Thursday, July 18, 2019

Background on January 2019 Al-Shabaab Attack in Nairobi

The CTC Sentinel published in July 2019 an article titled "East Africa's Terrorist Triple Helix: The Dusit Hotel Attack and the Historical Evolution of the Jihadi Threat" by Matt Bryden and Premdeep Bahra, both with the Sahan think tank in Nairobi.

The authors point out that the attack on 15 January 2019 of an office complex in Nairobi, Kenya, by al-Shabaab that killed 21 people and injured at least 28 involved Kenyan nationals of non-Somali descent. They conclude that al-Shabaab's longstanding ambition to transcend its Somali origins and become a truly regional organization is becoming a reality, representing a new and dangerous phase in the group's evolution and the threat that it poses to the region.