Stig Hansen's book proposes a history of one of the radical Islamist groups in Somalia that has been defying forecasts as it has been able to reinvent itself every time it faced annihilation. The book goes into details about the birth, the tense relations al-Shabaab entertained with other political actors in Somalia, its connections with al-Qaeda and the current spill-over of the confrontation with the AMISOM in neighbouring countries, especially Kenya.

This study does not take al-Shabaab propaganda for granted and analyses this movement. In contrast to many security-oriented publications, it pays attention to several important features of what could be called a state-building strategy of this radical group. The connections with al-Qaeda are seen for what they have been, fluctuant and relative in many regards despite the fundamental commitment of a core group in the leadership. For all those reasons, the book deserves a careful reading.

Yet, the author could have paid more attention to several important patterns of the post 9/11 political dynamics in Somalia. The first one is that Somalia was then a country at war with itself for more than a decade: the use of violence and the call for the restoration of law and order were framed in a specific history. The dynamics of political Islam in Somalia, its failures and resilience, are only analysed in a few pages while they highlight many paradoxes of the construction of the Jihadi movement, notably the very ambivalent and contradictory role played by Hasan Daahir Aweys, the singularity of the Raas Kambooni movement and its leader Hasan Turki. Against the conspiracy theories and the understanding of Ethiopian and Western security services, such an analysis would have described a process in which even al-Shabaab current leaders were often hesitant, contradictory in their political tactics and fairly Somalia-centred. Al-Shabaab growth was made possible thanks to the support it got from other potentially rival groups at different moments for different reasons. In particular, the role played by al-I'tisaam al-Islaamiyya and Hisbul Islaam deserved an extensive analysis. To put it in a nutshell, al-I'tisaam's supportive role was essential in the formative years and the major defeat encountered by al-Shabaab was not – as claimed in the book – the loss of Mogadishu in July/August 2011, but the hostile attitude of most of the ‘ulemaa who were close to that organisation after summer 2010 just before Hisbul Islam was forced to merge to avoid eradication.

As the author rightly underlines, al-Shabaab leadership has always been divided on many important political and tactical issues and, at the same time, less prone to ideological discussions since most in the leadership do not share a deep religious culture: Ahmed Godane is certainly one of the few with Fu'aad Shangoole and ‘Abdiqaadir Muumin to master it. The author emphasises the importance of the military branch and the ‘secret police’ (Amniyat) in charge of assassinations but he should have considered much more carefully the role d'awa plays in the survival strategy of the movement and its ability to be seen as an ‘avant-garde’ for many Sunni youth.

The book correctly mentions the catastrophic effects of the covert war waged after 9/11 in Mogadishu, but does not detail the regional and international policies that provided – often by reaction – al-Shabaab with a social support it would never have enjoyed for itself. Ethiopia provided many opportunities to al-Shabaab not only by intervening in December 2006 in Somalia but also by ruling through coercion its Region 5 for nearly two decades. Kenya, in a very different manner, by denying civil grievances offers even more room for a militarisation of political contradictions in its coastal areas. As this reviewer already noted in 2011 in an extensive analysis of the Jihadi movement, Kenya is going to pay a high price for its policy on Somalia.

The book leaves unanswered many questions. First, why and how was al-Shabaab able to get so many commanders from Somaliland but not be active there, except a few terror attacks (especially in late October 2008)? This lack of attention is surprising, as al-Shabaab is well aware of the synergies it can gain from Somaliland. Second, while in 2009 al-Shabaab propaganda talked about setting up an Islamic State, that goal was given up in the following years. Was it a victory of the internationalist ideology or an acknowledgement that the task was too ambitious for a movement that lacked cadres and was too decentralised to properly carry out that mandate? This is important because it raises a sensitive issue among Somali Islamists at large (and in government circles in Addis-Ababa): what are the borders of the Somali Islamists' ambitions? Third, the author is courageous to pinpoint that al-Shabaab indeed got support from certain segments of Somali society. However, he does not dig around enough to provide more nuanced explanations than a taste for law and order. Had he done so, he would have explained part of the resilience of that movement that despite all defeats and recurrent international announcements is still able to recruit people to fight a war that cannot be won.

A last point can be useful in case a second edition is published. Somali transliteration should be enforced carefully to avoid using three different spellings for the same name, as happens to Abuukar Aadane or ‘Ali Mahamed Raggeh in this book. The Somali alphabet does not have the letter ‘p’ as Arabic; yet, one can read ‘Hapsade’ instead of ‘Habsade’. There are also other errors: for instance, the author confuses ‘Ubayda (Hawiye/Haber Gidir) and Abu Qutayba (Hawiye/Murusade).