October 19, 2011 8:12 pm
Kenya ready for showdown with Somali rebels
Kenyan forces were heading for a showdown with Somali militants 75km inside Somalia’s borders on Wednesday, as officials said that a French hostage seized on Kenya’s coast had died.
Kenya’s incursion into Somalia this week has put an end to a policy of containment that held for years. When other foreign armies tried and failed to impose solutions on its troubled neighbour, which has been without a functioning government since the overthrow in 1991 of Siad Barre, Kenya kept its distance.
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But a string of kidnappings blamed on Somali militants has jeopardised the tourism industry, one of Kenya’s main sources of foreign exchange. Combined with growing domestic pressure, this has pushed Nairobi to drop its traditional caution, even though the risks of repercussions remain high.
As Kenyan troops crossed the border last weekend, al-Shabaab militants in Somalia, who have a network of supporters within Kenya according to UN reports, warned they would retaliate with terrorist attacks on the Kenyan capital.
There is also no guarantee that boots on the ground inside Somalia will be effective in curtailing the threat Somalia poses to regional stability.
“Kenya is certainly in the line of fire and invasion ramps it up further but Kenya decided the risk of doing nothing had become greater than the risk of invading,” a senior western official said.
France on Wednesday announced that 66-year old Marie Dedieu, whose kidnap on October 1 near the Kenyan island of Lamu was blamed by Kenya on Somali Islamists, had died in captivity inside Somalia.
Meanwhile, a Kenyan military spokesman said that Kenyan forces and Somali government troops had killed 73 al-Shabaab rebels and captured three towns. Residents of the Somali town of Afmadow said that rebels were fortifying defences in the town.
Kenya has supported proxies and militias inside Somalia in the past. But since the 1960s, when the two countries fought over border territory, it has avoided being drawn into direct confrontation.
Kenya has its own large Somali population to worry about. There are some 2.4m ethnic Somalis in Kenya, as well as close to 600,000 Somali refugees, a population that has grown as a result of conflict and recent drought.
There is also the history of other failed interventions. The war inside Somalia can be traced to Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006. The invasion was successful in overthrowing an administration backed by Islamic courts, in favour of an unpopular and weak transitional government propped up by western donors and Ugandan and Burundian African Union troops. But Al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabaab militants have been fighting it ever since.
US and United Nations efforts to tackle starvation in the earlier years of the civil war and restore stability ended similarly in retreat and failure.
Kenya’s ambitions may be less grandiose. The government claims it has sent troops in “hot pursuit” of kidnappers. “If we think they [the kidnappers] are in Kismayo, we will go to Kismayo,” government spokesman Alfred Mutua told the Financial Times, referring to the port town that doubles as the militants’ stronghold and their main source of revenue from illegally trafficked goods.
However, Mr Mutua said Kenyan forces also aimed to “track down and dismantle the al-Shabaab”. Western diplomats believe they will attempt at least to secure the border area, and create a buffer zone manned by allied proxies.
In an interview with the FT two weeks ago, Raila Odinga, Kenya’s prime minister, hinted that the government was running out of options. He said Somalia was the “epicentre” of a dangerous crisis embracing piracy, terrorism and refugees that poses a serious security challenge. Initiatives such as training up Somalia militias had backfired.
“We’re told that some of them have run away, some of them have defected to the rebels or some have run away to Kenya, so that shows you the level of commitment of some of these mercenaries,” he said.
Kenya may be calculating now that al-Shabaab has been weakened by internal divisions and an offensive in the capital Mogadishu by transitional government militias backed by AU troops.
But with history in mind, many regional experts predict that a full-scale invasion against such a guerrilla force could be counter-productive. Somalis tend to unite when foreigners invade.
“There’s no way you can get the last man and the last gun,” said an international military source based in Kenya, adding that long supply lines in muddy ground ill-served by infrastructure would make the Kenyans vulnerable.
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