Increased Counter-terrorism operations by Kenya’s Anti-Terror Police Unit ATPU have destroyed major terror cells, prompting the Al Shabaab terror group attacks to shift into more asymmetrical, misaligned methods.
Intelligence experts confirmed that intercepted communication within the al-Muhajiroun intelligence networks revealed that terrorist were worried for lack of facilities to co-ordinate their attacks from owing to their destroyed operation cells.
In the intercepted communication, the Al Shabaab terror group was calling from their bases in Somalia for their adherents to conduct suicide attacks in Kenya.
Intelligence has it that the Al-Shabaab Terror group is seeking to use 3rd-parties that will be asymmetrical to their intentions of instilling fear and causing downfall of their victim countries including Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Tanzania and even the Western block, the United States.
The indirect strategies will include suicide bombers, sectarian conflict, psychological warfare, and information warfare to conduct attacks.
Suicide bombers
- Kenya Army Special Forces intercepted suicide bombers by arresting suspected Al Shabaab suicide bombers in Wajir in Kenya’s North early May who were in possession of active suicide vests.
- Al Shabaab currently is believed to be undertaking huge recruitment coupled with intensive training in ideologies including a systematic mechanization of humans to become suicide bombers.
- Intercepted al-Muhajiroun intelligence communication by Kenya’s Anti-Terror Police Unit early this year revealed that the Al Shabaab terror group was calling for more suicide bombs in Kenya.
Sectarian conflict
- Al-Shabaab terror group is opting activation of proxies to conduct attacks.
- The terror group wishes to stir a big war between countries fighting their insurgency so that they may thrive.
- Use of religious conflict is the other example of asymmetry and stirring of sectarian conflict. They have in their past attacks isolated and killed Christians and spared Muslims in a bid to create enmity between the two religions.
- When they spare the Muslims, they promise them security that nothing will happen to them since Muslims know how to defend their ‘brothers’.
Psychological warfare
- The Al Shabaab terror group will often release haunting videos of their executed victims in order to torment the public and draw sentimental responses.
- These videos also call lure potential recruits into joining the terror group in Somalia and alternatively attack in their own countries.
- In the aftermath of their attacks, they issue statements warning of another attack which leaves the public apprehensive.
Information warfare
- The Al Shabaab terror group will spread its propaganda using leaflets, social media, sites linked to them to keep the public apprehensive a possible terror attack.
- They are also planning to release videos to draw sentimental response from the victims’ families and the families to get what they want in their extreme socio-political and economic interests.
Countries are bound to win this war over the Al Shabaab terror group by, defending their cyber space and working with the global network toward the denial of information collection and dissemination opportunities to the terrorists including the Al Shabaab terror group.
