The Intervention :Kenya - Somalia Nexus

The mention of an attack along Moi Avenue, Nairobi (Kenya) and the impulsive thought of blaming Al-Shaabab inspired this post. Thanks to all the people and institutions who give me insight on what's happening, and the news too. The views here are totally personal.

Somalia has been anarchy for like Forever. To me it seems forever coz since I was a child, Somalia has been synonymous with conflict, refugees, war and all those derogatory words. Civil war broke out in 1991 when the former despotic leader of Somalia, Siad Barre was ousted. Somalia seems like a hopeless case and why does it seem so? It is at war with itself, with the region and the international community. Well, the Somalia history and the wars and proxy wars involved it would cost me the whole post so I’ll get into the dynamics another day.

image courtesy of area254.com

The TFG, according to the people, has been imposed on them by the International actors and they are corrupt and useless – If I am allowed to use that term. Al-shabaab was born out of grievances by the people due to economic mismanagement and poor governance. They saw the TFG as a ‘puppet’ regime and the Ethiopian backers as ‘invaders’. The insurrection group has espoused vicious patterns of violence buttressed by spiritual tactics. 

In the news, we heard that Kenya was intervening in Somalia because of the kidnapping of foreigners at the Coast by Al-shabaab. Well, how could it take about 1-2 weeks to prepare for a war of that magnitude? The abductions may have been just but a trigger but definitely not the main reason the otherwise meek Kenyan military could have ventured into the Somali territory. Kenya’s hard power had been a cause for speculation for far too long (even Museveni doubted the Kenyan army could fight) and they were proving their military might by going into Somalia to save it and chase Al Shabaab away, right? Well, It had more to do with protecting Kenya’s interests, mostly economic. The Port of Lamu is a major project to be undertaken but the problem comes in when you think about the proximity to Somalia and the pirates. For any chance of success, Somalia needs to be stable. So probably the government of Kenya had thought of ways they could get into Somalia, have support of the Kenyans and international actors as well and not have questions risen. I mean, we have IDPs languishing in camps and the government wanted to spend money on war, they needed a good excuse. So they went in, with so much pomp and excitement. Kenyans too were excited. All TV stations had live reports on the intervention. Then came the media blackout. All of a sudden, as fast as they had started, they stopped. Was Kenya biting off more than they could chew? Had they really thought this through?

 Kenya was going strong up until they got about 100kms into Somalia. Now they had to maintain the captured towns or else Al-Shabaab would recapture them and they also had to move on. How? They had obviously not thought this through. Kismayu is known to be the economic power of Al-Shabaab. If the intention was to weaken them, they could have gotten there but they haven’t.  Alshabaab are very deceptive and very smart. They can camouflage, they can fit in. They can just adorn themselves with a buibui and niqaab and act like women – only with a gun, a grenade or some sort of weapon beneath the buibui. You can’t tell them apart from their Somali counterparts. War is also very expensive and Kenya has its own economic problems. This war is just not sustainable. They had not set a time period for when they would leave. So they re-hatted and joined the AMISOM forces which would create a source of funds and also some sort of redemption for the Kenyan forces. They were not quitting, they had joined AMISOM. They were trying to tell us that they weren’t defeated but in actual sense, to me, that’s exactly the message I got. The vast support they had started to diminish and this may probably be because of the body bags that started finding its way into the country. Some also speculate that Kenya wants to get rid of Dadaab refugee camp though this is a problem that’s not spoken of too loudly. If the soldiers manage to save Somalia, the Somali inhabitants will make their way back home and Kenya won’t be home to one of the largest refugee camps.  I wait for that to happen.

So now Kenya is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can’t just up and leave Somalia, after all they wanted to demonstrate their military might. On the other hand, Kenya continues to be seen as an enemy to Al-Shabaab and chances are they will not stop attacking us until we pack up and leave their country. I wait to see what happens.

God protect us!