Is Kenya’s anti-terrorist crackdown exacerbating drivers of violent extremism?

Summary

Kenya has seen a dramatic rise in violent extremism: Between 1970 and 2007, the country experienced 190 terrorist attacks, an average of five per year; since 2008, the average has escalated to 47 attacks a year. The overwhelming majority of these incidents have been attributed to Al-Shabaab. Originating in Somalia in 2005, the group has since regionalized its operations and established an active presence in Kenya, where it has successfully recruited and radicalized Kenyan nationals and carried out numerous attacks on a variety of local targets (Botha, 2014). The 2 April 2015 attack on Garissa University College, which killed 147 people, was the group’s most deadly to date.

Keywords

Radicalization VE Terrorism

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