There has been very little research into why young Kenyan and Somali men join Al Shabaab and the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC). This has led to limited understanding among government and Kenyan society of the roots of radicalisation and terrorism.

But to deal with terrorism you have to understand where it comes from. Three recent research projects come in handy: Two different studies in Kenya and Uganda, followed by a third study in Somalia.

In the Kenyan study, with the assistance of the Kenyan Muslim Youth Alliance, 95 people associated with Al Shabaab were interviewed and 45 associated with the MRC, besides relatives of people associated with the organisations.

It was found that many Muslim youth joined extremist groups as a reaction to the Kenyan government’s collective punishment or killing of their religious leaders. It is clear, therefore, that government anti-terror strategies based on mass arrests and racial profiling are counterproductive and may drive individuals to extremism.

The MRC is often mistakenly associated with al Shabaab, but research shows otherwise. The MRC is driven by ethnic and economic factors, while Al Shabaab’s core is radical Islam. The two have a common enemy in the Kenyan government, but it would be a mistake to place extremists from both groups under one banner.

Violent extremism in Kenya has since the 1990s lost its exclusively foreign character, and national and regional extremism has expanded. While Al Shabaab’s roots are in Somalia, growing acceptance of al-Qaeda and Al Shabaab’s philosophy in traditional African communities has allowed it to spread through the broader region, including Kenya.

The most dramatic manifestation of Al Shabaab’s abilities to strike beyond Somalia came when it successfully executed suicide attacks in Kampala, Uganda, on July 11, 2010, and the attack on the Westgate shopping mall on September 21, 2013 in Nairobi. Al Shabaab was also implicated in smaller attacks where Kenyans were the targets of improvised explosive devices and hand grenade attacks.

In addition to being the victims, Kenyans and Ugandans were directly involved in recruiting their fellow nationals to join Al Shabaab, some of whom were used to execute attacks in their own countries.

These radicalised individuals are identifying with something other than being Kenyan. It shows that radicalisation will increase as long as Kenyan citizens identify with an ethnic or religious identity that is perceived to be under threat.

The assassination of Muslim leaders or scholars has radicalised and recruited dozens, if not hundreds, of people into extremist organisations.

It is not only government and its security forces that treat people on the fringes of society as the “enemy,” but also the broader Kenyan society, which perceives Al Shabaab as consisting only of Somali nationals or those who are visibly Muslim.

Unfortunately, Kenyan government officials have mostly denied that domestic circumstances contribute to the radicalisation of Kenyan nationals. Some consider Kenya an innocent victim of conflict between the US and Islamic extremists, or think that Somalia is the beginning and end of all its security problems. Only a few accept that Kenya is experiencing internal problems.

Security in Kenya is also increasingly politicised, which affects the way the government responds to terrorism. For example, following the killing of at least 15 people in the village of Poromoko near Mpeketoni on the Kenyan coast on June 15, President Uhuru Kenyatta blamed official political opponents, even though Al Shabaab claimed responsibility.

Instead of attempting to bring people together, politicians are harnessing political divisions for their own ends, which further threatens national unity. As a result, the Kenyan leadership has not stepped in to address growing radicalisation when firm action could still have prevented the increase in attacks in Kenya.

Instead, local conditions have enabled growing frustrations to become worse, enabling Al Shabaab to expand its foothold in the country.

In a study we conducted, most Al Shabaab and MRC respondents said what pushed them to join radical organisations were injustices at the hands of Kenyan security forces; a perception of “collective punishment.”

The most important factor that drove respondents to join Al Shabaab, according to 65 per cent of respondents, was the government’s counter-terrorism strategy. The worst example of a campaign of mass arrests came in April, when Kenyan authorities arrested 4,005 Somali-looking individuals.

But lashing out against the collective is ineffective and counterproductive, because a real danger exists that affected communities may see a need to defend themselves, thus driving individuals to extremism. Our research also looked at the role of religious identity in radicalisation. Despite Kenya being a secular country, Muslims feel discriminated against and are not well represented in key government positions and institutions.

Revealingly, 73 per cent of Al Shabaab respondents said they “hated” other religions. Asked to define the intensity of the conflict between Islam and its enemies, 74 per cent of respondents classified it as “ongoing” and 26 per cent as an “all-out war.”

Nearly half of Al Shabaab respondents (49 per cent) identified the government as the source of the threat to their religion, followed by other religions (24 per cent), an external enemy (18 per cent) and a combination of the government and others (9 per cent).

The role of religion was again confirmed when respondents were asked why they joined Al Shabaab – 87 per cent of respondents cited religion. The role of a religious figure in the recruitment process was also important, with 34 per cent of Al Shabaab respondents saying they were approached by a religious figure.

None of the MRC and only 1 per cent of Al Shabaab respondents indicated that they trusted politicians, yet 22 per cent of MRC respondents still believed that elections could bring about change. Only 4 per cent of Al Shabaab respondents had the same trust in the political process.

It is clear that politicians and the government face a serious legitimacy crisis among individuals who ended up joining Al Shabaab and the MRC. The government needs to create the necessary political space to permit the expression of political frustrations and interests other than through the use of violence.

The research found no direct link between poverty and the reason why respondents joined Al Shabaab and the MRC. However, uneven development and subsequent relative deprivation played a prominent role among MRC respondents.

Education or a lack thereof was identified as a crucial contributing factor to relative deprivation. Overall, Al Shabaab respondents were better educated than MRC respondents. The number of years a person spent at school is therefore not the most important factor in preventing later radicalisation — it is also the quality of education that determines its value in preparing a person for a career.

More than half of respondents joined Al Shabaab and the MRC between the ages of 10 and 24. Nearly all Al Shabaab (96 per cent) and MRC (87 per cent) respondents said they had high levels of frustration when they joined the organisations, illustrating the role emotions play in the radicalisation process.

Most Al Shabaab respondents (87 per cent) referred to religion or the need to respond to a threat to their religious identity as their motive for joining. Only 4 per cent of Al Shabaab respondents referred exclusively to economic reasons. MRC respondents were motivated by a combination of ethnic, political and economic reasons.

By contrast, economics waa much larger factor in recruitment to Al Shabaab in Somalia, where researchers interviewed 88 former fighters in Mogadishu in April 2014, in a separate study by the ISS and Finn Church Aid that used the same methodology as the Kenya research.

Anneli Botha has been a senior researcher on terrorism at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria since 2003. Her specific areas of interest are counter-terrorism strategies and the underlying causes of terrorism and radicalisation.