Is the US intelligence community misreading the Shabaab-Qaeda relationship?
Is the US intelligence community misreading the Shabaab-Qaeda relationship?
by Deane-Peter Baker
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In a recent report at Long War Journal an unnamed senior US intelligence official is quoted as saying that “Al Qaeda’s top leadership has instructed Shabaab to maintain a low profile on al Qaeda links.” This, according to the same official, is because “al Qaeda is applying lessons learned from Iraq, that an overexposure of the links between al Qaeda central leadership and its affiliates can cause some unwanted attention.” The official added that “al Qaeda is pleased with the double suicide attack in Uganda, but suggested Shabaab reserve future strikes at US interests in the region.”
Perhaps access to the intelligence sources available to the unnamed official would make it obvious to any analyst that this interpretation is correct. From an outsider’s perspective, however, there are reasons to suspect that the intelligence community might, perhaps, have misread matters in this case.
Download the Full Article: Is the US intelligence community misreading the Shabaab-Qaeda relationship
Deane-Peter Baker is Editor of the African Security Review, Journal of the Institute for Security Studies, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the US Naval Academy and a 2010-2011 Academic Fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. All opinions expressed here are his own and should not be taken to reflect the official position of any organization.
