Kenyan troops face tough slogging in SomaliaPublished On Wed Oct 19 2011
By Michelle Shephard<http://www.thestar.com/unassigned/columnists/296383--shephard-michelle>National Security Reporter
NAIROBI, KENYA—Somalia’s heavy rains and mud are slowing the advance of hundreds of Kenyan troops in their fight against Al Shabab, but it is more than weather woes that are raising fears about Kenya getting bogged down in southern Somalia.
Kenya’s surprising military offensive this week against the Somalia-based radical Islamic group has many here worried about a retributive attack and long-term prospects of fighting an intractable war with a country hostile to foreign forces.
“The question to ask for me is, what are the Kenyans aiming for?” said International Crisis Group analyst Rashid Abdi in an interview Wednesday.
“A bit of muscle-flexing is fine. What worries me is if the Kenyans think they can occupy southern Somalia.”
Abdi argues that Kenya is ill-equipped to stay in Somalia long and need only look at Ethiopia’s disastrous 2006 military intervention, which effectively gave rise to the Shabab as Somalis joined forces to fight the country’s traditional arch-enemy.
Kenya sent 1,600 troops into Somalia on Sunday to hunt Shabab militants after four kidnappings, including the abduction of Marie Dedieu, a 66-year-old, quadriplegic Frenchwoman, who was taken from her Kenyan island home Oct. 1.
France announced Wednesday that Dedieu had died in custody, likely from the lack of medication she required for her cancer treatment.
Somalia’s prime minister expressed condolences, saying it was an “inhumane act of that offends the dignity of the Somali people.”
Al Shabab has denied any role in the kidnappings.
While Kenya vowed Wednesday to overcome washed-out roads and flooding to push toward Kismayo, a Somali port town and Shabab stronghold, it also scrambled to portray the military action as a joint offensive with Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.
Upon returning from a meeting with Somali officials in Mogadishu, Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula told reporters Wednesday that the intervention was coordinated at Mogadishu’s behest.
“First of all, there is no invasion, and Kenya has no intention of invading any country,” local reports quoted him as saying.
Somalia’s government said earlier this week it had not been informed of Kenya’s actions and did not approve.
Despite the Shabab’s threats to bring down Nairobi’s “skyscrapers” in retaliation, there is no notable increase in security here in Kenya’s capital. Nor is there widespread concern about the military intervention among Kenyans who are fed up with lost tourism dollars due to the kidnappings and the economic hardship of Somali refugees streaming into camps and cities.
“Pre-emptive strikes for the purpose of self-defence against Al Shabab in neighbouring Somalia was overdue,” begins an opinion piece in one of Nairobi’s leading newspapers.
But still, there is fear that the Shabab will make good on its threat. Kenyans remain haunted by the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy that killed more than 200, Al Qaeda’s inaugural large-scale attack.
There has been little doubt in the past few years that the Shabab could strike Kenya’s capital, with members scattered throughout the country. A July report from the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea also warned of recruiting and training within Kenya.
The report states since 2009, the Shabab has “rapidly expanded its influence and membership to non-Somali Kenyan nationals who, according to the Monitoring Group estimates, today constitute the largest and most structurally organized non-Somali group within Al Shabab.”
The question until now has always been, why would they strike?
Attacking Kenya has not been in the Shabab’s interest because the country serves an important economic and logistical hub as fighters and funds shuttle back and forth across the border.
“Al Shabab was a movement led by strategic thinkers, people who said, ‘This is a country that has served us well — a rear base — so let’s not strike it,’” said Abdi.
But Shabab’s leadership in recent months has been fractured between hardliners and more moderate members who opposed the group’s inaction on the famine and the bombing in Mogadishu earlier this month that killed dozens of students.
That’s what Abdi says worries him.
“The irrational elements are now in power . . . those that believe a quick strike will teach Kenya a lesson are the ones now holding sway within Al Shabab,” he said.
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