As the world celebrated the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan Sunday by US Special Forces, East Africa stared at a possible new political nightmare.

Even with Osama’s death, most analysts agree that the Al Qaeda threat has not been buried with him, because in the last years when he has been underground and unable to operate freely for fear that he would be killed or captured by the Americans, some part of his loose terrorist network had drifted away and become even more fractured.

Osama though, according to US officials who have analysed materials taken from his house after he was shot dead, still remained a rallying figure, and was still able to plan operations and call Al Qaeda troops out of the trenches.

With Osama gone, and no one with his charisma in senior Al Qaeda ranks, his international network is likely to disintegrate, and its regional affiliates will have to act to raise their profile and attract financial support and recruits.

The only way they can do this is by carrying out attacks.

The wider East and North Africa are likely to pay a high price as these old Al Qaeda affiliates bolster their brand because these groups are most active in East Africa, the Horn, and North Africa.

The biggest and most active Al Qaeda associate in Africa is Al Shabaab in chaotic Somalia.

East African intelligence forces say they have foiled many Al Shabaab attacks, but in July 2010 it managed two deadly bomb attacks at venues in the Uganda capital Kampala, where fans were watching the World Cup final. Nearly 70 people were killed, and hundreds injured.

The Shabaab later said the attack was punishment for Uganda’s interference in its politics.

Uganda, with Burundi, mans the African Union peace-keeping force in Somalia, Amisom.

Amisom has a decidedly aggressive policy in dealing with militants in Somalia.

The attacks on Uganda, though claimed by Al Shabaab in Somalia, were carried out by a cell that is based in Tanzania together with elements from Kenya, indicating that the organisation has spread its tentacles around the region.

In addition, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who is wanted for the terrorist bomb attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 2007, which killed 244 people, is suspected to be hiding in Somalia.

Ethiopia and the US, meanwhile, have accused Eritrea of financing, training, and harbouring Somali terrorists, and of being Al Shabaab’s patron.

After the US recently dropped Sudan from its list of countries backing terrorism, Eritrea enjoys the unique distinction of being the only African state sponsor of terrorism.

What makes Al Shabaab extremely dangerous is, as several reports have noted, what even Al Qaeda itself considered to be the organisation’s “lack of discipline”.

This means that even Osama himself probably saw the Al Shabaab as an affiliate that is likely to attack and cause many deaths, just for the sake of announcing its presence, rather than to gain any strategic advantage or advance any cause.

The other notable Al Qaeda affiliates in Africa are Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), headquartered in Algeria (formerly the Salafist Group for Call and Combat).

Another group, Armed Islamic Group (AIG), is also based in Algeria.

Then there is the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group; and in Egypt the Islamic Jihad and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades.

Though their strength varies, put together they have left a chilling trail of killings over the past 15 years in North and East Africa.

Though West Africa has witnessed some terrorist attacks, for some reason the region and Southern Africa are not yet attractive destinations for the suicide bombers.

In addition to the need to mark out their territory and grab attention through new attacks, terrorist groups in the region could feel emboldened if the US becomes content with having killed Osama and draws down on its counterterrorism partnership with East Africa countries.

Many of the United States’ overt counterterrorism efforts in Africa are aimed towards military assistance and surveillance, and security building.

At the continental level, its main programme is the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) whose African face is the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance Programme (ACOTA).

Smaller regional programmes

This breaks down into smaller regional programmes: The Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI); the Joint Task Force AZTEK SILENCE; and two touch on the wider East Africa: The East African Counter-Terrorism Initiative (EACTI), and the Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA).

East Africa has attracted special interest from the international counter-terrorism community because of its early links to transnational Islamist terrorism — Sudan and Somalia have both served as training grounds and transit routes for Al Qaeda, and the agents who attacked the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were closely linked to cells in Sudan and Somalia.

Established in June 2003 as a programme of the Department of State,  EACTI provides states in East Africa with military training to strengthen coastal, border, Customs, airport, and seaport security.

Under the East African Regional Strategic initiative, the American government has spent $687 million over the past five years in Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania helping the military and intelligence services in these countries to boost their capacity. 

The bulk of this money has gone to peacekeeping efforts in Somalia, which have so far attracted $495 million. 

Kenya and Ethiopia have also been big beneficiaries of the military assistance, with the former getting $58 million and the later $35 million over the past five years. Uganda and Tanzania got $25.41 million and $8.5 million respectively.

Kenya’s position

In the war against terror, Kenya has served as the centrepiece of American counter-terrorism strategy as evidenced by the fact that it received $38 million or 78 per cent of the $49 million that has been spent since 2006.

This could account for Kenya’s intelligence services’ recent successes in help foiling a major attack by Al Shabaab.

If the US strategy were to change to focus more attention on the Somalia crisis, Kenya, Tanzania’s and Uganda’s share of US military assistance budget is likely to rise.

This is to support both military capability and intelligence gathering in the region. In the period between 2009 and 2012, Kenya is expected to receive $3 billion of aid money from America, which is the largest share in Africa.

The bulk of this money is for security assistance, and fighting child mortality and HIV/Aids. Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria are expected to get $2.5 billion each.

The monies poured into counter-terrorism, also enabled regional security agencies to deal with other transnational crimes like human trafficking, in addition to drugs.

Should the US decide to cash in its Osama-death dividend cheque, and divert its counter-terrorism money to fix its debt-burdened economy at home, international crime syndicates could increase their activities, leading to a more fragile situation in East Africa.

Additional reporting by Samantha Spooner