Luca Gallazzi

In this final part of this paper key aspects of al-Shabaab organizational features and intelligence resources to collect information about this group will be summarized. In addition, recommendations will be made that may foster a better and broader use of U.S. resources in collecting intelligence and tackling al-Shabaab.

Al-Shabaab has the features and potential to become a direct threat to the United States. How and with what plausibility this threat can turn into a real attack must be established through the multi-sectoral and multidisciplinary collection of information and a thorough analysis of data.

Al-Shabaab, is a Sunni Islamist insurgency group active in Somalia, born around 2006. The group was created following the defeat of the Islamic Courts Union by the Transitional Federal Government and its supporters during the civil war in Somalia. It is the Somali cell of al-Qaeda, formally recognized in 2012. In June of the same year, the State Department of the United States has placed several bounties on the group leaders.

UNOSOM II has certainly laid the foundation for the doctrine of “responsibility to protect” (R2P), that would have been born out of the international community’s failure to respond to tragedies such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the massacre in Srebrenica in 1995, according to which the international community has a duty to act to protect people from gross violations of human rights when individual governments cannot or do not want to do it.

The intelligence cycle, as defined in literature, is a guideline sometimes working only in  theoretical manner. However, given the pragmatic nature of the discipline, it can be useful to integrate a good theory with a model closer to reality.

The Western social structure built around a value system, in which the youth is glorified as a symbol of success, necessarily results in the stigmatization of particular age groups, and consequently the older members are discredited and stereotyped as less capable and more fragile. Conversely, other cultures celebrate the aging process and venerate their elders. However, despite the interpretative differences, a line of anthropological affinity seems to bind the whole of humanity.

The reality past the “Brandt line”, the virtual boundary line that separates the rich regions of the global North and the poor countries of the South, is of malnutrition, disease, environmental degradation, and violence. Due to the huge amount of money involved in their operations, multinational companies are highly influential on the global economy, making their role a highly critical factor in maintaining the status quo. Fair-trade is opposed to exploitative trade practices that are believed often applied by multinational corporations operating exclusively with a view of profit maximization. In this regard, fair-trade intervenes by creating alternative marketing channels (but economically sustainable) to the dominant ones, in order to provide commercial outlets under conditions considered more sustainable for those who produce.

Across the history of vaccinations, many life-threatening diseases have been prevented, and many others can be prevented with the use of vaccines on children. Some claim that vaccines are safe and should be compulsory for all children, others believe that they are dangerous, and public health preventative policies should be revalued. This has sparked a fierce debate on the lawfulness of mandatory vaccinations for children.

The drone attacks in Pakistan have reported an unquestionable short-term success, but they have undermined the U.S. strategy with downside effects in the long-term, underlining the need for a reassessment  of U.S. approach to counterterrorism.

Despite the lack of local strategic importance and natural resources, Kashmir represents a crucial point in the agenda of three countries, with global strategic implications. It has no oil or other resources, does not possess rapidly developing city, and is landlocked. Nevertheless, it has an immense symbolic value.