Things getting tougher in Somalia Send to a friend

Things getting tougher in Somalia Send to a friend

Mobhare Matinyi

    matinyi@hotmail.com 

Famine-hit Somalia is once again in the limelight this time not for piracy but for being attacked from all possible angles in an effort to dislodge the hard fighting Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahidin, literally meaning "The Movement of the Striving Youth" famously known in short as Al Shabaab.

Al Shabaab, a self-proclaimed Al Qaeda franchise, is basically an off-shoot of a strictly religious group called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which fragmented into several smaller organizations following its removal from power by Ethiopian troops in December 2006.

The objectives of Al Shabaab are short and simple: to wage Jihad against the "enemies" of Islam; but alas! Are the thousands of dying Muslim Somalis enemies of Islam?

With covert military support from Eritrea, Al Shabaab is currently battling several armies comprising the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the African Union Mission to Somalia (Amisom) made up of Burundi and Ugandan forces, and the Kenyan forces.  The brutal Al Shabaab is also facing serious opposition from Ethiopia, and from neighboring Djibouti, a tiny country which hosts small contingents of American and French troops. Djibouti has promised to send troops to reinforce Amisom.

Considering that American and French troops are stationed in neighboring Djibouti, Al Shabaab fighters expect a severe challenge from the two major powers. Although France denies any involvement contrary to Kenya's confession, the US is already assisting Kenya remotely. The US operates from southern Ethiopia and Kenyan coast as well.

For Al Shabaab the immediate challenge comes from the recent Kenyan incursion backed by support from the Western powers. Kenya was forced to launch a defensive attack in Somalia in October after a series of attacks targeting locals, foreign aid workers and tourists inside its own territory.

But why did Kenyan authorities wait for so long when Al Shabaab was slowly taking unofficial "control" of some parts of Kenya? The answer is simple: Kenya was the main beneficiary of the dirty money from the Somali pirates. Indeed, in the past few years pirates have pumped a lot of cash into the Kenyan economy through real estate purchases and establishment of new businesses.

Historically, greed in Kenya has been fueling criminal activities in the region for decades including smuggling Ugandan coffee in the 1970s, Tanzanian gold in the 1980s, and currently food grain, pretty much everything even cattle rustling, and some Kenyans feel proud about it.

This time though the dirty deal has backfired. In the midst of this bizarre marriage between the Kenyan economy and the Somali piracy, Al Shabaab built a safe haven in the Kenyan territory before blowing it up by targeting Westerners. Fearing the loss of tourist revenue and angering her Western allies, the Kenyan government sent her ill-experienced troops into Somalia.

Speaking of combat exposure, Kenya's military has never fought a war since independence in 1963 and its peacekeeping involvement hasn't been impressive either. No wonder that Kenyan fighter jets bombed a refugee camp repeatedly and its navy killed unarmed Kenyans who were fishing.

The Kenyan government which has complained to the United Nations about Eritrea's assistance to Al Shabaab is reported to have found the going too tough, contrary to its expectations that the mission would be over by Christmas. Al Shabaab had warned earlier that the combat-untested lads from Kenya won't uproot them. Honestly, it's not easy to fight an insurgency.

Humbly, Kenya has now asked for US help although as mentioned earlier, analysts believe that the US and French military were already helping Kenya in fighting the illusive and invisible Al Shabaab.

Certainly, Kenya will have to seek more help from other nations since the Americans and the French won't put their soldiers at risk. Not surprisingly, the US Navy Times reports that Uganda and Kenya have already sent delegations to Israel to seek military assistance.

But it's unlikely that Israel will physically get involved in Somalia.Now, an accidental conglomerate of militaries from Burundi, Uganda, Kenya, the US, France, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the Somali government, will make this operation a bloody one with little prospects for success but certainty huge ones for civilian casualties.

Let us be realistic here, despite the covert and overt deployment of several armies and military assistance the mission is still bogged down in a quagmire as according to the UN reports Al Shabaab is bold enough to kick out 16 aid agencies that are funded by Western nations. Now, what should the world do?

As Tanzanian foreign policy on the complex Somali issue suggests, helping Somalis should be a global undertaking, rather than letting a bunch of galvanized but inexperienced forces twinned with ill-equipped but experienced forces trade shots with the insurgents. The efforts could end up being perceived as an anti-Islamic misadventure while in reality millions of Muslim Somalis are dying and begging for help. Truly, the world needs to look into this matter afresh.


http://thecitizen.co.tz/editorial-analysis/-/17547-things-getting-tougher-in-somalia
Mr Matinyi is a consultant based in Washington, DC