Terrible as it was, al Shabaab’s murderous attack on Garissa University in Kenya was not completely a surprise. The Somali Islamist terrorist group has lost much territory in Somalia in recent years to an African Union military force. Driven from strongholds it once planned to use as the basis of its caliphate, al Shabaab has fallen back on small-unit terrorist attacks in both Somalia and Kenya. Garissa is the latest and deadliest example.

Al Shabaab’s terror has multiple objectives. It is first of all meant to drive Kenyan forces out of Somalia. There is no sign thus far that this gambit is working. Some Kenyans question the wisdom of the Somali intervention back in 2011, but terror attacks have stiffened public support for President Kenyatta’s determination to stay in Somalia until the job there is done.

Another al Shabaab goal is to divide and pit Kenyan religious and ethnic communities against each other. Separating Muslims from Christians, as was done in Garissa, has been an al Sha-baab tactic since at least the Westgate Mall siege in 2013. After Westgate, al Shabaab targeted non-Muslims and certain ethnic groups (specifically Kikuyus) in a wave of bus hijackings and at-tacks on villages and worksites across northeast Kenya. The al Shabaab massacre of 47 people at Mpeketoni near the Kenyan coast in 2014 focused on a Kikuyu community that had been settled generations ago on land taken from local, non-Kikuyu populations.

Thus far, this strategy of driving wedges has also largely failed. Following the Garissa massacre, Kenyans of all religious and ethnic backgrounds, to their great credit, again closed ranks to denounce al Shabaab’s terror.

A third al Shabaab goal is to provoke harsh overreactions by the Kenyan government and its security services. If Kenya’s margin-alized Muslim communities bear the brunt of this overreaction, as al Shabaab no doubt calculates, sympathy and new recruits for the terror group could materialize. Recent trends suggest this initiative may prove more successful.

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