International Business Times quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on al-Shabaab’s internal factions and the potential for future attacks by the militant group:
“Al-Shabab has never been monolithic. It’s a rather confusing coalition of overlapping ideological groups and clan interests,” said Peter Pham, head of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. The group has its own internal factions. While some members are focused on gaining territory and power in Somalia, a growing faction is more interested in being part of a global jihad movement. The hard-line jihadists are taking over and pushing al-Shabab to increasingly desperate measures to prove themselves members of a more global movement — which may result in more large-scale attacks as it finds itself cornered.
“I would definitely expect that the attack in Garissa, dreadful and brutal as it was, is but the first of many,” Pham said.