Al-Shabaab InsurgencySomalia · 2009-ongoing“After the state fell and the courts were broken, another force learned to rule from the shadows.”Al-Shabaab rose from the wreckage of the Islamic Courts Union after Ethiopia's 2006 intervention in Somalia. What began as a militant youth wing hardened into an insurgency with its own courts, taxes, punishments and claims of religious rule.The lesson the elders kept: An insurgency feeds on broken institutions as much as ideology. Al-Shabaab teaches that security gains will not hold unless people can believe the state will stay after the soldiers leave.