From Nigeria in the west, to Algeria in the north, and Somalia in the east, local allies of al Qaeda have launched attacks that share the same fluid and ruthless style. Roving gunmen have killed gas workers in Algeria, villagers in Nigeria, and now, shoppers in Kenya. Conducted by local factions thousands of miles away from one another, the attacks have achieved a common goal of mass carnage.
On Sunday, the standoff in a Nairobi shopping mall between Kenyan security forces and militants stretched into a second day, with the government saying gunmen had slain at least 68 people and injured more than 175; more than 1,000 escaped the mall after Saturday's assault on the lunchtime crowd. On Sunday evening, Kenyan police said they had begun a final push to clear the building.
The insurgency known as al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, via Twitter. It was seen in part as revenge for Kenya's role last year in dispatching peacekeepers to drive the terrorist group out of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.
U.S. foreign-policy experts said the Nairobi attack reasserted al-Shabaab's capabilities at a time many thought its power had been diminishing.
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"There's been this tendency to predict the demise of al Qaeda, whether it's in Pakistan, Somalia or other locations, and they have demonstrated an ability to regenerate and conduct attacks when it is in their interest," said Seth Jones, an al Qaeda specialist at Rand Corp.
The attack was in keeping with the types of strikes the group has mounted by hitting a target that would have a higher proportion of foreigners and would do economic harm to the country, a U.S. official said, much like the groups' other attacks on restaurants and nightclubs.
The suspected militants appear to have exposed security weaknesses in Kenya. The attacks suggest insurgents are learning from one another—if not yet coordinating attacks—and punctures the myth that al Qaeda's Africa franchises are fragmented and isolated, said Paul-Simon Handy, research director of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. "What is new here is the potential for mutual inspiration," he said. "This isn't a fiction anymore."
In a brief speech on Sunday, as helicopters and planes roared overhead,Kenya's president, Uhuru Kenyatta, said the attack was international in nature. In addition to the scores of Kenyan victims, several foreign nationals died. They included three Britons, two Canadians and two French women—a mother and a daughter—who were executed in the mall's parking lot, the government said.
"This is an incident of terror, an incident that can happen in any city, in any capital anywhere in the world," Mr. Kenyatta said. "This is an international war. And we need to join hands and work together to see it effectively destroyed."
The U.S. government over the weekend pledged military, diplomatic and law-enforcement assistance to the Kenyan government. "We basically said: Let us know what you need," a senior U.S. official said.
U.S. officials said on Sunday that the Nairobi attack wasn't necessarily an indicator of a greater threat posed to U.S. interests there. The attack may not signal "any sort of broadening of al-Shabaab's ambitions or a broadening of its goals," a U.S. official said. "It's a continuation of its long-standing battle to weaken the countries Shabaab views as its chief aggressor."
The official said the attack, however, was significant both for its size and its targeting of Westerners. "This isn't about the U.S.," the official said. "It's Westerners."
The Nairobi attack unfolded in the same way as the January hijacking of a gas facility in southern Algeria. A jihadist brigade held more than 800 people hostage at the plant, jointly operated by British firm BP BP -0.45%PLC, Norway's Statoil STL.OS -0.22%ASA and Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company, for four days, until Algerian forces raided the site. Thirty-seven expatriates died.
"The method is the same," said Pascal Le Pautremat, a professor at Paris-based Institut des Relations Internationales et Stratégiques. "They hit the heart of a country as well as its most remote periphery to spread a sense of insecurity among the population."
The attackers at the Algerian plant called their raid revenge for a French intervention in nearby Mali, in January, against a trio of al Qaeda-allied insurgencies.
Weeks later, Nigerian militants belonging to the group Boko Haram took a French family hostage, again claiming the act as a retributive strike against France. As many as several hundred Boko Haram members had trained in Mali, and analysts said their campaign for Islamic rule across Africa's most-populous nation, which has left thousands dead, bares tactical resemblance to a two-decade-long al Qaeda-backed Islamic uprising in Algeria.
Last week, meanwhile, a shooting spree in the Nigerian village of Benisheik left 87 people dead. Nigeria's military blamed the killings on Boko Haram. Soldiers have cut cellphone service in the area and restricted travel, making it difficult to confirm such reports. In Benisheik, Boko Haram fighters were still popping up on country roads this past weekend, firing at civilians, then dashing back into the surrounding scrubland, said Mohammed Kana , an aid worker with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency. At least four people, including a young boy, died in those skirmishes, he said. The Nigerian military had begun to fly warplanes over the area.
In more government-focused assaults, both Somali and Nigerian rebels have bombed administrative buildings and assassinated politicians. Having weakened the state, those insurgencies then turn their guns against the population, said Kwesi Aning, research director at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana.
"It's to show that the government is incapable of protecting you," he said.
In the wake of such attacks, governments have responded as they have in the past—bluntly.
Nigeria has declared a state of emergency in its north giving soldiers free rein to detain civilians, enter their homes and block off highways. Meanwhile, Kenyan officials have promised swift justice for the perpetrators of the attack on its Westgate mall, popular with affluent Kenyans and foreign residents in Nairobi.
"We will punish the mastermind swiftly, and indeed, very painfully," said Kenya's President Kenyatta, whose nephew died in the attack.
Crushing displays of military force allowed governments here to quash the ethnic rebellions of the 1960s, back when today's generals and defense chiefs were foot soldiers. Now, those leaders find themselves at the helm of a fight that requires the more complex challenges of protecting civilian populations, said analysts. Some aren't up to the task, said Mr. Aning of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre.
"We basically need to change our thinking around fighting terrorism," he said. "Most of our armies and intelligence services are trained in conventional warfare, and they're seeing all these nonconventional demands put on them."
Experts drew parallels between the Nairobi mall shootings and the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, both of which deployed automatic assault-style weapons against civilians and held them hostage.
"It's been almost five years since the Mumbai attacks, and everybody's surprised we haven't seen a repeat of that type of operation," said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor specializing in al Qaeda. Although terrorists frequently target areas likely to inflict harm on civilians, "what's different and consequential [in Nairobi] is the ease with which this can be done," particularly in a country less experienced in dealing with terrorists, he said.
Experts said very few terrorist groups linked to al Qaeda stick to local attacks as they grow.
"Much like al Qaeda [in the] Arabian Peninsula having gone international very early, we have al-Shabaab going not international, but regional, in an extremely concerning manner, Mr. Hoffman said.
"This was a group that because of their diminishing territorial control in Somalia over the past couple of years was seen by many as on the decline and to be almost a metaphor for the diminishing prospects of al Qaeda," Mr. Hoffman said. The latest incarnation of al-Shabaab "could be more challenging than its predecessor," he said. "One way or another, we're still fighting the war on terrorism."
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