Foreign intervention, radicalization, and political violence: harakat al-Shabaab al-mujahideen in Somalia

This study investigates the development of political violence phenomenon in Somalia spanning from 2001 to 2009, with a particular focus on the radicalization processes on the part of Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen. We assert that radicalization emerges as one of the potential outcomes on the part of an organization in a political struggle that unfolds in a complex, multifaceted, and contentious political setting. The main findings of this research are as follows: Radicalization dynamics exerted their influence more within the two episodes of social interactions. The first episode refers to the "onset of radicalization," which can be traced back to the conflictual dynamics between the faction leaders and other opposing forces vis-à-vis the Islamic groups and other rivals between 2002 and 2006, as the violence in targeted form took place through the mechanism of retaliation and added an ideological dimension to the conflict. It resulted in emboldening a network of dispersed individuals who later came to be known as al-Shabaab. The study regards the second episode as the most decisive factor. It begins with the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia between 2005 and 2009, which opened the floor for al-Shabaab to expand its tactical repertoire of action and modify its target preferences in a more institutionalized and aggressive manner, which we labeled "intensified radicalization." Political violence has been predominantly examined from security and terrorism studies perspectives, putting much emphasis directly on the 'stateless' environment and its consequences, i.e., anarchy and terrorism. Moreover, such approaches focus on the radicalization tendencies of individuals with respect to their psychological dispositions, emotional tendencies, educational background, or certain characteristics transmitted through genetic inheritance. Nevertheless, these approaches do not allow us to capture the whole process of conflictual dynamics in violence at length, and Somali studies have been no exception. This research follows a distinct approach to the phenomenon under investigation. We argue that political violence unfolds from the ebb and flow of collective claim-making and struggle for power on the part of a movement organization in the relational radicalization framework. Therefore, this study analyzes the radicalization process within a broader political context across distinct arenas of interactions in which the mobilization of social movements takes place. This study follows a mechanism-based research technique and embraces deductive and inductive reasoning. Regarding data collection, it relies on comprehensive face-to-face interviews carried out in Mogadishu, Somalia, coupled with 12 months of the research program as a research scholar at the University of Minnesota, United States. Additionally, secondary resources have been used to identify and locate a diverse range of sub-mechanisms that contributed to the emergence and escalation phases of the violent political campaign of al-Shabaab. After all, explaining how and when the radicalization process unfolded on the part of al-Shabaab, referring to the timing and sequences, constitutes the central area of investigation of this research.