Patrol to protect Mogadishu from al-Shabab attacks. Flickr/AMISOM/Tobin Jones. Public domain.At first glance, the differences between al-Shabab, the extremist militant group based in Somalia, and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (popularly known as ISIS) that currently governs parts of Syria and Iraq, may seem inconsequential. Both groups thrive by leveraging religious sensibilities and socio-political grievances to justify extreme atrocities in their pursuit of authoritarian power. The April 2015 massacre of 148 Kenyan university students at the hands of al-Shabab militants and the recent coordinated attacks throughout Paris, murdering 130 and wounding hundreds more, are tragic examples of this affinity. Yet the recent killings of pro-ISIS al-Shabab members demonstrate that shared convictions and tactics are not enough to prevent jihadi militants from turning on one another.
Over the past few months, Islamic State recruiters have been wooing al-Shabab's leadership to cut ties with al-Qaeda. In May 2015, Islamic State released a short video in which members of Somali origin referred to al-Shabab fighters as “truthful mujahideen” and urged them to join their transnational state. However, last week al-Shabab killed Sheikh Hussein Abdi Gedi, their former deputy governor of the Juba region, after he joined over 100 al-Shabab fighters who defected to a pro-ISIS faction. Commenting on a number of other such targeted killings, the head of al-Shabab in the lower Shabelle, Abu Abdalla, said that his organisation has made "a clear decision to defend unity" among their ranks. He warned that “If you belong to another group, go where you belong. If you have a different flag, take it with you. It doesn't work here, and you will be beheaded, even if you have a big beard.” Such preemptive measures should prompt us to question the strategic considerations for militant groups such as al-Shabab, as they navigate the increasingly dangerous rivalry between ISIS and its predecessor, al-Qaeda.
In the decades following the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan in the 1980s, al-Qaeda represented the primary face of the global jihadi movement. Daniel Bynum, a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution, argues that Osama Bin Laden sought to capitalise on the network of fighters they had built in Afghanistan to “create a vanguard of elite fighters who could lead the global jihad project and bring together the hundreds of small jihadist groups struggling, often feebly, against their own regimes under a single umbrella.” By the mid-1990s the orientation of this network shifted from local regimes to what they perceived to be their source of sustenance: the United States and the west. Over the next decade, al-Qaeda employed a franchising strategy, which was most attractive to smaller groups on the brink of failure who required much needed financial assistance, a steady stream of recruits, training and logistical support. In return, franchises provide a potential local haven for al-Qaeda members and enable them to remain relevant. This franchise model continues to be attractive for al-Shabab despite the rise of ISIS.
