Expect global bloodletting after Afghan withdrawal fiasco

The questions caught me off-guard: Giving a lecture at the University of Hargeisa in Somaliland in 2019, first a faculty member and then a student asked me whether and when the United States would negotiate with al Shabab, an al Qaeda affiliate waging a terror campaign across Somalia and East Africa.

It seemed a far-fetched question: In September 2013, for example, the group attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, slaughtering 67 before the terrorists themselves died. Two years later, al Shabab terrorists entered Garissa University in Kenya, took 700 students hostage, and killed those who said they were Christian. Then, in October 2017, the group killed more than 500 in a twin truck bombing in Mogadishu.