African securityAl-Shabaab is implementing a "plan as we go" strategy

In the past two years, al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab has lost territory, ports, checkpoints, and key leaders to the African Union force in Somalia, which is supported by the United States. They have no armored personnel carriers like Nigerian-based Boko Haram, poppy fields like the Taliban, or oil fields like the Islamic State, still the Somali-based group has been able to launch deadly attacks in and out of Somalia.

Recently, the group managed to kill 147 people at Garissa University College in Kenya.

To many counterterrorism experts, al-Shabaab is implementing a “plan as we go” strategy, which relies on decentralized teams of gunmen who, on their own, determine who and where to attack. “I call it the dumbing down of terrorism,” said Matt Bryden, a political analyst and director at think tank Sahan Research. “They keep it simple. They’re lightly armed, highly disciplined and relatively well trained.” “They’ve definitely lost some of their major revenue flows,” he added. “But they’ve managed to survive a lean season.”

At its peak between 2007 and 2010, al-Shabaab ruled a large portion of Somalia, about the size of Denmark. “They were doing something like state building,” said Stig Jarle Hansen, author of “Al-Shabaab in Somalia. “They were administering territory. They were delivering services,” all while suppressing the local population by enforcing their interpretation of Sharia. Al-Shabaab began to lose its control of territory when the United States launched an almost $1 billion campaign that trained and equipped African Union forces to carry out missions against the group.

Still al-Shabaab militants are proving to be resilient. The New York Times notes that in conventional military terms, al-Shabaab is losing. The group has been forced to vacate territories, and is no longer able to bring in millions of dollars in revenue from operating ports and local trade, as it did a few years ago. Nevertheless, as the recent attack in Kenya has shown, al-Shabaab continues to grow in scope and ambition, spreading its violence and ideology outside Somalia.

Hansen acknowledges that defeating al-Shabaab will require more than military intervention. “It’s not an easy game,” he said. “You have to have a people-centric strategy. You have to bring security to the villages in Somalia and stop corruption within the Kenyan security services. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard over the past five or six years, ‘al-Shabaab is dying, al-Shabaab is dying.’ Al-Shabaab is not dying,” he said. “Case closed.”

For the past two years, al-Shabaab has increased its attacks on Western and Christian populations in Kenya. At the 2013 Westgate mall attack, militants asked shoppers questions about Islam to separate Muslims from non-Muslims before shooting the non-Muslims. At the Garissa University College attack, students were also separated by religion. The Times points out that Garissa University College had one of the largest concentrations of non-Muslims in that part of Kenya, and it is relatively close to the Somali border, not far from where al-Shabaab militants still circulate. In claiming responsibility for the Garissa attack, an al-Shabaab spokesman said the college was part of Kenya’s “plan to spread their Christianity and infidelity” in a Muslim area.

Without money and military equipment to fight African Union forces, al-Shabaab relies on small units to spread fear. The group has already made strides in recruiting youths in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Djibouti, said Bryden. Decentralization makes it more dangerous. “That makes it more resilient to decapitation strikes.” For that reason, analysts believe military might alone will not destroy al-Shabaab. “There has to be a political vision across this region to tackle al-Shabaab,” Bryden said.

“Right now, that doesn’t exist.”