The Resiliency of the Shabaab Movement in Somalia

Abstract

Throughout Al-Shabaabs history, the militant group has demonstrated enduring organizational resiliency in the face of concerted international counterterrorism efforts and turbulent internal dynamics. This thesis explores the factors that enabled the terrorist groups success and resilience in East Africa by considering two severe low points in the groups history, notably the failure of the Ramadan Offensive in 2010 and the death of Al-Shabaab emir Ahmed Godane in 2014. Both cases apply alternative hypotheses related to political context, organizational attributes, and counterterrorism failures and assess the hypotheses relevance to the case of Al-Shabaab in Somalia. Al-Shabaabs critical factors for resiliency provide insight into potential policy implications for Somalia and similarly situated conflict zones.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2020
Accession Number
AD1126551

Entities

People

  • Tess Oneill

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Africa
  • Air Force
  • Criminals
  • East Africa
  • Failed States
  • Foreign Relations
  • Governments
  • Military Science
  • Military Training
  • Minority Groups
  • National Governments
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Public Policy
  • Reliability
  • Societies
  • Terrorism
  • Terrorists
  • United States
  • United States Africa Command
  • United States Government
  • Urban Areas
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • History

Readers

  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.