Sputnik: What is it that al Shabaab are trying to achieve by suddenly going green and banning single-use plastic bags?
Dr. Elisabeth Kendall: It is interesting because it goes against all of our stereotypes of how jihad groups operate. We always associate them with killing and bombing, and maiming and this actually shows a completely different side. But I don’t think that this really is indicative of al Shabaab suddenly going all green; I think what it’s really trying to do is prove its governance credentials. It’s banning plastic bags because they litter villages and slums, they are a scourge on the environment, they harm livestock and al Shabaab wants to show it cares for Muslims, it cares about how they can live better and that the government doesn’t care, the government is corrupt, only out for itself, so al Shabaab should actually be in a ruling position. That’s much more what it's about; it's not about going green.
Dr. Elisabeth Kendall: Al Shabaab hasn’t been always been successful in the way it tries to put its message across. As you mentioned, it's done very unpopular things like banned football, banned the watching of movies, and so it really isn’t necessarily about trying to make itself popular, it’s really about trying to show that it can rule justly and that it takes local concerns into consideration. And in some of the moves it’s made in the past, it has actually had to take a more relaxed attitude and step back a little bit in order to keep that kind of popularity. What’s really going on here is al Shabaab trying to grab attention; this kind of media attention is very useful, it makes them seem like it’s a growing enterprise, it has ideas, initiatives and it has the will to govern well. It’s more about showing us, demonstrating to us that it do something rather than just trying to be incredibly popular with potential recruits.
Dr. Elisabeth Kendall: That's a very good question; I think it is likely to happen. I spend an awful lot of hours every day inside jihadist groups online and this has actually resonated strongly with groups in Syria, in Yemen, in North Africa, they’re all reporting on the al Shabaab decision to ban plastic bags. Partly because they were so pleased that it got a lot of Western media attention, so I think we might well see other initiatives follow. But as you pointed out, this comes in the context of an existing concern, not just in the Koran, but something that’s been played on particularly by Osama bin Laden himself before his death. We have a lot of correspondence that was rescued from the Abbottabad compound in which he was killed that shows that he was interested in issues like deforestation, pollution, climate change and water scarcity. Water scarcity was very much a worry to him, he felt not so much that this was an environmental issue, but that millions of Muslims could ultimately die if something were not done about it and this came under al Qaeda's duty of care to look after Muslims. So I think we’re going to see more of this.
Dr Elisabeth Kendall: I think we should be concerned about a trend that’s broader than just this environmental aspect, the trend is that al Qaeda, in particular, is stepping back from taking draconian measures to implement Sharia style governance, it's doing this consciously, we know this from correspondence, and saying: “Listen, don’t alienate your populations, try to get them on side first, they need to be educated first, and you should do this by addressing local concerns. What issues are locals concerned about, what is it that the governments, that we considered corrupt, are not addressing? Let’s move into that space and address those issues.” And this is why we should be worried, because that is a much more smart way of dealing with recruitment generally and not just recruitment, winning toleration among local populations than just undertaking military-like operations. Just to sort of sum up, when the West tries to combat this by military operations of the same depth, it's not going to work, it has to be about trying to move in to the spaces that jihad groups occupy before they get there, and undercutting the kind of issues they’re able to latch onto — before they do it themselves.