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This article will be based on Dr Mohamed Ibrahim Shire‘s research on the issue. Dr Shire published ‘Brothers in Arms: The Phenomenon of Complex Suicide Attacks‘ end of last year.
This research paper talks about the complexity of Al Shabaab(AS) attacks , compares the different years of activity and methods used to cause havoc. We spoke about how inaccurate ACLED is in our previous article.
The dataset starts from 2006 and goes all the way to 2018. This gives a good comparison between different years and high & lows. The first tally presented is the ‘Al-Shabaab’s Suicide bombing operations over time’. This tally recordes that the highest year between 2006 – 2018 was 2016, with a recorded 35 suicide attacks. During the past decade suicide attacks increased yearly but started to decrease in 2017. From 2016 to 2018, attacks went down by 37%.
We now have an exact count of the suicide attacks, we move on to understanding the casualties whether it be combants or civilian.
The ratio of combatant to civilian is 60:40, this means that overall from 2006 to 2018 there has been more combatant deaths than civilian deaths.
Suicide attack are split to two different types :
This line graph dataset shows the increase of Complex suicide attacks and the gradual decline from 2016. The same would also apply to the Simple suicide attacks.
Simple attacks
Simple attacks can be specified into three groups :
PBIED devices reached their peak at 2012, with 10 attacks and later started to fall in 2014 and 2016. VBIED took off in 2010 and peaked in 2017 then declined the following year.
With the evidence provided above it can be said that AS activity have decreased in recent years. Here are some possible reasons :
This research paper talks about the complexity of Al Shabaab(AS) attacks , compares the different years of activity and methods used to cause havoc. We spoke about how inaccurate ACLED is in our previous article.
The dataset starts from 2006 and goes all the way to 2018. This gives a good comparison between different years and high & lows. The first tally presented is the ‘Al-Shabaab’s Suicide bombing operations over time’. This tally recordes that the highest year between 2006 – 2018 was 2016, with a recorded 35 suicide attacks. During the past decade suicide attacks increased yearly but started to decrease in 2017. From 2016 to 2018, attacks went down by 37%.
We now have an exact count of the suicide attacks, we move on to understanding the casualties whether it be combants or civilian.
The ratio of combatant to civilian is 60:40, this means that overall from 2006 to 2018 there has been more combatant deaths than civilian deaths.
Suicide attack are split to two different types :
- Simple attack – traditional suicide bombing operation involving one or more suicide bombers but absent of any assailants.
- Complex attack – a deliberate and coordinated attack that includes a suicide device, more than one attacker, and more than one tactic (for instance, a suicide vehicle bomb) and small arms fire.
This line graph dataset shows the increase of Complex suicide attacks and the gradual decline from 2016. The same would also apply to the Simple suicide attacks.
Simple attacks
Simple attacks can be specified into three groups :
- PBIED – Person-Borne IED
- VBIED – Vehicle-Borne IED
- Mixture – Elements of both VBIED and PBIED
PBIED devices reached their peak at 2012, with 10 attacks and later started to fall in 2014 and 2016. VBIED took off in 2010 and peaked in 2017 then declined the following year.
With the evidence provided above it can be said that AS activity have decreased in recent years. Here are some possible reasons :
- US has conduct 35 Airstrikes in 2017, 47 in 2018 and 63 in 2019
- SNA improvements and restructuring
- Military academy opening end of 2017
- Increased Defence Budget
the court ordered to retrieve documents from records..to cross examine it with our documents
