BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 29 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida's announcement that Somalia's al-Shabaab Islamists have merged with the jihadist network and reports jihadists are joining the year-old struggle to topple the Syrian regime suggest that al-Qaida, weakened by U.S. attacks, is seeking to reinvent itself.
With al-Shabaab being squeezed on all sides in Somalia, by invading Kenyan forces in the southwest, Ethiopian forces in the north and African Union troops supporting the Transitional Federal Government in the east, backing al-Shabaab does not at first glance look like a viable proposition.
But it was a U.S.-supported Ethiopian intervention in 2006 that played a critical role in creating al-Shabaab in the first place by toppling a short-lived Islamic regime in Mogadishu and installing the Western-backed TFG.
This could happen again, particularly if the Western powers supporting the TFG persist in seeking to resolve Somalia's two decades of what has essentially been clan warfare through a security-driven approach rather than a political-economic blueprint.
The Americans, including a sizeable CIA presence in Somalia, are talking of boosting military aid to the AU peacekeeping force in what is the world's most spectacularly failed state.
This 10,000-strong force, largely made up of Ugandan and Burundian soldiers, is the only thing that kept the fractious, clan-riven TFG in power over the last few years in the face of al-Shabaab attacks.
The Americans also back the Kenyans and Ethiopians, reportedly with occasional airstrikes, intelligence and military support, part of a much broader U.S. policy of clandestine military activity across Africa.
At the same time, the Americans have conducted drone attacks to eliminate al-Shabaab leaders.
Al-Qaida's new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has clearly sought to revitalize the jihadist network and give it new direction since he took over after Osama bin Laden was assassinated by U.S. Special Forces in Pakistan May 2, 2011.
The movement's leadership has been badly ripped apart by U.S. attacks, particularly by missile-firing aerial drones in Pakistan, and this has eroded control by al-Qaida Central, the command node in Pakistan.
The mandate of the corruption-plagued TFG expires in August and the fear is that it will simply be replaced by another group of grasping clan leaders rather than an administration dedicated to finding consensus among Somalia's feuding clans and warlords.
All the signs are the next administration set up in Mogadishu, Somalia's war-battered capital, will be no different than the outgoing one headed by President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed.
It's probably significant that Zawahiri's Feb. 9 announcement al-Shabaab was formally part of al-Qaida came a few days before Britain convened a conference to chart what was billed as a political transition in Somalia in August.
With al-Shabaab excluded from the political process, many observers fear "the process overseen by the United Nations will merely recycle the current politicians and prolong the status quo," warned Afyare Elmi, assistant professor of international affairs at Qatar University.
Al Shabaab's formal links with al Qaida, particularly its highly active branch in Yemen across the Gulf of Aden, could mean an increase in foreign fighters moving in to reinforce the movement's jihadist faction.
Zawahiri's strategy of stirring up jihad in Syria, a far more pivotal state in the Middle East, could be more profitable for al-Qaida because it could help spread the Syrian bloodletting across a region already convulsed by pro-democracy uprisings that have toppled four Arab dictators in a year.
The Americans and their friends don't want to see al-Qaida hijack the Syrian uprising.
The Saudis, bitter opponents of Assad and his Iranian allies, are more ambivalent because they wouldn't mind seeing Sunni jihadists bring down the minority Alawite regime in Damascus.
Al-Qaida claims it was behind suicide bombings against Syrian intelligence centers Dec. 23 and Jan. 6. There have been persistent reports jihadists are infiltrating Syria from neighboring Lebanon and Iraq.
Al-Qaida was overwhelmed, and marginalized, by the spontaneous pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world, which succeeded where it had failed.
Syria "gives jihadists an opportunity to reassert their relevance," says analyst Kamran Bokhari of the global security consultancy Stratfor.
"The collapse of the Syrian state … would allow the jihadists a wide arena in which to operate, stretching from Lebanon to Iraq and putting them very close to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories -- the best theater a jihadist could ask for."
