Lt Col Jeff Nyaga (centre), Captain Patrick Mutuku (left) and Ras Kamboni Brigade head, Sheikh Ahmed Madobe, confer at the Central Square of Afmadhow town early this week.
Two days after the capture of Afmadhow by Kenyan and allied Somali forces, Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Nyaga ascended the steps of a stage in the middle of the wind-swept Central Square in the town and addressed the locals.
The speech was brief, as you would expect from a military man. Read (Kenya on high alert as troops target Kismayu)
No, he said, Kenya had not come to extend its territorial boundaries.
Somalia has not had a government for more than 20 years, he pointed out, and Kenya had not moved a single beacon at the border to eat into Somali territory.
False, again, he said. The Kenyan Defence Forces were not in Somalia to spread Christianity —one of the oft-repeated propaganda lines by Al-Shabaab.
Kenya was a multi-religious nation with all creeds represented in its military, he said, and the presence of its forces in Somalia had absolutely nothing to do with religion.
Kenya had a single mission in Somalia. It was to fight the Shabaab, a group that, he said, had brutalised locals and extended its extremism campaign into Kenya’s borders.
The speech itself contained few surprises. But the fact that the head of the forces at the frontline was holding a megaphone, surrounded by sandal-wearing elders and speaking to a crowd of nearly 5,000 people in the middle of the strategic town of Afmadhow, was a metaphor for what Kenya is trying to do in Southern Somalia.
A visit to the areas where the Kenyan forces have taken control— an arc that traces a long line from Dhobley near the border through market centres from Tabda, to Beles Qoqani, Delbio and Hosingow and ultimately to Afmadhow— illustrates this.
Kenya is engaged in an ambitious experiment in establishing new administrations and institutions in the region near its borders, an effort at nation building that has not been attempted since Somalia descended into anarchy in 1991.
Not content with sweeping into the territory from which they have routed Al-Shabaab and marching forward, Kenya has been working in every district they have captured to build a new local government from scratch, seeking the buy-in of locals to find a durable replacement to Al-Shabaab.
The objective is to create an exclusion zone stretching up to Kismayu, nearly 240 kilometres from the Kenyan border, from which the Shabaab can no longer operate with any level of freedom.
That probably explains the painstakingly deliberate speed with which the Kenyans have moved, avoiding the temptation to pour forward into new areas while leaving regions close to the border exposed.
“We came here with a very clear mission, which is to degrade Al-Shabaab’s capability and make sure our borders are safe,” said Col Daniel Bartonjo, Deputy Brigade Commander of the Kenyan forces in the South of Somalia.
“Our success so far has been partially attributable to our understanding of clan politics in Somalia and our close cooperation with locals everywhere we have gone.
Organise elections
We have been patient. After liberating an area we organise elections, help them set up a security apparatus and assist them in pacification of the area. This can take two to three months. We don’t need to move fast until we have achieved our objective. Our aim is to win hearts and minds. When we are sure an area is safe we move to the next area.”
The mission seems to be going to plan, so far at least.
Since they crossed the border on October 14, the Kenyans have pushed the militia from areas near the Kenyan border stretching up to Afmadhow —representing 100,000 square kilometres or about one sixth the size of Somalia.
The towns from which the Shabaab have fled, with the exception of Beles Qoqani and Afmadhow at the frontline, are now almost entirely quiet with no reported military action for the last few months.
Business has picked up in these areas as has the population. In October 2011, according to local officials, Dhobley’s population stood at 5,000. Now, it is touching 20,000 as the famously entrepreneurial local Somalis, including many returnees from the diaspora, have flooded back.
There have been no cross-border raids from Somalia since the abduction of tourists in September last year and no piracy attacks near the Kenyan section of the sea in that period.
Overall, according to the European Union, piracy across the Somali sea line is down 68 per cent due to a range of factors.
In keeping with the trend elsewhere in the country, there has been a resurgence of economic activity in the regions from which the Shabaab have been driven.
The Economist magazine last week reported that there has been a 20 per cent rise in financial flows recorded by the Dahabshiil money transfer giant, which has a presence in towns from Mogadishu to Afmadhow.
Afmadhow is the latest town on which Kenya is attempting to apply its model of building leadership and institutions to take the place of the Shabaab, who have held sway for the last five years.
The reason the town was such an attractive target is because of its strategic location which makes it the crossroads to almost the entire Southern Somalia.
Financial woe
Its capture spells more financial woe for the Shabaab because most material from the Kismayu port has to flow through Afmadhow.
It links Djilib—a key commercial centre with Kismayu, Buale, Dif Somalia, Beles Qoqani, Dhobley, Bibi, Hosingow and ultimately most of northern Kenya.
When they forced the Shabaab to retreat from the town, the Kenyan forces, held a meeting with elders and asked for an election to pick someone to be the administrative head.
The man tapped by consensus was Abdihakim Omar Haji, a mild-mannered former teacher, who now occupies the District Commissioner’s office which, until last week, was the headquarters of the Shabaab in the town.
The next step was the address at the baraza. In many ways, the approach of the Kenyan forces in Somalia differs sharply from that of other forces that have come in to seize control of this country in the last three decades.
The Americans and their allies, with a massive force of about 25,000 troops and with the noble intention of alleviating an acute humanitarian crisis in the country, appeared to have underestimated the complexity of the local clan and business interests that fed the civil war in the 1990s.
They soon found themselves taking fire from all sides and had to organise a hasty retreat.
The Ethiopians —more recent entrants into the vortex of the Somalia conflict— were successful in ousting the Shabaab initially but courted the animosity of locals with what was seen as a heavy-handed approach and eventually had to withdraw.
Kenya has opted to use a combination of lethal force to deal with the Shabaab and a diplomatic charm offensive to win the trust of the locals— especially the elders of the Mohamed Zuber sub-clan of the Ogaden, who are the dominant group in Jubbaland and Gedo regions.
An elaborate effort to foster ties with powerful local clan leaders such as Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Islam, best known as Sheikh Madobe, and Brigadier General Ismael Sahardid has been part of that effort.
Prominent players
The pair, who are natives of the Jubbaland region, have been key liaisons between the Kenyan forces and locals.
They are expected to be prominent players in running the region when Kenya eventually withdraws, and they flanked Lt Col Nyaga when he made his initial speech to locals.
That address helped soothe local fears. Some of them had bought Shabaab propaganda to such an extent that they skipped Friday prayers the day after Kenya took control of Afmadhow.
An elder, Hussein Khalid Hussein, told the Saturday Nation the predominant emotion among locals following the exit of the Shabaab was one of relief.
“I was arrested several times because I would not cooperate with them. They insisted our children must join Shabaab. They placed sanctions on NGOs and left the poor suffering.”
Yet challenges remain. The flight of the Shabaab has not eased the humanitarian crisis in the region. In some respects, living conditions could yet get worse because there are reports that the Shabaab are blocking supplies from Kismayu.
The Kenyans and local officials are urging NGOs to come in and offer aid due to the improved security environment.