaliation, mobs of youth committed random acts of murder with machetes.

On Saturday, November 22, Al Shabaab soldiers hijacked a bus in the province of Mandera, Kenya near the border of Somalia.  Al Shabaab claims the bus attack was retaliation for the crack down on the mosque recruiting centers.  All non-Muslims passengers were shot in the head.  Like the Westgate Mall attack, where those who could recite the Koran or name Mohammad’s niece were spared, this action caries an ideological and religious message and communicates religious intent.  In response to the Mandera attack, civilians in the region are fleeing to a local air base and demanding that the government evacuate civil servants.  Kenyans in Nairobi are protesting in the street for improved security.

In June, attacks on the town of Mpeketoni and Mporomooko on the eastern coast killed 60 people.  In Likoni, terrorists raided a church and killed six people.  They left a bullet lodged in the head of two-year-old baby.  Despite such a season of violence against civilians in Kenya, the western media consistently runs headlines on the heavy handedness of Kenya security forces and often gives ink and microphones to all who either defend al Shabaab or criticize police and military action so long as they identify as human rights activists.  Such intensity of violence in their own communities will likely never allow the Kenyan government to satisfy western media in its security practices.  This will intern serve Al Shabaab’s media apparatus.  Al Shabaab’s human rights dupes will use the legal system to limit tactical options for security forces.  Kenya’s efforts to strive for rule of law will suffer for trying to establish security in the midst of a fourth generation war.