NAIROBI, Jan 18 (NNN-ALLAFRICA) — Kenya has endured a grim start to the new year as extremist group al-Shabaab launched attacks against a school, a police post and a military base shared by US forces.
Observers are debating whether the surge of violence signals renewed strength by the terror group or is a seasonal phenomenon. A new report found the group has killed more than 4,000 civilians over the past 10 years.
On Monday, three teachers were killed and one abducted in Kamuthe, a town in Garissa county, bordering Somalia. The three killed were all non-Muslims, while the one kidnapped was a Muslim. Another teacher was wounded. Attackers also hit a police post and destroyed a telecommunications tower.
Hillary Mutyambai, inspector general of the Kenya Police Service, visited a police camp in neighboring Lamu county on Tuesday to thank officers for their efforts, but advised them to reach out to community members for help foiling future attacks.
Mutyambai \u201curged the officers to change their tact in the fight against the enemy,\u201d the Kenya Police Service\u2019s official account tweeted about the visit. He also \u201curged the officers to embrace community policing so as to have [a] flow of information from members of [the] public on suspected criminals.\u201d
Tres Thomas, a security analyst focusing on Somalia, said the latest attacks show that the terror group is attempting to sow divisions among the population by sparing Muslims and killing Christians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also said that January is typically a time when al-Shabaab launches some of its deadliest attacks, including a 2017 attack in Kulbiyow, where dozens of Kenya Defense Force soldiers were killed, and the DusitD2 hotel attack in 2019 that killed more than 20 people.
Thomas said the spate of violence shows the group is able to exploit points of weakness along the Kenyan border.
\u201cYou still see al-Shabaab has free mobility to cross the border from Somalia into Kenya. And that\u2019s because a lot of the areas don\u2019t have adequately manned checkpoints,\u201d he told VOA. \u201cAnd one of the areas on the southeastern border in the Boni Forest is very rugged terrain that\u2019s hard for security forces to navigate and offers a safe haven to Shabaab.\u201d
Thomas added that the lack of capacity is exacerbated by a lack of cooperation between local and national law enforcement agencies.
\u201cYou still have security forces that are not integrated,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have tensions between the central government and regional administrations that prevent them from banding together to defeat al-Shabaab.\u201d
He said a Jan 5 attack against Camp Simba that left three Americans dead exemplifies the group\u2019s continued ability to identify and exploit weak spots.
\u201cI think Shabaab was able to identify this as a vulnerable spot that didn\u2019t have adequate force protection from US and Kenyan forces,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so only with maybe 15 or so attackers actually on the base, they were able to destroy approximately $20 million in equipment, including spy aircraft used to collect intelligence on al-Shabaab and to target mid-level and senior-level officials. So I think, from that perspective, al-Shabaab was able to achieve its objectives.\u201d
Future strategies, he added, should focus on securing the border and preventing the group from recruiting young Kenyans, particularly those of Somali origin.
\u201cWhat needs to be identified are ways to actually stop al-Shabaab from crossing the border, recruiting inside Kenya. And that\u2019s something that Kenya hasn\u2019t been able to accomplish, even though it\u2019s been deployed in Somalia for the last nine years,\u201d Thomas said. — NNN-ALLAFRICA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIROBI, Jan 18 (NNN-ALLAFRICA) — Kenya has endured a grim start to the new year as extremist group al-Shabaab launched attacks against a school, a police post and a military base shared by US forces. Observers are debating whether the surge of violence signals renewed strength by the terror group or is a seasonal phenomenon. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58893"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}