Al Shabaab's Suicide Bombing

Al Shabaab was the first terrorist organization to use an American citizen to conduct a suicide bombing mission more than five years ago. Since then, the group has consistently targeted civilians and non-combatants to achieve their goals and has continued to attract Americans and other foreigners to its ranks. The group controls a large swath of territory in southern and central Somalia which enables the group to train and operate freely without any real interference. It has managed to survive amid the array of other terrorist groups that come and go in the region and has grown from a regional threat to an international one. With elements of the Somali diaspora spread across the domestic landscape, al Shabaab is a legitimate threat to the United …show more content…
This sent the country into a downward spiral characterized by civil war, piracy, warlords, and conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya. Various interventions by the international community, including those efforts carried out by the United States (US) and the United Nations (UN), continually failed to provide the country with any sort of stability or lasting peace. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Fact Book web page, the first attempt of a provisional government in 2000, the Transitional National Government (TNG), failed to establish adequate security or governing institutions (CIA, n.d.). The TNG was followed in 2004 by a second interim government known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of the Somali Republic. Hanson and Kaplan, of the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that the TFG was the fourteenth attempt to establish a functioning government and had to govern from neighbouring Kenya because of security concerns (Hanson & Kaplan, 2008). This absence of any visible authority or police presence within Somalia created an environment conducive to the numerous warlords competing for power in the various neighbourhoods. As a result, the warlords took control of Somalia and imposed their own brand of law and …show more content…
In Ken Menkhaus’ testimony to the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, he ascribes their growth to ‘jihadist rhetoric’ that capitalized on Somali nationalism and anti-Ethiopianism. They even won support from local Somalis who were opposed to the group’s extremist interpretations of Islam (Menkhaus, 2009). The TFG and Ethiopian forces were portrayed as the Christian West meddling in Somalia’s Islamic affairs and the diaspora believed that al Shabaab was justified as a defensive jihad. As such, al Shabaab’s tactics increasingly involved assassinations, bombings, improvised explosive devices, kidnappings, piracy, and suicide attacks which led to the United States designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February of 2008. By 2008, Somalia was perceived as one of the most dangerous places in the