Analysis: al-Shabaab will already be planning its next move The longer-term question, however, is what this means for Somalia's al-Qaeda-allied jihadist army, one of a new axis of Islamist aggression touching Yemen, the Horn of Africa, northern Nigeria and the southern Sahara. No longer will it be able to control urban centres and play the role of regional government, taxing civilians, setting rules and punishing miscreants. When it loses Kismayo, it loses its most important source of revenue - the tithes it takes from traders using the city's port. That means it will no longer be able to finance the kind of administrative presence it has had across southern Somalia for the last three years. Instead, what money the organisation still commands is likely to go on more weapons, more explosives, and paying for ever harder-line fighters. The fear is that when al-Shabaab held towns, those ranged against it - Somalia's government, the African Union, aid agencies, Western intelligence agencies - knew where their enemy was. Once the Islamists are forced into the bush, they effectively disappear. They will then most likely focus on hit-and-run ambushes on coalition convoys, on attacking aid agencies if they return, and on suicide bombings in Mogadishu and the "newly liberated" Kismayo. Furthermore, Kenya itself will become even more of a target for al-Shabaab's bombs. Already there is a heavy presence of the group's sympathisers in parts of Kenya's coast, and in poor areas of Nairobi. Al-Shabaab will already be plotting revenge, both within Somalia and outside its borders.