NAIROBI — On a Sunday afternoon in late February, a car exploded outside a crowded restaurant in Baidoa, Somalia, and moments later a suicide bomber blew himself up among fleeing survivors.At least 30 people died in the attack, the latest by al-Shabaab, a Somali-led al-Qaeda group in East Africa that continues to defy repeated predictions of its demise.Two days before the Baidoa bombings 14 people were killed when two bombs exploded outside a hotel and a public park in the capital Mogadishu.One was a 200kg homemade bomb, only the second time al-Shabaab has used such a large device. The first was in July and the explosion tore the side off a six-storey hotel. Five weeks earlier, 19 were killed in a bomb and gun attack on a restaurant on Mogadishu’s Lido Beach.It is not just civilians who are targeted.On January 15, al-Shabaab fighters overran a military outpost in El-Adde, southern Somalia, manned by up to 200 Kenyan soldiers deployed as part of the African Union peace-enforcement mi...
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