Last week terrorist group Al Shabaab lost its leader Muktar
al Zubeyr “Godane” to an airstrike launched by the US, throwing the group into
a crisis that the region must take advantage of to ensure peace and stability
in the future.
Al Shabaab, meaning the youth, is an offshoot of the Islamic
Courts Union (ICU) who were routed by the Ethiopian army in 2006. The ICU were
a group of sharia courts that came together to form a rival administration to
the Transitional Federal Government.
Al Shabaab has previously pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and
under Godane, has sought to spread its brand of terrorism around the region, with
deadly attacks in Kenya and Uganda.
Godane, who had a $5m bounty on his head, had purged many of
his lieutenants and analysts think that it will be some time before the group
is back on its feet.
This week the group announced a successor Ahmad Umar, who it
can be expected will unleash more of the same.
For the region who are the terrorist organisation’s first
line of attack the unsettling -- however temporary, of the group is an
opportunity that cannot go begging.
"The obvious thing would be to step up military operations in the short term. Put the group under intense pressure and hope to weaken them severely by death or defections of their fighters. Some observers have suggested that many of the rank and file are not in the fight out of any ideological conviction but see it as a source of livelihood. This tells you something about the desperate economic situation in the country...
This last point is where long term efforts have to be
targeted. A resuscitation of the country’s economy is the only sustainable way
to deny these terrorist organisation the foot soldiers to promote their deadly
agenda.
But for the economy to have a chance peace and stability has
to be restored to the country, which for more than a quarter of century has not
had a coherent government. This is easier said than done as Al Shabaab is not
the only group opposed to the seating government.
The African Union Mission Somalia (AMISOM) work propping up
the government is a step in the right direction. War situations are often fluid
and it would be foolhardy to put a definitive time frame to the exit of the
foreign troops, but it is imperative that they work themselves out of the job
by training law enforcement agencies to keep the peace but also the critical
bureaucracy to run the war torn country.
The Somali people are the best people to sort themselves out
and maintain stability. We should not lose sight of the fact that AMISOM is
only there to nurture that process.
An even longer time initiative would be to resolve the
issues that lead to the popping up of terrorist groups around the world. At the
heart of the issue is the economic inequalities prevailing in the world that
mean that for certain populations there is no hope for betterment of their
living standards. This desperation feeds very well into the agendas of
anarchist groups like Al Shabaab.
"So a regional force might pummel Al Shabaab and leave them for dead in the sands of Somalia, but soon another group, maybe even more ferocious, God forbid, will rear its head to take their place if the underlying issues are not tackled...
As long as these global inequalities persist, that lead to
unfair political arrangements, there will always be a terrorist eager to be
recruited.
Some circles may rejoice at the taking out of a major pillar
of world terrorism, but those in the thick of things know that Godane’s demise
may only offer momentary respite before its back to business as usual.
