IS Rival Al-Shabab Seeks to Regain Footing in East Africa

"...The driving force behind the competition between Mu’min and other groups of pro-IS defectors and Al-Shabab is most likely local dynamics, economics, and grievances rather than the global conflict between al-Qaeda and its allies against IS and its regional affiliates and allies.  Local pro-IS figures are willing, it seems, to move away from the actual IS organization's general practices, in particular related to the violence of control, in order to win over new supporters.  In Kenya, for example, pro-IS voices are reportedly attempt to lure support with promises of a decrease in violence (such as the implementation of the hudud or 'set' punishments for certain crimes such as murder and theft in Islamic criminal law) and lower taxes than with Al-Shabab.

The success of Mu’min and other pro-IS defectors on the ground in Somalia is intrinsically tied to the trajectory of Al-Shabab.  As the latter's fortunes rebound thanks to mounting domestic pressures on and internal discord in countries such as Ethiopia and Burundi, two of the regional countries contributing to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces safeguarding the internationally-backed Somali Federal Government, it will likely empower the Al-Shabab leadership in clamping down on defectors and dissidents.  The decline and ongoing territorial losses of IS in Iraq, Syria, and Libya will also dampen that organization’s global appeal, though local jihadi/insurgent dissidents in such places as Somalia, Kenya, North Africa and the Sahel, and Afghanistan and Pakistan may continue to use the 'IS' name or brand as a way of breaking  away from the dominant militant groups in those areas...."

Read the entire op-ed here: https://www.hate-speech.org/is-rival-al-shabab-seeks-to-regain-footing-in-east-africa/