Counter-terrorism in the Horn of Africa: New security frontiers, old strategies

Counter-Terrorism Security

Terrorism has been elevated to the foremost threat to global security. The bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and the attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa in November 2002 confirmed the Horn of Africa as the continent’s most insecure region and a soft target of terrorism. Vulnerability to terrorism has thrust the region into the international spotlight as one of the main theatres of the global anti-terrorist campaign. But like a double-edged sword, the US’s ‘war on terror’ following 11 September 2001 is at once stemming the spread of terrorism and accentuating insecurity in the region’s volatile countries – Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia (including the self-declared Republic of Somaliland), Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.