East Africa’s Terrorist Triple Helix: The Dusit Hotel Attack and the Historical Evolution of the...

We are really past the 20 year mark with our fight with AQ in the Horn of Africa.. and it is a draw. AQ aligned organizations have gotten better in thier planning and execution. US allies have gotten better in their CT operations. What does it take to break the stalemate in the favor of the Kenyans and others?
"Although one operation does not in itself indicate a trend, key aspects of the D2 operation suggest that this is a new phase in the evolution of the terrorist threat in East Africa and the Horn. The reasons are twofold: first, the coming of age of al-Shabaab’s East African fighters, gradually transforming a predominantly Somali organization into a more inclusive regional avatar of al-Qa`ida in East Africa; and second, the faltering of Somalia’s political reconstruction under the administration of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo and Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire,5 offering al-Shabaab ample time and space to plan and prepare new operations.

Historically, the threat of terrorism in the region has been at its most acute when three main strands of jihadism—Somali, East African, and global—have intertwined in a kind of ‘triple helix’: Somalia serves as the geographic and organizational host; East African extremists provide the foot soldiers who can operate most effectively across the wider region; and al-Qa`ida provides the ideological legitimacy and global appeal. The 1998 suicide bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing over 220 people and wounding thousands more, were the work of just such a triad: al-Qa`ida, the Somali jihadi group al-Ittihad al-Islami, and a network of Kenyan extremists that later came to be known as al-Hijra. So, too, were the bombing of a tourist resort near Mombasa and attempted shooting down of an Israeli passenger jet in 2002."