The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department group funded by Congress, says that al-Shabaab aims to be a “totalitarian theocracy in Somalia.” ISIS-Somalia, in contrast, has struggled to gain territory and expand its army of fighters as it battles al-Shabaab and the Somali federal government. “We simplistically hear the name ISIS and immediately assume that the group is a threat to the U.S.,” Will Walldorf, a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University, told me. “Some have gravitated to the name to raise funds and recruit, but they are not comparable to the ISIS we knew in Iraq and Syria at the height of the caliphate.”
[…] Without international follow-up on the ground that tackles governance issues and a stronger national Somali military, U.S. missile strikes won’t address the root causes that create the conditions for civil war, such as poor governance and corruption. Rather, Walldorf said, they “could create conditions for the kind of animosity and anger that could lead to the next generation of jihadists.”
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