The Somali terrorist group Shabaab Mujahideen issued a statement claiming it killed Christian settlers in Kenya’s North Eastern region.
S.I. analysts accessed the statement and analysed it’s prose and syntax to identify underlying meaning and messages.
Most interesting is the amplification of the statement and it’s message by sympathetic accounts based virtually on the microblogging site Twitter. One account report that, the Al-Qaeda affiliate Harakat Shabaab Mujahideen “claims responsibility for killing two Christian Settlers working as teachers near the city of Mandeera in the occupied NFD region”.
Two notables are observed in the narrative, the extremist’s terms as follows “Christian settlers and Occupied Northern District (NFD)”.
- These words and extremists’ terms are meant to spread fear to the Christians living in the North Eastern Prefecture (NEP).
- It’s also meant to inspire the Muslims in the NEP to view their Christian friends and neighbors as enemies and illegal settlers.
- On the occupied NFD suppositions, the terrorists are delegitimizing the Government of Kenya’s territorial autonomy and ownership of the NEP.
- It’s an attempt to inspire the Somali’s living in the region to feel more Somali than Kenyan hence revolt against the Kenyan administration.
- The word “occupied” is meant to imply oppression and marginalization thus subsequently inspire hatred and rebellion, in what S.I refers to as out bidding.
However, history hasn’t documented events that tell away spoils of terrorism. Despite gaining territory and influencing perception, there’s no recorded history of terror outfits making political and military progress beyond militancy and some political concessions (after being downgraded significantly). Shabaab Mujahideen despite its regular insurgency, cannot make inroads in encroaching the Kenyan sovereignty.
Cross-border attacks and micro – bases in remote desert areas cannot be viewed as strategic gains despite their low-level threats to National Security. Conventional Intelligence and Military Forces will of course adapt and adopt versatile strategies to counter violent extremism and eventually win hearts and minds of vulnerable communities living in such frontier and geographically challenged regions. Al-Shabaab Mujahideen stab is just that, a rosy dream inspired by war movies.
