Al Shabab 101: What is the Somali terrorist group?

Al Shabab, which was behind the attack on Nairobi's Westgate mall, has long fomented violence and promoted radical Islam in Somalia.

4. Why is Washington sending US military forces on raids in Somalia?

The October 2013 raid on the southern Somali coastal town of Baraawe was a bold attempt to capture Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, an Al Shabab commander who uses the nom de guerre Ikrima and who is suspected of grenade attacks and other violence against Kenyan military and civilians. Though unsuccessful, the attack underscores US concern that Shabab's ties with Al Qaeda could heighten the ability of allied terror groups to hit targets across Africa. Washington opened a small installation in the West African nation of Niger in February to operate surveillance drones, particularly over Mali, whose north was temporarily overrun by an Al Qaeda-linked group last year. The US's only military installation on the continent, meanwhile, is in Djibouti; US forces have used the Horn of Africa country since 2002 to fly drones over Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere.

“While the operation did not result in Ikrima’s capture, U.S. military personnel conducted the operation with unparalleled precision and demonstrated that the United States can put direct pressure on Al Shabab leadership at any time of our choosing," the Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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