Al-Shabaab’s motives to target Ethiopia again

Ahmed Adel

The terrorist Al-Shabaab movement in Somalia is trying to make a comeback in the face of the expanded campaign waged against it by the armies of the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia announced that it had thwarted an attack by Al-Shabaab on the Ethiopian town of Dolo on the border with Somalia, and the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Twitter that the Ethiopian army stopped the attackers during their advance before they could wreak havoc.

The Ethiopian town of Dolo is less than three kilometers from the Somali town of the same name.

The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the Ethiopian National Defense Forces neutralized two suicide bombers and destroyed weapons that the terrorist group was about to use.

On the other hand, Al-Shabaab announced through its communication channels that it had carried out two suicide bombings at an Ethiopian military base on the Somali side of the border, according to the SITE Intelligence Group website.

Al-Shabaab said that the two operations resulted in numerous dead and wounded.

Previously, in mid-2022, the movement had attacked a number of Ethiopian camps at the border between the two countries.

The Ethiopian authorities said at the time that they had killed about a hundred of the movement’s fighters who had infiltrated the country.

In February 2023, the presidents of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya held a quadripartite security summit to discuss military operations against Al-Shabaab, which concluded with the four countries pledging to redouble military efforts against the movement to liberate Somalia and cooperate to secure border areas to prevent terrorist elements from crossing into neighboring countries.

The leaders agreed to make the final move for joint operations in the areas still controlled by the terrorists.

Al-Shabaab targets Ethiopia in response to Addis Ababa sending troops to Somalia within the framework of the African Union forces.

The Somali army launched an all-out war about a year ago to liberate the country from the control of the terrorist movement.

Mohamed al-Sharqawi, a researcher in the affairs of terrorist groups and crisis areas, said that Al-Shabaab’s renewed targeting against Ethiopia comes within the framework of its moves to expand in the Horn of Africa and to prove its presence in light of the blows it has received in the depth of its concentrations in Somalia.

He pointed out in an exclusive statement to the Reference that these attempts are not new, as the movement has been trying to transfer its operations elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, and Ethiopia in particular, since 2013.

According to Sharqawi, the intensity of operations is increasing with time, starting with the failed attempt to bomb a football stadium in Addis Ababa in 2013, through to the security chaos that Ethiopia witnessed in 2020 due to the events in the Tigray region.

He explained that the tidal movements of the militants towards Ethiopia were revealed by the failed operations that happened on June 7, when the Ethiopian army neutralized suicide bombers and destroyed the weapons they had as they entered from the Somali town of Dolo towards the Ethiopian town of the same.

Sharqawi confirmed that the movement’s allegations of carrying out two terrorist operations at an Ethiopian military base on the Somali side of the border is nothing short of a propaganda war.