Get The Elliott School Advantage
Watch our video and learn the advantages of an Elliott School education.
Watch Video
Lectures & Speeches
Horn of Africa Conference - VII
Faith, Citizenship, Democracy and Peace in the Horn of Africa
City Hall, Lund, Sweden
17-19 October 2008
Implications of Terrorism and Counterterrorism in the Horn of Africa
David H. Shinn
Adjunct Professor
Elliott School of International Affairs
The George Washington University
The fact that I am speaking on terrorism before this audience gives it more importance in a relative sense than it deserves. The sponsors asked me to address the subject and I expressed a willingness to do so. But I want to be very clear about its relative importance to other critical issues in the region. There are many challenges in the Horn of Africa that are far more important than international or domestic terrorism. Until governments in the Horn of Africa and their foreign supporters, including the United States, pay greater attention to these more pressing problems, political stability and quality of life for people in the Horn will not improve. Political marginalization, social and economic inequality, endemic poverty, pervasive corruption, poor governance, extremist ideology, and lack of tolerance are all greater threats than terrorism to political stability and economic progress in the Horn of Africa. In fact, these problems aid and abet terrorism. It is the responsibility of the governments in the Horn of Africa and their international partners to focus their efforts on solving these critical challenges. For the purposes of this discussion, I include East Africa as part of the region.
International versus Domestic Terrorism
Let me put the issue of terrorism and counterterrorism into its proper perspective. There is no universally accepted agreement on the definition of terrorism. The United States government defines "international terrorism" as involving citizens or the territory of more than one country. It defines "terrorism" as premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents. These definitions of international terrorism and just plain terrorism are significant when we look at the situation in East Africa and the Horn.
The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the Horn of Africa do not constitute international terrorism. They are, rather, acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by groups such as the Janjaweed in Sudan, the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda, and, more recently, al-Shabaab in Somalia. Occasionally, terrorist acts carried out by followers who claim to represent one of these organizations qualify as international terrorism. In addition, indiscriminate attacks against non-combatant targets by governmental armies are seen by many in the region as acts of terrorism, although they do not fit the US government's definition of terrorism. The point I want to emphasize, however, is the need to distinguish between domestic terrorism, which has become fairly common in East Africa and the Horn, and the much less frequent international terrorism. The 1998 al-Qaeda bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and the assassination of foreign journalists and non-governmental organization staff in Somalia, some of the attacks allegedly carried out by al-Shabaab followers, are examples of international terrorism. My remarks will focus on the implications of international terrorism that have tended to drive American policy in the region since the 1998 embassy bombings and the attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001.
Early International Terrorist Activity in the Region
First, I want to review briefly early international terrorist activity in the region. After seizing power in Sudan in 1989, the National Islamic Front and its allies in the military invited Osama bin Laden to establish a presence in the country. Between late 1989 and late 1991, al-Qaeda moved most of its best trained and experienced fighters, numbering 1,000 to 1,500, to Sudan. Although bin Laden retained an extensive infrastructure in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he joined his followers in Sudan late in 1991. Most outsiders initially thought bin Laden was a legitimate businessman in Sudan. It became apparent, however, that he also created terrorist training facilities and a confederation of terrorist organizations throughout the Muslim world. Sudan became increasingly concerned, however, about the poor state of its relations with the U.S. and accepted an American request in the spring of 1996 to force bin Laden and his followers out of Sudan. Although bin Laden did not cut all of his ties with Sudan in 1996, his relations with the government grew increasingly strained as a result of internal divisions among the Sudanese leadership. Even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States, Sudan signaled Washington that it was ready to cooperate on counterterrorism.
Ethiopia has experienced relatively little international terrorist activity but continues to be subject to terrorist attacks aimed at influencing the domestic political situation. There were several international attacks in the mid-1990s perpetrated by al-Ittihad al-Islamiyya based in neighboring Somalia. The attacks stopped with the demise of the Somali organization. The Egyptian terrorist group Gama'at al-Islamiyya, with the help of the Sudanese government, tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to Addis Ababa in 1995. The Sudan-based Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement carried out a few attacks inside Eritrea in the 1990s. Once Ethiopia and Eritrea normalized relations with Sudan in the late 1990s, Sudanese support for these terrorist groups ended.
Al-Qaeda played a role in the attacks on American and United Nations forces in Somalia during the humanitarian intervention that began late in 1992. There is considerable debate, however, concerning the significance of al-Qaeda's role. A number of al-Qaeda documents have fallen into the hands of American intelligence. They have been declassified and released to the public. They clearly show that Africa regional al-Qaeda leader Abu Hafs made multiple trips to Somalia from the al-Qaeda base in Khartoum beginning in 1992. The first al-Qaeda operatives left Pakistan for Somalia early in 1993. They worked closely with al-Ittihad, established three training camps, and apparently took orders from the al-Qaeda headquarters in Khartoum. Although the experts on this early al-Qaeda engagement in Somalia are not in agreement, the weight of the evidence suggests that al-Qaeda was not very successful in co-opting Somalis.
The Harmony Project at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which analyzed all of the seized al-Qaeda documents, concluded that al-Qaeda thought Somalis would enthusiastically join its ranks. In fact, al-Qaeda underestimated the cost of operating in Somalia. Al-Qaeda constantly experienced extortion from Somali clans and unanticipated losses when bandits attacked their convoys. Al-Qaeda overestimated the degree to which Somalis would become jihadis, especially if there was no financial incentive. Many Somali clan leaders wanted the U.S. and United Nations force to leave Somalia, but their first goal was the security of their clan against others. Al-Qaeda failed to understand the importance of traditional Sufi doctrine in Somali Islam and the degree of Somali attachment to clans and sub-clans. Al-Qaeda largely failed to overcome local loyalties although it did buy its way into a few sub-sub clans and managed to recruit a number of young Somalis who were attracted to the call for jihad. Some of these early recruits probably form the nucleus of today's Somali jihadis. Nevertheless, the Harmony Project found that the jihadi foreigners encountered more adversity than success.
Al-Qaeda has had cells in Kenya since Wadih el-Hage, who had served as bin Laden's personal secretary and had U.S. citizenship through marriage, arrived in Nairobi to run the al-Qaeda operation in 1994. Eventually arrested by the FBI, he was convicted in the United States on terrorism charges in 2001. Abu Hafs and other al-Qaeda operatives began planning in 1994 for the 1998 embassy bombings. Kenya has been ground zero for international terrorist attacks. Al-Qaeda bombed the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel north of Mombasa in 2002 and, in the same attack, tried but failed to shoot down an Israeli passenger plane with two SA-7 missiles. Kenyan and international authorities have prevented other international terrorist attacks, including one on the new U.S. embassy in Nairobi.
Al-Qaeda began activities in Tanzania in 1993 by using diamonds, tanzanite, and rubies as a resource to make al-Qaeda cells in East Africa financially self-sufficient. Authorities captured two al-Qaeda operatives from Zanzibar who took part in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam. One has been convicted in a U.S. court and is serving a life term in Colorado. The other acknowledged that he joined al-Qaeda but insisted he did not knowingly engage in a terrorist act.
In 1994, al-Qaeda supported the obscure Salafi Foundation of Uganda, which eventually evolved into an anti-Uganda government group known as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Al-Qaeda helped set up training camps for the ADF, which operated out of the eastern Congo. The ADF sporadically appears as a meaningful organization and then disappears. In 1998 Ugandan authorities detained 20 suspects linked to al-Qaeda who were believed to be planning an attack against the U.S. embassy in Kampala.
Somalia and Al-Shabaab
Turning to the current situation, the role of al-Shabaab in Somalia has received a great deal of attention in the past couple of years. The best open source analysis of al-Shabaab as an organization appeared in the 1 September 2008 Jane's Intelligence Review. It was written by Stig Jarle Hansen, senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research. He concluded that al-Shabaab is directed by a small group of Afghanistan veterans, former members of al-Ittihad al-Islamiyya, and Somali disapora ideologues. Al-Shabaab's most prominent ideologue, according to Hansen, is Sheikh Fuad Muhammad Qalaf, a former imam from the now closed Rinkeby Mosque in Sweden. Al-Shabaab identified its principal leader in a November 2007 internet statement as Sheikh Mukhtar Abu Zubair, although there is some confusion about the background of this individual.
Hansen explained that al-Shabaab leaders, at least until recently, have denied any formal link to al-Qaeda, but have expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden and other jihadists. While Hansen is not certain what role is being played by the small number of foreign al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia, he said al-Shabaab is clearly influenced by al-Qaeda. Al-Shabaab leaders see the Somali conflict as part of a global war between the West and Islam. At the same time, he argued that most al-Shabaab rank and file fighters are motivated by a desire to force the Ethiopians out of Somalia and to have sharia courts enforce law and order. He added that al-Shabaab's hard-line ideology led to its break in 2007 with the Union of Islamic Courts and both subsequent factions of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).
Policy differences between the Union of Islamic Courts and al-Shabaab have increased in recent months. Al-Shabaab strongly opposed efforts by the Djibouti faction of the ARS, working with the Transitional Federal Government, to create a government of national unity in Somalia. The Union of Islamic Courts issued a statement in mid-September calling on al-Shabaab to abandon its attacks on aircraft that use Mogadishu airport, arguing that service in and out of the airport is needed to help sustain Somalis in the capital. There are disagreements between leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts and the group that recently seized power in Kismayu and claims to be linked to al-Shabaab. Finally, there seem to be different positions concerning the recent attacks on Ugandan troops who are serving in Mogadishu as African Union peacekeepers. A group calling itself the Ras Kamboni fighters took credit for one of the attacks. According to Radio HornAfrik, a spokesperson for the Union of Islamic Courts said the Ras Kamboni group was once under the Courts but apparently had become independent. The Court spokesperson then took credit for the attack on the Ugandans.
Ken Menkhaus, a professor at Davidson College and an American who has been following developments in Somalia for many years, made some important comments about al-Shabaab in a September 2008 paper entitled Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare. After al-Shabaab severed its links with the Union of Islamic Courts and the ARS, Menkhaus explained that jihadist cells in Mogadishu linked to al-Shabaab have engaged in a campaign of threats and alleged assassinations against Somalis who worked for western aid agencies or those who collaborated with United Nations agencies and western NGOs. Menkhaus emphasized, however, that not all al-Shabaab members embraced this policy. Al-Shabaab's spokesperson, Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, condemned the policy of assassinations in July 2008, commenting that it was unbecoming for al-Shabaab to kill persons who are trying to help the Somali people. By October 2008, however, Robow warned the International Medical Corps and Care International to stop meddling in areas under al-Shabaab control. He did not elaborate on this al-Shabaab threat but sent a chilling message to these and similar aid organizations.
Jihadist cells in Mogadishu are increasingly fragmented and answer to no one. Menkhaus commented that some of these cells are believed to have targeted national aid workers and civil society leaders. At the same time, he did not rule out that some of the attacks taking place in Mogadishu could be the work of hardliners in the Transitional Federal Government. To the extent that al-Shabaab is behind the attacks against aid workers, he said they are a direct response to the U.S. designation in March 2008 of al-Shabaab as a terrorist organization and the May 2008 U.S. missile strike that killed al-Shabaab's leader, Aden Hashi Ayro.
Al-Shabaab's public position concerning a link to al-Qaeda may have changed in recent months. Al-Shabaab spokesperson Mukhtar Robow is quoted in a Los Angeles Times story by Edmund Sanders on August 25 that "we will take our orders from Sheik Osama bin Laden because we are his students." Robow added that "al-Qaeda is the mother of the holy war in Somalia" and "most of our leaders were trained in al-Qaeda camps. We get our tactics and guidelines from them. Many have spent time with Osama bin Laden." U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger expressed some doubts in the same Los Angeles Times article as to the closeness of the connection between al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda. He suggested that al-Shabaab continues to run its own affairs and is not taking orders from al-Qaeda.
In view of the growing U.S. pressure on al-Shabaab, however, it may well have concluded that it can attract financing and support by stressing a link with al-Qaeda that, in fact, may not yet be very significant. Al-Shabaab released in July 2008 a 24-minute video featuring Mukhtar Robow and Kenyan al-Qaeda operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who has been implicated in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. The video reaches out to al-Qaeda. Four internet forums regularly used by al-Qaeda carried the video. In another development, the Head of Iraq's Investigation and Information Agency in the Ministry of Interior recently told Gulf News that documents and letters found during search operations in suburbs of Baghdad prove that al-Qaeda elements left Iraq for Somalia and Sudan.
Implications of US Counterterrorism Policy in the Horn
U.S. counterterrorism policy in the Horn has included some programs that have contributed in a positive way to countering terrorist activities. Assistance to governments in the Horn for improved computerized tracking of suspect individuals by emigration departments and certain specialized counterterrorism training are examples. At the same time, U.S. policy has emphasized the capturing or killing of persons who it believes have been involved in international terrorist attacks and an effort to deny Somalia as a safe haven for al-Qaeda operatives. The United States has devoted an enormous amount of energy to tracking down three individuals — Fazul Abdullah Mohammed from the Comoro Islands, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, and Abu Talha al-Sudani from Sudan — all of whom were implicated in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Nabhan acknowledged in the July 2008 video that al-Sudani died more than a year ago in battle, presumably with Ethiopian forces in Somalia. Fazul and Nabhan remain very much at large. Kenyan police converged on Fazul's safe house in Malindi, along the Kenya coast, early this past August. Fazul escaped again and, according to one account, is now in Tanzania. Fazul and Nabhan are believed to have moved in and out of Somalia in recent years. Although Ayro and al-Sudani, who are known to have been involved in international terrorist attacks, are no longer a threat, it strains credulity to argue that U.S. counterterrorism policy in the Horn has been a significant success after 10 years of serious effort.
As I stated at the beginning, the main problem with U.S. policy is that it does not give sufficient attention to working with host governments and civil society with the objective of ameliorating the reasons why so many persons living in the region provide support to committed terrorist operatives or refuse to identify them to responsible authorities. Making the Horn a better and more equitable place to live will probably never deter the Fazuls, Nabhans, and al-Sudanis of the world. But ameliorating the root causes of terrorism will almost certainly diminish the support and sustenance terrorists continue to receive from the population generally and reduce the temptation to become rank and file members of organizations like al-Shabaab. Elijah Karia, the Kenyan anti-terrorism unit chief in the Malindi area, told Stephanie McCrummen in an August 15 Washington Post article, for example, that Fazul receives the support of Kenyans who live along the coast and it is "only the sympathizers who are keeping him from being arrested."
Although many, perhaps most, Somalis disapprove of al-Shabaab, Menkhaus argued that Somali anger is now directed at Ethiopia, the Transitional Federal Government, and the United States. Menkhaus added that U.S. policy in Somalia has had the effect of isolating more moderate members of the Somali opposition, generated a high level of anti-Americanism, and contributed to the radicalization of the population. If Menkhaus is correct on this point, and I am inclined to agree with his analysis, the current U.S. approach to counterterrorism in Somalia will not work. It must use greater discretion in its efforts to capture and/or kill bad guys and devote more resources and effort, working with local governments and groups, to resolve the root causes of terrorism.
Other knowledgeable observers have also been critical of U.S. counterterrorism policy in the Horn. Reporting the views of several human rights activists and a U.S. official familiar with Kenya's counterterrorism situation, Stephanie McCrummen wrote that Kenya's anti-terrorism unit, which the United States helped finance through the East African Counterterrorism Initiative, is ineffective. Hundreds of Kenyans have been arrested on suspicion of terrorist activities. Only one has been successfully tried in court. Ali-Amin Kimathi, chairman of the Muslim Human Rights Forum in Kenya, told McCrummen that Kenya's anti-terrorism unit has cultivated a network of informants who often supply its agents with names of people who turn out to be business enemies or others with whom they are trying to settle scores.
In a recent study of U.S. efforts to counter terrorism in Kenya, Beth Whitaker of the University of North Carolina wrote in International Studies Perspectives that the United States has repeatedly urged the Kenyan parliament to pass anti-terrorism legislation. Kenyan parliamentarians have refused to do so. Whitaker argued that Kenya is reluctant to cooperate in the open with the U.S. war on terror because many Kenyans feel empowered by its democracy after years of experiencing autocratic rule. The democratization process in Kenya has contributed to the mobilization of the minority Muslim community. Kenyans generally view the concept of security much more broadly than the view implied by the United States. Most Kenyans still see terrorism as largely an American or Israeli problem. Finally, Kenyan resistance to U.S. demands is linked to similar concerns expressed by Europeans. Whitaker, although acknowledging quiet Kenyan cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism, concluded that the same democratic system that the United States promoted in Kenya has now made it difficult for the United States to obtain complete cooperation in the war on terror, at least in the short term.
Sudan, which remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, has been a surprising success story in U.S. efforts to counter international terrorism in the region. While the Sudanese government hosted Osama bin Laden during the first half of the 1990s, it is now working with the United States to defeat international terrorists. In fact, al-Qaeda cells in Sudan are now attacking western interests in Sudan, including the assassination of a USAID officer in Khartoum in January 2008, to both harm Americans and to embarrass the same Sudanese government that once supported al-Qaeda. An obscure group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid claimed credit for the killing of the American official. The government of Sudan captured and has put five Sudanese on trial for the assassination. Early this month, the U.S. embassy in Khartoum publicized a warning against Americans in Sudan from another obscure group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Niles.
The State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2006 stated that "the Sudanese government was a strong partner in the War on Terror and aggressively pursued terrorist operations directly involving threats to U.S. interests and personnel in Sudan." A year later, Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 commented that "the Sudanese government continued to cooperate in the War on Terror, pursuing terrorist operations directly involving threats to U.S. interests and personnel in Sudan. While the U.S.-Sudanese counterterrorism relationship remained solid, hard-line Sudanese officials continued to express resentment and distrust over actions by the USG and questioned the benefits of continued cooperation."
This view reflects the disappointment among Sudanese officials that Sudan remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in spite of its cooperation with Washington since the beginning of this century. This frustration will almost certainly increase now that North Korea has been removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list. The 2007 State Department report added that Sudan uncovered and largely dismantled a large-scale terrorist organization targeting western interests in Khartoum.
The Next Administration
If the United States wants to make meaningful progress on countering support for international terrorist activity in East Africa and the Horn, it needs to reassess its entire approach to counterterrorism in the region. This means devoting more intellectual and financial resources to resolving terrorism's root causes. While the United States and its partners in the region have killed and captured a number of terrorist operatives and interrupted several terrorist plots before they took place, there is little indication that U.S. policy has decreased the willingness of persons living in East Africa and the Horn to end their support for or at least toleration of individuals who are prepared to use terrorist tactics against western interests and their governmental allies in the region. There has been even less progress in deterring support for groups that engage in the far more frequent acts of terrorism whose goal is regime change or is designed to embarrass existing authorities or competing political groups. It is also time to reassess the decision that keeps Sudan, a country now cooperating with the United States on countering terrorism, on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. This issue should be separated from Washington's legitimate disagreements with Khartoum over its policy in Darfur.
While the U.S. government has often exaggerated the international terrorist threat in East Africa and the Horn and instituted a flawed policy for coping with it, some residents of these countries and their counterparts in the diaspora err on the side of understating the problem. I have had conversations with some individuals from the region who are essentially in denial and refuse to admit that international terrorism is an issue in spite of well documented terrorist attacks and public statements by al-Qaeda and indigenous terrorist organizations in the Horn that brag about their responsibility for these attacks. Neither the exaggeration of the threat of international terrorism nor its denial serves the interests of the United States or the people and countries in the region.
