Takfiri “Al Shabab” On Rampage in Somalia

BY CounterJihad · @CounterjihadUS | October 26, 2016

Islamic extremist group al Shabab, a violent offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union that once attempted to govern Somalia, has staged a series of guerrilla attacks in the last week. In Kenya, they struck a troop of non-Muslim actors trying to bring awareness of a new program to provide textbooks to regional schools. Twelve of the actors were killed in an attack that featured grenades and homemade explosives, finished off by militants with guns who stormed the building and murdered the wounded.

The attack is part of a campaign to drive non-Muslims, and especially Christians, from educational facilities in the region. In this it is similar to Boko Haram, another African Islamist group that targets educators and schools in an attempt to control the minds of the youth. Though the claim is that Western education is a kind of propaganda, Western mathematics and medicine are being denied to the people of these regions in an attempt to make sure that they learn nothing that might cause them to question the conservative interpretations of Islam favored by these militants. Though they are quite similar in this way, the two groups are not formally aligned. Boko Haram is allied with the Islamic State (ISIS), whereas al Shabab’s affiliation is with al Qaeda.

Separately, yesterday another group of Shabab militants attacked an African Union (AU) military base hosting troops from Djibouti. The complex attack featured a truck bomb followed by coordinated small arms fire. The military forces claim that they not only repelled the attack, but killed all members of the attacking force. Shabab’s spokesmen say that the attack was a reprisal for massacres allegedly conducted by the AU forces. Djibouti is an American ally, hosting Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier, an old French Foreign Legion base that is currently the only permanent base for US forces in Africa.

In addition to this, al Shabab captured a city in Somalia in the last week. Allied Ethiopian forces fled before them, leaving them to occupy the city of Halgan. However, this is the third time this month that the militants have captured that city. So far the Somali government has managed to put together enough of its own or allied forces to retake the city. The Ethiopian forces built trenches and fortifications, but appear to have elected to destroy them and flee rather than use them to stand and fight against the Islamists. While this does at least deny al Shabab the benefit of the fortifications, it is unclear why these professional soldiers would not or could not hold their posts against guerrilla forces from a dug-in position.

Early this month al Shabab even managed a car bomb attack on a restaurant in the capital city of Mogadishu.

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