How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
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THE GUNS OF OCTOBER: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
2 hours agoby Patrick Gathara17 min read0 Comments
Somalia Invasion
When Kenyan troops crossed the proverbial Rubicon and entered Somalia nearly six years ago, it caught almost everyone by surprise. It was Kenya’s first sustained and significant foray into its troubled neighbors territory and ran counter to the country’s historic pacifism -at least in international if not necessarily in domestic, affairs- as well as against the grain of the advice she had received from her much more experienced friends and patrons in the international community.
The immediate trigger of Kenya’s offensive was a spate of kidnappings of aid workers and tourists near the Somalia border, which had devastated the country’s lucrative tourism industry and which the government blamed on the al Shabaab terror group. Since 2007, the al Shabaab, had been fighting to oust the then transitional government in Mogadishu which was protected by AU forces under the AU Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). Allied to Osama bi Laden’s Al Qaeda, the al Shabaab had carried out atrocities both inside and outside Somalia, including the July 2010 bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, which targeted football fans watching the soccer World Cup final and killed 76 people.
The objectives given by the Kenyan government for the invasion were both confused and confusing. Spokesman Alfred Mutua initially claimed the KDF was pursuing the alleged kidnappers across the border but later admitted that the kidnappings had been an excuse to launch a plan that had “been in the pipeline for a while.” Despite the fact that the al Shabaab had strongly denied having anything to do with the kidnappings and the government produced no evidence to back up its allegations, it still dispatched a letter to the UN Security Council citing the “latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the Al-Shabaab terrorists” as reason for “remedial and pre-emptive action” undertaken “to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security.”
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia. “We are going to be there until the (Somali government) has effectively reduced the capacity of al-Shabaab to fire a single round … We want to ensure there is no al Shabaab,” declared military spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir.
The first few weeks were greeted with euphoric displays of patriotism from a polarized populace desperate for something to rally around. Less than four years prior, the country had almost torn itself apart following the shambolic and disputed elections of 2007. For a country used to seeing itself, despite the testimony of history, as “an island of peace in a sea of chaos”, the episode was profoundly traumatizing and left in its wake deep and disturbing questions about what it meant to be Kenyan. The adoption of a new constitution in 2010, a seminal moment in any nation’s history, had done little to quieten the nagging doubts. A Government of National Unity formed in the aftermath of the violence was proving to be a testy affair. The power struggles and political realignments within it, as well as the continuing and blatant theft of public resources it presided over, undermined rather than reinforced the already shaky idea of Kenya.
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia.
But if there’s one thing that can be relied on to rally a people, it is war. And war was what the media branded the invasion. “Kenyan troops off to war” blared the Daily Nation headline. “We are in a war against terrorists in and outside our country,” President Uhuru Kenyatta would declare in December 2014. However, there has never been an official declaration of war, either against Somalia or against Al Shabaab, which according to the constitution requires the authorization of Parliament.
Regardless, following the invasion Kenyans were treated to breathless coverage of the exploits and capacities of their valiant and heroic troops. Tales came about captured towns that few had ever heard of and one front page article even proclaimed the “imminent fall of Kismayo”. Uncomfortable questions about the aims and wisdom of the invasion were quickly swept aside. Still, as John Adams, the second President of the United States said, “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
The first hints of the morass Kenya had got herself mired in came quite early on. Within weeks of setting foot in Somalia, the troops were literally stuck in mud as the invasion had been conducted at the height of Somalia’s dehr short rain season. 60 days into what had been branded Operation Linda Nchi, Franklin would report that “KDF ground units are bogged down in the mud of South Central Somalia or marooned in the vicinity of Ras Kamboni on the Indian Ocean. Bad weather seems to have severely limited sorties by fixed wing ground attack aircraft as well as KDF attack helicopters”. It would take the KDF nearly 7 months to capture Afmadow, al Shabaab’s logistical base, and a year to get to Kismayo, Somalia’s second largest port, which was the real prize. By this time, Operation Linda Nchi had been wound down without achieving any of its objectives and 4600 Kenyan troops transferred to AMISOM.
Back in Kenya, the novelty of war had worn thin and the country was settling down to yet another divisive and scary election campaign. It was also coming to terms with the fact that the battle with the al Shabaab would not just be fought in Somalia. Almost immediately after the invasion, al Shabaab leaders had begun promising “huge blasts” in Nairobi. An initial campaign attacks using hand grenades and improvised explosives badly damaged the already fragile perception of security. But what completely shattered it was the attack on the Westgate Mall in September 2013 where 4 terrorists murdered at least 68 people and ruthlessly exposed the incompetence and corruption at the heart of the national security establishment.
In fact, it is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that. Few will ever forget the grainy CCTV footage of soldiers, who were meant to be battling the terrorists, instead strolling out of the Nakumatt supermarket carrying plastic shopping bags. The four-day fiasco, the friendly fire incident in which the KDF shot and killed a commander of the General Service Unit’s Recce Squad, the looting of the mall, the confused public updates and the inability to take on 4 armed men at the heat of the city destroyed public confidence in the KDF and in the intelligence agencies.
The carefully cultivated reputation of the National Intelligence Service, honed during its time as the Directorate of Security Intelligence, better known as the “Special Branch”, and favorite tool of surveillance and repression by the brutal regime of Daniel Arap Moi, was also in tatters. It would be completely obliterated by a series of large attacks which came within the two years following Westgate. These include the massacres in Mpeketoni and at the Garissa University College, and the attacks on buses and workers in Mandera, all of which claimed tens and sometimes hundreds of lives, and which were all, somewhat unfairly, blamed on failures of intelligence.
For the KDF, the bad news would keep on coming. It was again at the centre of the failures in both Mpeketoni and Garissa University, and was accused in a November 2015 report of profiteering from the Somalia deployment. A report titled “Black and White” by Journalists for Justice, accused the KDF of colluding with al Shabaab, the very enemy they are supposed to be fighting, to illegally export charcoal out of Somalia ports and to smuggle sugar into Kenya. Similar allegations had been made by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea and the KDF’s vehement denials and empty promises to investigate did little to salvage its reputation.
On January 15, 2016 the AMISOM base at the nondescript Somali town of El Adde, which was manned by troops from the Kenyan contingent, was overrun by the al Shabaab. Up to 200 soldiers were killed and a dozen kidnapped. A UN report by the accused KDF of failure to implement basic defensive measures and concluded that the al Shabaab faced “relatively little resistance from the Kenyan troops”.
Back home, the government and the KDF retreated into silence, obviously hoping the questions and calls for accountability would go away. They would be temporarily jolted out of their reverie a year later when another KDF-manned camp was overrun by al Shabaab, this time at Kulbiyow. Different accounts of what happened have been offered with The Standard claiming up to 68 soldiers were killed and the KDF putting the number at 9 with 15 injured.
None of this has done the KDF’s reputation much good. Today, its star is considerably diminished. It has turned out to be just as vacuous, corrupt, incompetent and unaccountable as nearly all the other public institutions in the political firmament.
Regardless of this, the government has not shied away from increasing the deployment of the KDF internally. In fact, especially since October 2011, the military has taken on a much more public profile. For a country which has never experienced the misfortune of military rule, Kenya has always had an uneasy relationship with its soldiers. Following two failed coup plots in the 70s and the 80s, the political elite has preferred to keep the troops happy, well fed and watered in their barracks. But, as Daniel Branch noted in Foreign Policy, by 2011, the KDF had “been trained and equipped to do much more than parade on national holidays.” Increased counter-terrorism funding from Washington had underwritten a stronger Kenyan military which in turn had “grown more confident and combative”.
It is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that.
In the aftermath of the invasion of Somalia, it has now become almost routine for the government to deploy this capability to deal with local trouble spots within the country without seeking authorization from the National Assembly as required by the constitution. Neither does it appear that the Inspector General of Police is made “responsible for the administration, command, control and overall superintendence of the operation” as required by the KDF Act.
In December 2013 President Kenyatta raised hackles when he announced the formation of the Nairobi Metropolitan Command of the KDF citing the need to combat “the current threats in the country emerging from terrorism, drug trafficking, proliferation of small arms, and crime, among others, that tend to flourish in highly urbanised areas like Nairobi.” And seven months later, a bill was proposed (and later dropped) which sought to strip Parliament of its power to approve the deployment of the KDF within Kenya. “We need to ensure that we remove the roadblocks on the way that may derail the process of deployment of the military locally so that we can respond faster and swiftly,” declared National Assembly Majority Leader, Aden Duale.
Further, in addition to the larger role played by retired officers in the civilian security and intelligence agencies, President Kenyatta earlier this year appointed the serving Chief of Defense Forces, Gen Samson Mwathethe to chair the Blue Economy implementation Committee which oversees the implementation of government programs.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse. According to a report by the Daily Nation’s Newsplex, which cited data from the Global Terrorism Database, the most comprehensive unclassified database on terrorist events conducted by non-state actors and the Nation Media Group’s own archives, in the 45 months after Operation Linda Nchi began, there were nine times as many attacks as in the 45 months before the mission. The attacks were also more ferocious, with deaths and injuries multiplying eight-fold in the same period.
The government has instrumentalized the fear this has generated to scapegoat particular communities in order to distract attention from its own actions and to try to roll back the freedoms guaranteed in the 2010 constitution.
According to Andrew Franklin, a security consultant and former US marine, “Declarations of war justify extraordinary – and temporary – restrictions on all manner of normal domestic activities and curbs on many constitutionally protected freedoms. This is why going to war is considered a big deal and not just a matter of semantics.”
Yet the government has invoked the idea of a country at war to justify the concentration of power in the Executive, especially in the Presidency, the removal of existing constitutional restraints on the exercise of that power and the clampdown on media freedoms and civil liberties. In December 2014, the government forced through Parliament legislation expanding the powers of the President and imposing limitations of civil liberties, including the right to protest and fair trial, as well as curtailing media freedom to publish terrorism-related stories. Just two days before, State House spokesman, Manoah Esipisu, penned a telling op-ed in the Daily Nation in which he justified these measures on the basis that it was a “time of war”.
The primary targets of the government’s fear-mongering and scapegoating have been the Muslim community and especially, though not exclusively, ethnic Somalis. Be they Kenyan citizens or refugees from Somalia, they have been collectively blamed for the atrocities committed by al Shabaab and this has led to repressive “anti-terror operations” and deportations. In April 2014, the government deployed, according tosays Human Rights Watch, about 5000 police officers and KDF troops in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood following a series of grenade and gun and in Mombasa. Operation Usalama Watch lasted several weeks during which “the forces raided homes, buildings, and shops, extorted massive sums, and harassed and detained an estimated 4,000 people – including journalists, registered refugees, Kenyan citizens, and international aid workers – without charge, and in appalling conditions for periods well beyond the 24-hour legal limit.” Further, in violation of its international obligations, the government is trying to close the Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest, and to force nearly half a million refugees back across the border.
In addition to this, extrajudicial assassination and disappearances have also become a preferred way to deal with those suspected of links to al Shabaab. Several radical Muslim clerics at the coast have been murdered and the Anti-Terror Police Unit has been accused of disappearing Somali and Muslim youth across the country and, more specifically, in the arid counties of the former North Eastern Province. This is not new. As the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission demonstrates, Somali and Muslim communities have historically suffered the bulk of atrocities committed by both the colonial and post-colonial governments. However, for much of that history, such oppression was carried out in the remote north and hidden from most of the public. During Usalama Watch, however, the state was blatantly carrying out large scale, systematic campaign of extortion and abuse right in the heart of the capital city and targeting a specific minority in broad daylight and with the tacit approval of a large segment of terrorized society.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse.
Similarly, surveillance too has come out of the shadows. During the Moi dictatorship, the perception of widespread surveillance through networks of informers was key to keeping the population compliant and afraid. Citizens were afraid to criticize the state since one did not know who might be listening. However, today they welcome even more comprehensive and ubiquitous surveillance, via CCTV cameras and listening in on phone and online conversations, as reassurance that the state is looking out for -rather than watching- them.
In the weeks following the Westgate attack, the government introduced a programme labelled Nyumba Kumi which encouraged citizens to form neighbourhood teams that would spy on members and report “suspicious activities” to the government. It was borrowed from Tanzania where it was used by Julius Nyerere’s government as a means of political control, to strengthen one-party rule. The late Michael Okema in his 1996 book on the Political Culture of Tanzania wrote that the system was “designed to make the citizen more security conscious” and expected him or her “to be all ears on behalf of the state”. Nyumba Kumi has much more ancient roots in 4th Century BCE China where, as described by Rev. John MacGowan of the London Missionary Society in 1897, the Ten House System “was a small division of a ward in a city, and consisted of ten dwelling houses. Each of these was responsible to the government for the conduct of the rest.”
The invasion of Somalia and the brutal reaction it inspired have generated a climate of fear and fostered an unthinking and unquestioning patriotism which has paved way for the enforcement of an orthodoxy of “official truth”. Querying government misdeeds especially in the security sector and in the prosecution of its “war on terror” immediately attracts accusations of harboring terrorist sympathies. National security has become the carpet under which governmental ills are hidden. When, in November 2015, journalists reported on security procurement queries raised by the Auditor-General, three were immediately summoned to the Directorate of Criminal investigations and one was subsequently arrested, apparently on the orders of Internal Security Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery. He demanded that they reveal their confidential sources claiming that their reports contained information “calculated to create a perception that there were malpractices relating to procuring security items within the Interior ministry” that could “expose our security forces to significant risk”. Ironically, they were accused of endangering public safety for reporting that the Auditor-General had specifically stated that the corrupt “purchase of second-hand arms and ammunition… had “seriously compromis[ed] the operations of the security agencies”.
Although the severity and regularity of terror attacks within the country have significantly reduced since their peak in 2015, Kenya remains a country on edge. Mass surveillance, ubiquitous security checks, xenophobia and state-sanctioned murder and disappearance of citizens have become normalized. Parliament, the media and civil society have shown little inclination to either demand accountability from the security sector or to encourage an honest public debate over the wisdom, strategy and objectives of continuing military operations in Somalia. Neither has there been anything resembling a deep introspection over the expanded domestic role of the KDF.
The October 2011 invasion may yet help provide Somalia with an opportunity to recover from its decades of turmoil but the experience has already severely degraded Kenya’s institutions and dented her ambitions of entrenching democratic and accountable governance at home. Its effects will be felt for generations to come.
By Patrick Gathara
(Mr Gathara is a freelance researcher, investigator and cartoonist based in Nairobi)
2 hours agoby Patrick Gathara17 min read0 Comments
Somalia Invasion
When Kenyan troops crossed the proverbial Rubicon and entered Somalia nearly six years ago, it caught almost everyone by surprise. It was Kenya’s first sustained and significant foray into its troubled neighbors territory and ran counter to the country’s historic pacifism -at least in international if not necessarily in domestic, affairs- as well as against the grain of the advice she had received from her much more experienced friends and patrons in the international community.
The immediate trigger of Kenya’s offensive was a spate of kidnappings of aid workers and tourists near the Somalia border, which had devastated the country’s lucrative tourism industry and which the government blamed on the al Shabaab terror group. Since 2007, the al Shabaab, had been fighting to oust the then transitional government in Mogadishu which was protected by AU forces under the AU Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). Allied to Osama bi Laden’s Al Qaeda, the al Shabaab had carried out atrocities both inside and outside Somalia, including the July 2010 bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, which targeted football fans watching the soccer World Cup final and killed 76 people.
The objectives given by the Kenyan government for the invasion were both confused and confusing. Spokesman Alfred Mutua initially claimed the KDF was pursuing the alleged kidnappers across the border but later admitted that the kidnappings had been an excuse to launch a plan that had “been in the pipeline for a while.” Despite the fact that the al Shabaab had strongly denied having anything to do with the kidnappings and the government produced no evidence to back up its allegations, it still dispatched a letter to the UN Security Council citing the “latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the Al-Shabaab terrorists” as reason for “remedial and pre-emptive action” undertaken “to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security.”
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia. “We are going to be there until the (Somali government) has effectively reduced the capacity of al-Shabaab to fire a single round … We want to ensure there is no al Shabaab,” declared military spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir.
The first few weeks were greeted with euphoric displays of patriotism from a polarized populace desperate for something to rally around. Less than four years prior, the country had almost torn itself apart following the shambolic and disputed elections of 2007. For a country used to seeing itself, despite the testimony of history, as “an island of peace in a sea of chaos”, the episode was profoundly traumatizing and left in its wake deep and disturbing questions about what it meant to be Kenyan. The adoption of a new constitution in 2010, a seminal moment in any nation’s history, had done little to quieten the nagging doubts. A Government of National Unity formed in the aftermath of the violence was proving to be a testy affair. The power struggles and political realignments within it, as well as the continuing and blatant theft of public resources it presided over, undermined rather than reinforced the already shaky idea of Kenya.
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia.
But if there’s one thing that can be relied on to rally a people, it is war. And war was what the media branded the invasion. “Kenyan troops off to war” blared the Daily Nation headline. “We are in a war against terrorists in and outside our country,” President Uhuru Kenyatta would declare in December 2014. However, there has never been an official declaration of war, either against Somalia or against Al Shabaab, which according to the constitution requires the authorization of Parliament.
Regardless, following the invasion Kenyans were treated to breathless coverage of the exploits and capacities of their valiant and heroic troops. Tales came about captured towns that few had ever heard of and one front page article even proclaimed the “imminent fall of Kismayo”. Uncomfortable questions about the aims and wisdom of the invasion were quickly swept aside. Still, as John Adams, the second President of the United States said, “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
The first hints of the morass Kenya had got herself mired in came quite early on. Within weeks of setting foot in Somalia, the troops were literally stuck in mud as the invasion had been conducted at the height of Somalia’s dehr short rain season. 60 days into what had been branded Operation Linda Nchi, Franklin would report that “KDF ground units are bogged down in the mud of South Central Somalia or marooned in the vicinity of Ras Kamboni on the Indian Ocean. Bad weather seems to have severely limited sorties by fixed wing ground attack aircraft as well as KDF attack helicopters”. It would take the KDF nearly 7 months to capture Afmadow, al Shabaab’s logistical base, and a year to get to Kismayo, Somalia’s second largest port, which was the real prize. By this time, Operation Linda Nchi had been wound down without achieving any of its objectives and 4600 Kenyan troops transferred to AMISOM.
Back in Kenya, the novelty of war had worn thin and the country was settling down to yet another divisive and scary election campaign. It was also coming to terms with the fact that the battle with the al Shabaab would not just be fought in Somalia. Almost immediately after the invasion, al Shabaab leaders had begun promising “huge blasts” in Nairobi. An initial campaign attacks using hand grenades and improvised explosives badly damaged the already fragile perception of security. But what completely shattered it was the attack on the Westgate Mall in September 2013 where 4 terrorists murdered at least 68 people and ruthlessly exposed the incompetence and corruption at the heart of the national security establishment.
In fact, it is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that. Few will ever forget the grainy CCTV footage of soldiers, who were meant to be battling the terrorists, instead strolling out of the Nakumatt supermarket carrying plastic shopping bags. The four-day fiasco, the friendly fire incident in which the KDF shot and killed a commander of the General Service Unit’s Recce Squad, the looting of the mall, the confused public updates and the inability to take on 4 armed men at the heat of the city destroyed public confidence in the KDF and in the intelligence agencies.
The carefully cultivated reputation of the National Intelligence Service, honed during its time as the Directorate of Security Intelligence, better known as the “Special Branch”, and favorite tool of surveillance and repression by the brutal regime of Daniel Arap Moi, was also in tatters. It would be completely obliterated by a series of large attacks which came within the two years following Westgate. These include the massacres in Mpeketoni and at the Garissa University College, and the attacks on buses and workers in Mandera, all of which claimed tens and sometimes hundreds of lives, and which were all, somewhat unfairly, blamed on failures of intelligence.
For the KDF, the bad news would keep on coming. It was again at the centre of the failures in both Mpeketoni and Garissa University, and was accused in a November 2015 report of profiteering from the Somalia deployment. A report titled “Black and White” by Journalists for Justice, accused the KDF of colluding with al Shabaab, the very enemy they are supposed to be fighting, to illegally export charcoal out of Somalia ports and to smuggle sugar into Kenya. Similar allegations had been made by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea and the KDF’s vehement denials and empty promises to investigate did little to salvage its reputation.
On January 15, 2016 the AMISOM base at the nondescript Somali town of El Adde, which was manned by troops from the Kenyan contingent, was overrun by the al Shabaab. Up to 200 soldiers were killed and a dozen kidnapped. A UN report by the accused KDF of failure to implement basic defensive measures and concluded that the al Shabaab faced “relatively little resistance from the Kenyan troops”.
Back home, the government and the KDF retreated into silence, obviously hoping the questions and calls for accountability would go away. They would be temporarily jolted out of their reverie a year later when another KDF-manned camp was overrun by al Shabaab, this time at Kulbiyow. Different accounts of what happened have been offered with The Standard claiming up to 68 soldiers were killed and the KDF putting the number at 9 with 15 injured.
None of this has done the KDF’s reputation much good. Today, its star is considerably diminished. It has turned out to be just as vacuous, corrupt, incompetent and unaccountable as nearly all the other public institutions in the political firmament.
Regardless of this, the government has not shied away from increasing the deployment of the KDF internally. In fact, especially since October 2011, the military has taken on a much more public profile. For a country which has never experienced the misfortune of military rule, Kenya has always had an uneasy relationship with its soldiers. Following two failed coup plots in the 70s and the 80s, the political elite has preferred to keep the troops happy, well fed and watered in their barracks. But, as Daniel Branch noted in Foreign Policy, by 2011, the KDF had “been trained and equipped to do much more than parade on national holidays.” Increased counter-terrorism funding from Washington had underwritten a stronger Kenyan military which in turn had “grown more confident and combative”.
It is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that.
In the aftermath of the invasion of Somalia, it has now become almost routine for the government to deploy this capability to deal with local trouble spots within the country without seeking authorization from the National Assembly as required by the constitution. Neither does it appear that the Inspector General of Police is made “responsible for the administration, command, control and overall superintendence of the operation” as required by the KDF Act.
In December 2013 President Kenyatta raised hackles when he announced the formation of the Nairobi Metropolitan Command of the KDF citing the need to combat “the current threats in the country emerging from terrorism, drug trafficking, proliferation of small arms, and crime, among others, that tend to flourish in highly urbanised areas like Nairobi.” And seven months later, a bill was proposed (and later dropped) which sought to strip Parliament of its power to approve the deployment of the KDF within Kenya. “We need to ensure that we remove the roadblocks on the way that may derail the process of deployment of the military locally so that we can respond faster and swiftly,” declared National Assembly Majority Leader, Aden Duale.
Further, in addition to the larger role played by retired officers in the civilian security and intelligence agencies, President Kenyatta earlier this year appointed the serving Chief of Defense Forces, Gen Samson Mwathethe to chair the Blue Economy implementation Committee which oversees the implementation of government programs.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse. According to a report by the Daily Nation’s Newsplex, which cited data from the Global Terrorism Database, the most comprehensive unclassified database on terrorist events conducted by non-state actors and the Nation Media Group’s own archives, in the 45 months after Operation Linda Nchi began, there were nine times as many attacks as in the 45 months before the mission. The attacks were also more ferocious, with deaths and injuries multiplying eight-fold in the same period.
The government has instrumentalized the fear this has generated to scapegoat particular communities in order to distract attention from its own actions and to try to roll back the freedoms guaranteed in the 2010 constitution.
According to Andrew Franklin, a security consultant and former US marine, “Declarations of war justify extraordinary – and temporary – restrictions on all manner of normal domestic activities and curbs on many constitutionally protected freedoms. This is why going to war is considered a big deal and not just a matter of semantics.”
Yet the government has invoked the idea of a country at war to justify the concentration of power in the Executive, especially in the Presidency, the removal of existing constitutional restraints on the exercise of that power and the clampdown on media freedoms and civil liberties. In December 2014, the government forced through Parliament legislation expanding the powers of the President and imposing limitations of civil liberties, including the right to protest and fair trial, as well as curtailing media freedom to publish terrorism-related stories. Just two days before, State House spokesman, Manoah Esipisu, penned a telling op-ed in the Daily Nation in which he justified these measures on the basis that it was a “time of war”.
The primary targets of the government’s fear-mongering and scapegoating have been the Muslim community and especially, though not exclusively, ethnic Somalis. Be they Kenyan citizens or refugees from Somalia, they have been collectively blamed for the atrocities committed by al Shabaab and this has led to repressive “anti-terror operations” and deportations. In April 2014, the government deployed, according tosays Human Rights Watch, about 5000 police officers and KDF troops in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood following a series of grenade and gun and in Mombasa. Operation Usalama Watch lasted several weeks during which “the forces raided homes, buildings, and shops, extorted massive sums, and harassed and detained an estimated 4,000 people – including journalists, registered refugees, Kenyan citizens, and international aid workers – without charge, and in appalling conditions for periods well beyond the 24-hour legal limit.” Further, in violation of its international obligations, the government is trying to close the Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest, and to force nearly half a million refugees back across the border.
In addition to this, extrajudicial assassination and disappearances have also become a preferred way to deal with those suspected of links to al Shabaab. Several radical Muslim clerics at the coast have been murdered and the Anti-Terror Police Unit has been accused of disappearing Somali and Muslim youth across the country and, more specifically, in the arid counties of the former North Eastern Province. This is not new. As the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission demonstrates, Somali and Muslim communities have historically suffered the bulk of atrocities committed by both the colonial and post-colonial governments. However, for much of that history, such oppression was carried out in the remote north and hidden from most of the public. During Usalama Watch, however, the state was blatantly carrying out large scale, systematic campaign of extortion and abuse right in the heart of the capital city and targeting a specific minority in broad daylight and with the tacit approval of a large segment of terrorized society.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse.
Similarly, surveillance too has come out of the shadows. During the Moi dictatorship, the perception of widespread surveillance through networks of informers was key to keeping the population compliant and afraid. Citizens were afraid to criticize the state since one did not know who might be listening. However, today they welcome even more comprehensive and ubiquitous surveillance, via CCTV cameras and listening in on phone and online conversations, as reassurance that the state is looking out for -rather than watching- them.
In the weeks following the Westgate attack, the government introduced a programme labelled Nyumba Kumi which encouraged citizens to form neighbourhood teams that would spy on members and report “suspicious activities” to the government. It was borrowed from Tanzania where it was used by Julius Nyerere’s government as a means of political control, to strengthen one-party rule. The late Michael Okema in his 1996 book on the Political Culture of Tanzania wrote that the system was “designed to make the citizen more security conscious” and expected him or her “to be all ears on behalf of the state”. Nyumba Kumi has much more ancient roots in 4th Century BCE China where, as described by Rev. John MacGowan of the London Missionary Society in 1897, the Ten House System “was a small division of a ward in a city, and consisted of ten dwelling houses. Each of these was responsible to the government for the conduct of the rest.”
The invasion of Somalia and the brutal reaction it inspired have generated a climate of fear and fostered an unthinking and unquestioning patriotism which has paved way for the enforcement of an orthodoxy of “official truth”. Querying government misdeeds especially in the security sector and in the prosecution of its “war on terror” immediately attracts accusations of harboring terrorist sympathies. National security has become the carpet under which governmental ills are hidden. When, in November 2015, journalists reported on security procurement queries raised by the Auditor-General, three were immediately summoned to the Directorate of Criminal investigations and one was subsequently arrested, apparently on the orders of Internal Security Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery. He demanded that they reveal their confidential sources claiming that their reports contained information “calculated to create a perception that there were malpractices relating to procuring security items within the Interior ministry” that could “expose our security forces to significant risk”. Ironically, they were accused of endangering public safety for reporting that the Auditor-General had specifically stated that the corrupt “purchase of second-hand arms and ammunition… had “seriously compromis[ed] the operations of the security agencies”.
Although the severity and regularity of terror attacks within the country have significantly reduced since their peak in 2015, Kenya remains a country on edge. Mass surveillance, ubiquitous security checks, xenophobia and state-sanctioned murder and disappearance of citizens have become normalized. Parliament, the media and civil society have shown little inclination to either demand accountability from the security sector or to encourage an honest public debate over the wisdom, strategy and objectives of continuing military operations in Somalia. Neither has there been anything resembling a deep introspection over the expanded domestic role of the KDF.
The October 2011 invasion may yet help provide Somalia with an opportunity to recover from its decades of turmoil but the experience has already severely degraded Kenya’s institutions and dented her ambitions of entrenching democratic and accountable governance at home. Its effects will be felt for generations to come.
By Patrick Gathara
(Mr Gathara is a freelance researcher, investigator and cartoonist based in Nairobi)
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
THE GUNS OF OCTOBER: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
2 hours agoby Patrick Gathara17 min read0 Comments
Somalia Invasion
When Kenyan troops crossed the proverbial Rubicon and entered Somalia nearly six years ago, it caught almost everyone by surprise. It was Kenya’s first sustained and significant foray into its troubled neighbors territory and ran counter to the country’s historic pacifism -at least in international if not necessarily in domestic, affairs- as well as against the grain of the advice she had received from her much more experienced friends and patrons in the international community.
The immediate trigger of Kenya’s offensive was a spate of kidnappings of aid workers and tourists near the Somalia border, which had devastated the country’s lucrative tourism industry and which the government blamed on the al Shabaab terror group. Since 2007, the al Shabaab, had been fighting to oust the then transitional government in Mogadishu which was protected by AU forces under the AU Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). Allied to Osama bi Laden’s Al Qaeda, the al Shabaab had carried out atrocities both inside and outside Somalia, including the July 2010 bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, which targeted football fans watching the soccer World Cup final and killed 76 people.
The objectives given by the Kenyan government for the invasion were both confused and confusing. Spokesman Alfred Mutua initially claimed the KDF was pursuing the alleged kidnappers across the border but later admitted that the kidnappings had been an excuse to launch a plan that had “been in the pipeline for a while.” Despite the fact that the al Shabaab had strongly denied having anything to do with the kidnappings and the government produced no evidence to back up its allegations, it still dispatched a letter to the UN Security Council citing the “latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the Al-Shabaab terrorists” as reason for “remedial and pre-emptive action” undertaken “to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security.”
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia. “We are going to be there until the (Somali government) has effectively reduced the capacity of al-Shabaab to fire a single round … We want to ensure there is no al Shabaab,” declared military spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir.
The first few weeks were greeted with euphoric displays of patriotism from a polarized populace desperate for something to rally around. Less than four years prior, the country had almost torn itself apart following the shambolic and disputed elections of 2007. For a country used to seeing itself, despite the testimony of history, as “an island of peace in a sea of chaos”, the episode was profoundly traumatizing and left in its wake deep and disturbing questions about what it meant to be Kenyan. The adoption of a new constitution in 2010, a seminal moment in any nation’s history, had done little to quieten the nagging doubts. A Government of National Unity formed in the aftermath of the violence was proving to be a testy affair. The power struggles and political realignments within it, as well as the continuing and blatant theft of public resources it presided over, undermined rather than reinforced the already shaky idea of Kenya.
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia.
But if there’s one thing that can be relied on to rally a people, it is war. And war was what the media branded the invasion. “Kenyan troops off to war” blared the Daily Nation headline. “We are in a war against terrorists in and outside our country,” President Uhuru Kenyatta would declare in December 2014. However, there has never been an official declaration of war, either against Somalia or against Al Shabaab, which according to the constitution requires the authorization of Parliament.
Regardless, following the invasion Kenyans were treated to breathless coverage of the exploits and capacities of their valiant and heroic troops. Tales came about captured towns that few had ever heard of and one front page article even proclaimed the “imminent fall of Kismayo”. Uncomfortable questions about the aims and wisdom of the invasion were quickly swept aside. Still, as John Adams, the second President of the United States said, “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
The first hints of the morass Kenya had got herself mired in came quite early on. Within weeks of setting foot in Somalia, the troops were literally stuck in mud as the invasion had been conducted at the height of Somalia’s dehr short rain season. 60 days into what had been branded Operation Linda Nchi, Franklin would report that “KDF ground units are bogged down in the mud of South Central Somalia or marooned in the vicinity of Ras Kamboni on the Indian Ocean. Bad weather seems to have severely limited sorties by fixed wing ground attack aircraft as well as KDF attack helicopters”. It would take the KDF nearly 7 months to capture Afmadow, al Shabaab’s logistical base, and a year to get to Kismayo, Somalia’s second largest port, which was the real prize. By this time, Operation Linda Nchi had been wound down without achieving any of its objectives and 4600 Kenyan troops transferred to AMISOM.
Back in Kenya, the novelty of war had worn thin and the country was settling down to yet another divisive and scary election campaign. It was also coming to terms with the fact that the battle with the al Shabaab would not just be fought in Somalia. Almost immediately after the invasion, al Shabaab leaders had begun promising “huge blasts” in Nairobi. An initial campaign attacks using hand grenades and improvised explosives badly damaged the already fragile perception of security. But what completely shattered it was the attack on the Westgate Mall in September 2013 where 4 terrorists murdered at least 68 people and ruthlessly exposed the incompetence and corruption at the heart of the national security establishment.
In fact, it is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that. Few will ever forget the grainy CCTV footage of soldiers, who were meant to be battling the terrorists, instead strolling out of the Nakumatt supermarket carrying plastic shopping bags. The four-day fiasco, the friendly fire incident in which the KDF shot and killed a commander of the General Service Unit’s Recce Squad, the looting of the mall, the confused public updates and the inability to take on 4 armed men at the heat of the city destroyed public confidence in the KDF and in the intelligence agencies.
The carefully cultivated reputation of the National Intelligence Service, honed during its time as the Directorate of Security Intelligence, better known as the “Special Branch”, and favorite tool of surveillance and repression by the brutal regime of Daniel Arap Moi, was also in tatters. It would be completely obliterated by a series of large attacks which came within the two years following Westgate. These include the massacres in Mpeketoni and at the Garissa University College, and the attacks on buses and workers in Mandera, all of which claimed tens and sometimes hundreds of lives, and which were all, somewhat unfairly, blamed on failures of intelligence.
For the KDF, the bad news would keep on coming. It was again at the centre of the failures in both Mpeketoni and Garissa University, and was accused in a November 2015 report of profiteering from the Somalia deployment. A report titled “Black and White” by Journalists for Justice, accused the KDF of colluding with al Shabaab, the very enemy they are supposed to be fighting, to illegally export charcoal out of Somalia ports and to smuggle sugar into Kenya. Similar allegations had been made by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea and the KDF’s vehement denials and empty promises to investigate did little to salvage its reputation.
On January 15, 2016 the AMISOM base at the nondescript Somali town of El Adde, which was manned by troops from the Kenyan contingent, was overrun by the al Shabaab. Up to 200 soldiers were killed and a dozen kidnapped. A UN report by the accused KDF of failure to implement basic defensive measures and concluded that the al Shabaab faced “relatively little resistance from the Kenyan troops”.
Back home, the government and the KDF retreated into silence, obviously hoping the questions and calls for accountability would go away. They would be temporarily jolted out of their reverie a year later when another KDF-manned camp was overrun by al Shabaab, this time at Kulbiyow. Different accounts of what happened have been offered with The Standard claiming up to 68 soldiers were killed and the KDF putting the number at 9 with 15 injured.
None of this has done the KDF’s reputation much good. Today, its star is considerably diminished. It has turned out to be just as vacuous, corrupt, incompetent and unaccountable as nearly all the other public institutions in the political firmament.
Regardless of this, the government has not shied away from increasing the deployment of the KDF internally. In fact, especially since October 2011, the military has taken on a much more public profile. For a country which has never experienced the misfortune of military rule, Kenya has always had an uneasy relationship with its soldiers. Following two failed coup plots in the 70s and the 80s, the political elite has preferred to keep the troops happy, well fed and watered in their barracks. But, as Daniel Branch noted in Foreign Policy, by 2011, the KDF had “been trained and equipped to do much more than parade on national holidays.” Increased counter-terrorism funding from Washington had underwritten a stronger Kenyan military which in turn had “grown more confident and combative”.
It is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that.
In the aftermath of the invasion of Somalia, it has now become almost routine for the government to deploy this capability to deal with local trouble spots within the country without seeking authorization from the National Assembly as required by the constitution. Neither does it appear that the Inspector General of Police is made “responsible for the administration, command, control and overall superintendence of the operation” as required by the KDF Act.
In December 2013 President Kenyatta raised hackles when he announced the formation of the Nairobi Metropolitan Command of the KDF citing the need to combat “the current threats in the country emerging from terrorism, drug trafficking, proliferation of small arms, and crime, among others, that tend to flourish in highly urbanised areas like Nairobi.” And seven months later, a bill was proposed (and later dropped) which sought to strip Parliament of its power to approve the deployment of the KDF within Kenya. “We need to ensure that we remove the roadblocks on the way that may derail the process of deployment of the military locally so that we can respond faster and swiftly,” declared National Assembly Majority Leader, Aden Duale.
Further, in addition to the larger role played by retired officers in the civilian security and intelligence agencies, President Kenyatta earlier this year appointed the serving Chief of Defense Forces, Gen Samson Mwathethe to chair the Blue Economy implementation Committee which oversees the implementation of government programs.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse. According to a report by the Daily Nation’s Newsplex, which cited data from the Global Terrorism Database, the most comprehensive unclassified database on terrorist events conducted by non-state actors and the Nation Media Group’s own archives, in the 45 months after Operation Linda Nchi began, there were nine times as many attacks as in the 45 months before the mission. The attacks were also more ferocious, with deaths and injuries multiplying eight-fold in the same period.
The government has instrumentalized the fear this has generated to scapegoat particular communities in order to distract attention from its own actions and to try to roll back the freedoms guaranteed in the 2010 constitution.
According to Andrew Franklin, a security consultant and former US marine, “Declarations of war justify extraordinary – and temporary – restrictions on all manner of normal domestic activities and curbs on many constitutionally protected freedoms. This is why going to war is considered a big deal and not just a matter of semantics.”
Yet the government has invoked the idea of a country at war to justify the concentration of power in the Executive, especially in the Presidency, the removal of existing constitutional restraints on the exercise of that power and the clampdown on media freedoms and civil liberties. In December 2014, the government forced through Parliament legislation expanding the powers of the President and imposing limitations of civil liberties, including the right to protest and fair trial, as well as curtailing media freedom to publish terrorism-related stories. Just two days before, State House spokesman, Manoah Esipisu, penned a telling op-ed in the Daily Nation in which he justified these measures on the basis that it was a “time of war”.
The primary targets of the government’s fear-mongering and scapegoating have been the Muslim community and especially, though not exclusively, ethnic Somalis. Be they Kenyan citizens or refugees from Somalia, they have been collectively blamed for the atrocities committed by al Shabaab and this has led to repressive “anti-terror operations” and deportations. In April 2014, the government deployed, according tosays Human Rights Watch, about 5000 police officers and KDF troops in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood following a series of grenade and gun and in Mombasa. Operation Usalama Watch lasted several weeks during which “the forces raided homes, buildings, and shops, extorted massive sums, and harassed and detained an estimated 4,000 people – including journalists, registered refugees, Kenyan citizens, and international aid workers – without charge, and in appalling conditions for periods well beyond the 24-hour legal limit.” Further, in violation of its international obligations, the government is trying to close the Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest, and to force nearly half a million refugees back across the border.
In addition to this, extrajudicial assassination and disappearances have also become a preferred way to deal with those suspected of links to al Shabaab. Several radical Muslim clerics at the coast have been murdered and the Anti-Terror Police Unit has been accused of disappearing Somali and Muslim youth across the country and, more specifically, in the arid counties of the former North Eastern Province. This is not new. As the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission demonstrates, Somali and Muslim communities have historically suffered the bulk of atrocities committed by both the colonial and post-colonial governments. However, for much of that history, such oppression was carried out in the remote north and hidden from most of the public. During Usalama Watch, however, the state was blatantly carrying out large scale, systematic campaign of extortion and abuse right in the heart of the capital city and targeting a specific minority in broad daylight and with the tacit approval of a large segment of terrorized society.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse.
Similarly, surveillance too has come out of the shadows. During the Moi dictatorship, the perception of widespread surveillance through networks of informers was key to keeping the population compliant and afraid. Citizens were afraid to criticize the state since one did not know who might be listening. However, today they welcome even more comprehensive and ubiquitous surveillance, via CCTV cameras and listening in on phone and online conversations, as reassurance that the state is looking out for -rather than watching- them.
In the weeks following the Westgate attack, the government introduced a programme labelled Nyumba Kumi which encouraged citizens to form neighbourhood teams that would spy on members and report “suspicious activities” to the government. It was borrowed from Tanzania where it was used by Julius Nyerere’s government as a means of political control, to strengthen one-party rule. The late Michael Okema in his 1996 book on the Political Culture of Tanzania wrote that the system was “designed to make the citizen more security conscious” and expected him or her “to be all ears on behalf of the state”. Nyumba Kumi has much more ancient roots in 4th Century BCE China where, as described by Rev. John MacGowan of the London Missionary Society in 1897, the Ten House System “was a small division of a ward in a city, and consisted of ten dwelling houses. Each of these was responsible to the government for the conduct of the rest.”
The invasion of Somalia and the brutal reaction it inspired have generated a climate of fear and fostered an unthinking and unquestioning patriotism which has paved way for the enforcement of an orthodoxy of “official truth”. Querying government misdeeds especially in the security sector and in the prosecution of its “war on terror” immediately attracts accusations of harboring terrorist sympathies. National security has become the carpet under which governmental ills are hidden. When, in November 2015, journalists reported on security procurement queries raised by the Auditor-General, three were immediately summoned to the Directorate of Criminal investigations and one was subsequently arrested, apparently on the orders of Internal Security Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery. He demanded that they reveal their confidential sources claiming that their reports contained information “calculated to create a perception that there were malpractices relating to procuring security items within the Interior ministry” that could “expose our security forces to significant risk”. Ironically, they were accused of endangering public safety for reporting that the Auditor-General had specifically stated that the corrupt “purchase of second-hand arms and ammunition… had “seriously compromis[ed] the operations of the security agencies”.
Although the severity and regularity of terror attacks within the country have significantly reduced since their peak in 2015, Kenya remains a country on edge. Mass surveillance, ubiquitous security checks, xenophobia and state-sanctioned murder and disappearance of citizens have become normalized. Parliament, the media and civil society have shown little inclination to either demand accountability from the security sector or to encourage an honest public debate over the wisdom, strategy and objectives of continuing military operations in Somalia. Neither has there been anything resembling a deep introspection over the expanded domestic role of the KDF.
The October 2011 invasion may yet help provide Somalia with an opportunity to recover from its decades of turmoil but the experience has already severely degraded Kenya’s institutions and dented her ambitions of entrenching democratic and accountable governance at home. Its effects will be felt for generations to come.
By Patrick Gathara
(Mr Gathara is a freelance researcher, investigator and cartoonist based in Nairobi)
2 hours agoby Patrick Gathara17 min read0 Comments
Somalia Invasion
When Kenyan troops crossed the proverbial Rubicon and entered Somalia nearly six years ago, it caught almost everyone by surprise. It was Kenya’s first sustained and significant foray into its troubled neighbors territory and ran counter to the country’s historic pacifism -at least in international if not necessarily in domestic, affairs- as well as against the grain of the advice she had received from her much more experienced friends and patrons in the international community.
The immediate trigger of Kenya’s offensive was a spate of kidnappings of aid workers and tourists near the Somalia border, which had devastated the country’s lucrative tourism industry and which the government blamed on the al Shabaab terror group. Since 2007, the al Shabaab, had been fighting to oust the then transitional government in Mogadishu which was protected by AU forces under the AU Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). Allied to Osama bi Laden’s Al Qaeda, the al Shabaab had carried out atrocities both inside and outside Somalia, including the July 2010 bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, which targeted football fans watching the soccer World Cup final and killed 76 people.
The objectives given by the Kenyan government for the invasion were both confused and confusing. Spokesman Alfred Mutua initially claimed the KDF was pursuing the alleged kidnappers across the border but later admitted that the kidnappings had been an excuse to launch a plan that had “been in the pipeline for a while.” Despite the fact that the al Shabaab had strongly denied having anything to do with the kidnappings and the government produced no evidence to back up its allegations, it still dispatched a letter to the UN Security Council citing the “latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the Al-Shabaab terrorists” as reason for “remedial and pre-emptive action” undertaken “to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security.”
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia. “We are going to be there until the (Somali government) has effectively reduced the capacity of al-Shabaab to fire a single round … We want to ensure there is no al Shabaab,” declared military spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir.
The first few weeks were greeted with euphoric displays of patriotism from a polarized populace desperate for something to rally around. Less than four years prior, the country had almost torn itself apart following the shambolic and disputed elections of 2007. For a country used to seeing itself, despite the testimony of history, as “an island of peace in a sea of chaos”, the episode was profoundly traumatizing and left in its wake deep and disturbing questions about what it meant to be Kenyan. The adoption of a new constitution in 2010, a seminal moment in any nation’s history, had done little to quieten the nagging doubts. A Government of National Unity formed in the aftermath of the violence was proving to be a testy affair. The power struggles and political realignments within it, as well as the continuing and blatant theft of public resources it presided over, undermined rather than reinforced the already shaky idea of Kenya.
The stated objectives for the incursion quickly escalated. They ran the gamut from rescuing the kidnapped foreigners to pushing al Shabaab away from the border and establishing a buffer zone, to the capture of the port city of Kismayo, the dismantling of al Shabaab and the stabilization of Somalia.
But if there’s one thing that can be relied on to rally a people, it is war. And war was what the media branded the invasion. “Kenyan troops off to war” blared the Daily Nation headline. “We are in a war against terrorists in and outside our country,” President Uhuru Kenyatta would declare in December 2014. However, there has never been an official declaration of war, either against Somalia or against Al Shabaab, which according to the constitution requires the authorization of Parliament.
Regardless, following the invasion Kenyans were treated to breathless coverage of the exploits and capacities of their valiant and heroic troops. Tales came about captured towns that few had ever heard of and one front page article even proclaimed the “imminent fall of Kismayo”. Uncomfortable questions about the aims and wisdom of the invasion were quickly swept aside. Still, as John Adams, the second President of the United States said, “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
The first hints of the morass Kenya had got herself mired in came quite early on. Within weeks of setting foot in Somalia, the troops were literally stuck in mud as the invasion had been conducted at the height of Somalia’s dehr short rain season. 60 days into what had been branded Operation Linda Nchi, Franklin would report that “KDF ground units are bogged down in the mud of South Central Somalia or marooned in the vicinity of Ras Kamboni on the Indian Ocean. Bad weather seems to have severely limited sorties by fixed wing ground attack aircraft as well as KDF attack helicopters”. It would take the KDF nearly 7 months to capture Afmadow, al Shabaab’s logistical base, and a year to get to Kismayo, Somalia’s second largest port, which was the real prize. By this time, Operation Linda Nchi had been wound down without achieving any of its objectives and 4600 Kenyan troops transferred to AMISOM.
Back in Kenya, the novelty of war had worn thin and the country was settling down to yet another divisive and scary election campaign. It was also coming to terms with the fact that the battle with the al Shabaab would not just be fought in Somalia. Almost immediately after the invasion, al Shabaab leaders had begun promising “huge blasts” in Nairobi. An initial campaign attacks using hand grenades and improvised explosives badly damaged the already fragile perception of security. But what completely shattered it was the attack on the Westgate Mall in September 2013 where 4 terrorists murdered at least 68 people and ruthlessly exposed the incompetence and corruption at the heart of the national security establishment.
In fact, it is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that. Few will ever forget the grainy CCTV footage of soldiers, who were meant to be battling the terrorists, instead strolling out of the Nakumatt supermarket carrying plastic shopping bags. The four-day fiasco, the friendly fire incident in which the KDF shot and killed a commander of the General Service Unit’s Recce Squad, the looting of the mall, the confused public updates and the inability to take on 4 armed men at the heat of the city destroyed public confidence in the KDF and in the intelligence agencies.
The carefully cultivated reputation of the National Intelligence Service, honed during its time as the Directorate of Security Intelligence, better known as the “Special Branch”, and favorite tool of surveillance and repression by the brutal regime of Daniel Arap Moi, was also in tatters. It would be completely obliterated by a series of large attacks which came within the two years following Westgate. These include the massacres in Mpeketoni and at the Garissa University College, and the attacks on buses and workers in Mandera, all of which claimed tens and sometimes hundreds of lives, and which were all, somewhat unfairly, blamed on failures of intelligence.
For the KDF, the bad news would keep on coming. It was again at the centre of the failures in both Mpeketoni and Garissa University, and was accused in a November 2015 report of profiteering from the Somalia deployment. A report titled “Black and White” by Journalists for Justice, accused the KDF of colluding with al Shabaab, the very enemy they are supposed to be fighting, to illegally export charcoal out of Somalia ports and to smuggle sugar into Kenya. Similar allegations had been made by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea and the KDF’s vehement denials and empty promises to investigate did little to salvage its reputation.
On January 15, 2016 the AMISOM base at the nondescript Somali town of El Adde, which was manned by troops from the Kenyan contingent, was overrun by the al Shabaab. Up to 200 soldiers were killed and a dozen kidnapped. A UN report by the accused KDF of failure to implement basic defensive measures and concluded that the al Shabaab faced “relatively little resistance from the Kenyan troops”.
Back home, the government and the KDF retreated into silence, obviously hoping the questions and calls for accountability would go away. They would be temporarily jolted out of their reverie a year later when another KDF-manned camp was overrun by al Shabaab, this time at Kulbiyow. Different accounts of what happened have been offered with The Standard claiming up to 68 soldiers were killed and the KDF putting the number at 9 with 15 injured.
None of this has done the KDF’s reputation much good. Today, its star is considerably diminished. It has turned out to be just as vacuous, corrupt, incompetent and unaccountable as nearly all the other public institutions in the political firmament.
Regardless of this, the government has not shied away from increasing the deployment of the KDF internally. In fact, especially since October 2011, the military has taken on a much more public profile. For a country which has never experienced the misfortune of military rule, Kenya has always had an uneasy relationship with its soldiers. Following two failed coup plots in the 70s and the 80s, the political elite has preferred to keep the troops happy, well fed and watered in their barracks. But, as Daniel Branch noted in Foreign Policy, by 2011, the KDF had “been trained and equipped to do much more than parade on national holidays.” Increased counter-terrorism funding from Washington had underwritten a stronger Kenyan military which in turn had “grown more confident and combative”.
It is arguable that the biggest casualties of the invasion of Somalia have been the national security agencies and especially the KDF. Prior to the invasion, the KDF was seen as a professional, disciplined, if spoilt and coddled, military force. It was widely thought to be immune to the foibles and prejudices and moral and material decay afflicting the rest of the public service. Westgate put paid to all that.
In the aftermath of the invasion of Somalia, it has now become almost routine for the government to deploy this capability to deal with local trouble spots within the country without seeking authorization from the National Assembly as required by the constitution. Neither does it appear that the Inspector General of Police is made “responsible for the administration, command, control and overall superintendence of the operation” as required by the KDF Act.
In December 2013 President Kenyatta raised hackles when he announced the formation of the Nairobi Metropolitan Command of the KDF citing the need to combat “the current threats in the country emerging from terrorism, drug trafficking, proliferation of small arms, and crime, among others, that tend to flourish in highly urbanised areas like Nairobi.” And seven months later, a bill was proposed (and later dropped) which sought to strip Parliament of its power to approve the deployment of the KDF within Kenya. “We need to ensure that we remove the roadblocks on the way that may derail the process of deployment of the military locally so that we can respond faster and swiftly,” declared National Assembly Majority Leader, Aden Duale.
Further, in addition to the larger role played by retired officers in the civilian security and intelligence agencies, President Kenyatta earlier this year appointed the serving Chief of Defense Forces, Gen Samson Mwathethe to chair the Blue Economy implementation Committee which oversees the implementation of government programs.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse. According to a report by the Daily Nation’s Newsplex, which cited data from the Global Terrorism Database, the most comprehensive unclassified database on terrorist events conducted by non-state actors and the Nation Media Group’s own archives, in the 45 months after Operation Linda Nchi began, there were nine times as many attacks as in the 45 months before the mission. The attacks were also more ferocious, with deaths and injuries multiplying eight-fold in the same period.
The government has instrumentalized the fear this has generated to scapegoat particular communities in order to distract attention from its own actions and to try to roll back the freedoms guaranteed in the 2010 constitution.
According to Andrew Franklin, a security consultant and former US marine, “Declarations of war justify extraordinary – and temporary – restrictions on all manner of normal domestic activities and curbs on many constitutionally protected freedoms. This is why going to war is considered a big deal and not just a matter of semantics.”
Yet the government has invoked the idea of a country at war to justify the concentration of power in the Executive, especially in the Presidency, the removal of existing constitutional restraints on the exercise of that power and the clampdown on media freedoms and civil liberties. In December 2014, the government forced through Parliament legislation expanding the powers of the President and imposing limitations of civil liberties, including the right to protest and fair trial, as well as curtailing media freedom to publish terrorism-related stories. Just two days before, State House spokesman, Manoah Esipisu, penned a telling op-ed in the Daily Nation in which he justified these measures on the basis that it was a “time of war”.
The primary targets of the government’s fear-mongering and scapegoating have been the Muslim community and especially, though not exclusively, ethnic Somalis. Be they Kenyan citizens or refugees from Somalia, they have been collectively blamed for the atrocities committed by al Shabaab and this has led to repressive “anti-terror operations” and deportations. In April 2014, the government deployed, according tosays Human Rights Watch, about 5000 police officers and KDF troops in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood following a series of grenade and gun and in Mombasa. Operation Usalama Watch lasted several weeks during which “the forces raided homes, buildings, and shops, extorted massive sums, and harassed and detained an estimated 4,000 people – including journalists, registered refugees, Kenyan citizens, and international aid workers – without charge, and in appalling conditions for periods well beyond the 24-hour legal limit.” Further, in violation of its international obligations, the government is trying to close the Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest, and to force nearly half a million refugees back across the border.
In addition to this, extrajudicial assassination and disappearances have also become a preferred way to deal with those suspected of links to al Shabaab. Several radical Muslim clerics at the coast have been murdered and the Anti-Terror Police Unit has been accused of disappearing Somali and Muslim youth across the country and, more specifically, in the arid counties of the former North Eastern Province. This is not new. As the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission demonstrates, Somali and Muslim communities have historically suffered the bulk of atrocities committed by both the colonial and post-colonial governments. However, for much of that history, such oppression was carried out in the remote north and hidden from most of the public. During Usalama Watch, however, the state was blatantly carrying out large scale, systematic campaign of extortion and abuse right in the heart of the capital city and targeting a specific minority in broad daylight and with the tacit approval of a large segment of terrorized society.
A scared people are much more willing to bargain away their freedoms for a sense of safety, however ephemeral. And by the end of 2015, Kenyans were a pretty scared lot. The Somalia invasion had backfired spectacularly and not only failed to deliver the promised safety, but made matters much worse.
Similarly, surveillance too has come out of the shadows. During the Moi dictatorship, the perception of widespread surveillance through networks of informers was key to keeping the population compliant and afraid. Citizens were afraid to criticize the state since one did not know who might be listening. However, today they welcome even more comprehensive and ubiquitous surveillance, via CCTV cameras and listening in on phone and online conversations, as reassurance that the state is looking out for -rather than watching- them.
In the weeks following the Westgate attack, the government introduced a programme labelled Nyumba Kumi which encouraged citizens to form neighbourhood teams that would spy on members and report “suspicious activities” to the government. It was borrowed from Tanzania where it was used by Julius Nyerere’s government as a means of political control, to strengthen one-party rule. The late Michael Okema in his 1996 book on the Political Culture of Tanzania wrote that the system was “designed to make the citizen more security conscious” and expected him or her “to be all ears on behalf of the state”. Nyumba Kumi has much more ancient roots in 4th Century BCE China where, as described by Rev. John MacGowan of the London Missionary Society in 1897, the Ten House System “was a small division of a ward in a city, and consisted of ten dwelling houses. Each of these was responsible to the government for the conduct of the rest.”
The invasion of Somalia and the brutal reaction it inspired have generated a climate of fear and fostered an unthinking and unquestioning patriotism which has paved way for the enforcement of an orthodoxy of “official truth”. Querying government misdeeds especially in the security sector and in the prosecution of its “war on terror” immediately attracts accusations of harboring terrorist sympathies. National security has become the carpet under which governmental ills are hidden. When, in November 2015, journalists reported on security procurement queries raised by the Auditor-General, three were immediately summoned to the Directorate of Criminal investigations and one was subsequently arrested, apparently on the orders of Internal Security Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery. He demanded that they reveal their confidential sources claiming that their reports contained information “calculated to create a perception that there were malpractices relating to procuring security items within the Interior ministry” that could “expose our security forces to significant risk”. Ironically, they were accused of endangering public safety for reporting that the Auditor-General had specifically stated that the corrupt “purchase of second-hand arms and ammunition… had “seriously compromis[ed] the operations of the security agencies”.
Although the severity and regularity of terror attacks within the country have significantly reduced since their peak in 2015, Kenya remains a country on edge. Mass surveillance, ubiquitous security checks, xenophobia and state-sanctioned murder and disappearance of citizens have become normalized. Parliament, the media and civil society have shown little inclination to either demand accountability from the security sector or to encourage an honest public debate over the wisdom, strategy and objectives of continuing military operations in Somalia. Neither has there been anything resembling a deep introspection over the expanded domestic role of the KDF.
The October 2011 invasion may yet help provide Somalia with an opportunity to recover from its decades of turmoil but the experience has already severely degraded Kenya’s institutions and dented her ambitions of entrenching democratic and accountable governance at home. Its effects will be felt for generations to come.
By Patrick Gathara
(Mr Gathara is a freelance researcher, investigator and cartoonist based in Nairobi)
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
The primary targets of the government’s fear-mongering and scapegoating have been the Muslim community and especially, though not exclusively, ethnic Somalis. Be they Kenyan citizens or refugees from Somalia, they have been collectively blamed for the atrocities committed by al Shabaab and this has led to repressive “anti-terror operations” and deportations. In April 2014, the government deployed, according tosays Human Rights Watch, about 5000 police officers and KDF troops in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood following a series of grenade and gun and in Mombasa. Operation Usalama Watch lasted several weeks during which “the forces raided homes, buildings, and shops, extorted massive sums, and harassed and detained an estimated 4,000 people – including journalists, registered refugees, Kenyan citizens, and international aid workers – without charge, and in appalling conditions for periods well beyond the 24-hour legal limit.” Further, in violation of its international obligations, the government is trying to close the Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest, and to force nearly half a million refugees back across the border.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
Kenya's Criminal Assault on Famine-Stricken Somalia
Sunday, December 18, 2011
By Stephen Roblin, Truthout | News Analysis
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Kenyas Criminal Assault on Famine-Stricken Somalia
A view of the skyline beyond the northern suburbs of Mogadishu is seen through a bullet hole in the window of a hotel in Yaaqshiid District, where Al Shabaab militants have been pushed beyond the city's northern fringes to the outskirts of the Somalia seaside. (Photo: Stuart Price / United Nations Photo)
On October 15, Kenya's top security chiefs declared war on Al Shabaab, the loose coalition of Islamist militias that controls southern Somalia. The next day, hundreds of Kenyan soldiers in armored trucks and tanks reportedly "stormed" across Kenya's northern border and into the region with the goal of decimating an Islamist coalition that was originally catapulted to dominance in 2007 consequent to a US-backed Ethiopian intervention.
Since then, Kenyan airstrikes have been clearing the way for Kenyan soldiers and their Somali proxy forces as they move deeper into southern Somalia, a region from which Al Shabaab has waged a bitter war against Somalia's Mogadishu-based Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the African Union (AU) "peacekeeping" mission (AMISOM) that has prevented its collapse. Ethiopian troops have reportedly joined the invasion where they are primarily targeting Al Shabaab strongholds in central Somalia.
Southern Somalia is currently the "epicenter" of a famine that the UN believes could claim up to 250,000 lives in coming months. Famine relief efforts have been crippled by three major factors: Al Shabaab's partial ban on aid agencies, the large-scale theft of food aid by TFG-affiliated militias, and US aid restrictions - the last of which have effectively criminalized humanitarian assistance in southern Somalia since 2008.
The Kenyan intervention now joins the factors cited above as a primary obstacle to overcoming "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today." In fact, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has already found that intervention is limiting humanitarian access and has stated unequivocally that "[t]he hostilities threaten the lives of those in crisis and the ongoing humanitarian efforts to assist them."[1]
Pushing hundreds of thousands of Somalis closer to the brink of starvation, however, has done nothing to deter Kenya, nor its backers, from pursuing what is clearly an illegal intervention.
Good Launchpad
The primary target for the military campaign, called Operation Linda Nchi (Protect the Nation), is Kismayo, the highly strategic port city in southern Somalia and Al Shabaab stronghold. According to Kenyan military spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir, "We are going to be there until the (Somali government) has effectively reduced the capacity of al-Shabab to fire a single round ... We want to ensure there is no al-Shabab."
The expressed war aim, however, has nothing to do with the alleged reason, nor with self-defense, as is claimed by Kenyan officials and its Western and regional backers.
The Kenyan government in Nairobi initially used the recent series of kidnappings inside Kenya as the pretext for the campaign. From early September to mid-October, unknown gunmen suspected of being Somalis had on four different occasions kidnapped five civilians (two Western tourists and aid workers and a Kenyan man working for a Western aid agency) and reportedly taken them to southern Somalia.[2]
Nairobi has failed to provide a shred of evidence on the identities of the kidnappers. Al Shabaab has denied responsibility. Quite tellingly, Nairobi has not bothered advancing the pretext of a rescue mission. The reason is clear: if the captives are in fact held in southern Somalia, the invasion jeopardizes their safety.
Recognizing this peril, the organization representing the two kidnapped aid workers, Doctors Without Borders, immediately criticized Kenya's irresponsible actions and dissociated itself from "any military or other armed activities, declarations or presumptions of responsibility related to this case."[3]
Instead of a rescue mission, Kenya used the kidnappings to justify the invasion on grounds of "self-defense." In an October 17 letter to the UN Security Council (UNSC), the Kenyan government cited the "latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the Al-Shabaab terrorists" as reason for "remedial and pre-emptive action" undertaken "to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security."[4]
Less than a week later, Nairobi collapsed its own pretext by admitting that the identities of the kidnappers were completely irrelevant to the government's decision to invade. Confirming what many analysts suspected, on October 23, the government's chief spokesman, Alfred Mutua, called the kidnappings a "good launchpad" for an operation that had "been in the pipeline for a while."
Kenyan officials continue to characterize the pre-meditated invasion as an act of "self-defense." In an attempt to give legal cover for the government-approved doublespeak, Nairobi invoked Article 51 of the UN Charter, part of which states: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."
Government spokespersons have interpreted the Article to mean that states have the right "to hit anybody who hits you or is planning to hit you.... [and] pursue those who have hit and ran away," Kenya's Internal Security Permanent Secretary Francis Kimemia put it.
With responsibility for the kidnappings consigned to irrelevancy, we can only interpret the Kimemia standard to mean that Kenya can "hit" anyone of their choosing, pending (we can presume) approval from appropriate authorities.
This viewpoint contrasts strikingly with the opinion of the UN body responsible for investigating violations to Somalia's longstanding general and complete arms embargo.[5]
Self-Defense?
To be clear, Kenya's right to self-defense is not in question. Since Kenya has not received UNSC approval for its invasion, the question to be asked is: does Kenya have a right to use force on Somali soil?
Without UNSC approval, international law allows the right to force on foreign soil only when all peaceful means to a conflict have been exhausted, leaving no alternative but the resort to force to defend against an attack under way or one that is "demonstrably imminent." Furthermore, the right to self-defense against an armed attack in only temporary and subsists "until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security," as stated in Article 51, with the intention being that the UNSC will act quickly to end the attack.[6]
Cases where there appear to be legitimate cause for self-defense raise crucial questions regarding necessity and measure.[7] For the Kenyan intervention, such questions don't even enter in. For one, the government already collapsed its own pretext. Secondly - and more importantly - aggressors forfeit their right to self-defense.
Since early 2009, the Kenyan government has implemented a military program called the "Jubaland Initiative" in blatant violation of the Somali arms embargo. The program was responsible for assembling, training and arming Somali proxy forces to carry out operations along the Somali side of the Kenyan border.[8]
The objective was to develop proxy militias capable of pushing Al-Shabaab out of Somalia's Juba Valley, a region that contains Kismayo and overlaps with the hydrocarbon-rich Kenyan-Somalia Lamu basin (which Kenya and its Western patrons are eager to exploit). By transforming the region into a "buffer zone," Nairobi's hope was for its proxies to prevent Somalia's crisis from spilling into Kenya, both in terms of insecurity and refugees.[9]
Ethiopia essentially mirrored the initiative along its Somali border, and achieved similar results to its counterparts. Rather than helping to establish "emergent local authorities" capable of delivering "enduring peace and security," the UN Monitoring Group in its July 2011 report warned that Kenya and Ethiopia
"resort to Somali proxy forces ... represents a potential return to the 'warlordism' of the 1990s and early 2000s."[10]
Kenyan and Ethiopian efforts to re-establish "warlordism" in the region violated the embargo on two fronts: first, arming and training Somali proxies without UNSC approval; and, second, carrying out military operations alongside proxies on Somali soil.
As stipulated in UNSC resolutions 1744 and 1772 (2007), arming and training Somali "security sector institutions" - which the Monitoring Group takes to include Somali factions formally aligned with the TFG - are eligible for exemption to the embargo on the condition that the UNSC Committee is notified "in advance and on a case-by-case basis."
Kenyan and Ethiopia proxy forces are nominally under the command of the TFG and therefore eligible for exemption. But because neither government has notified the sanctions Committee about their programs, the entire Jubaland Initiative and Ethiopia's like programs constitute "technical violations" of the arms embargo.[11]
Both governments have also committed "substantive violations," defined by the Monitoring Group as "contraventions of the embargo that would under no circumstances be eligible for exemptions."[12] The Monitoring Group has made clear that foreign military incursions on Somali soil fall into this category.
In response to joint operations carried out against Al Shabaab by Ethiopian forces and Addis Ababa's proxy militia, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama (ASWJ), the March 2010 report states: "The Monitoring Group does not believe that operations of foreign military forces on Somali soil correspond with the definition of support to the Somali security sector under Security Council resolution 1772 (2007), and therefore constitute a substantive violation of the arms embargo."[13]
Since then, Ethiopia has continued to carry out military operations inside Somali territory, with Kenya increasingly following suit.
In February 2011, the TFG and AMISOM spearheaded a military offensive against Al Shabaab that, according to credible sources, was supported militarily by Ethiopian and Kenyan forces and their proxies. For example, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report on August 15 documenting how "nits of the Ethiopian and Kenyan armed forces have been deployed in support of operations in southern Somalia since the beginning of 2011."
The report cites the shelling of the town, Bula Hawo, by Ethiopian forces in March. Kenyan troops allegedly were present in the town.[14]
Throughout March and into early April, Kenyan tanks and artillery reportedly shelled the town of Dhobley from the Kenyan side of the border. According to Human Rights Watch, during the final day of shelling on April 4, a hospital was severely damaged in an act the organization suspects may have been deliberate.[15]
The Monitoring Group corroborates the presence of Kenyan military operations in Dhobley during March: "According [to Kenyan] governmental sources, artillery for these incursions was provided by the Kenyan military, which included military helicopters to provide air support," the July 2011 report states.[16]
Kenyan and Ethiopian military operations on Somali soil in support of the TFG/AMISOM offensive fall squarely in the category of "substantive violations." In keeping with the Monitoring Group definition, the TFG does not possess the legal authority to override the embargo and grant permission for foreign incursions. The Monitoring Group made this point clear in its opinion on the US-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia (December 2006 - January 2009).
Like Nairobi, Addis Ababa argued that its invasion was consistent with the UN Charter because it was at the request of the TFG and was undertaken in "self-defense."[17] The Monitoring Group responded to Addis Ababa's argument by stating unambiguously: "the presence of Ethiopian forces on Somali territory constituted a violation of the arms embargo, notwithstanding the bilateral agreements between the Government of Ethiopia and the Transitional Federal Government under which that deployment had taken place."[18]
This point bears significantly on the Kenyan invasion because it nullifies the October 17 joint Kenyan-Somali communiqué sent to the UNSC, which, at best, only implies TFG approval for the invasion. (The communiqué is careful not to specifically authorize Kenyan troops on Somali soil. The closest it comes is to state that both countries will "[c]ooperate in undertaking security and military operations, and to undertake coordinated pre-emptive action and the pursuit of any armed elements ...")[19]
In short, Kenya is without a legal justification for the right to force on Somali soil. This fact entails that the invasion not only constitutes a "substantive violation" of the arms embargo, but also foreign aggression - the "supreme international crime" in the determination of the Nuremberg Tribunals.
Client-State Impunity
It is now known from US embassy cables released on WikiLeaks that as of February 2010 Kenya's "counter-terrorism" chief and top Western patron did not support the Jubaland Initiative on tactical grounds, fearing that the policy would "backfire."[21] That month, Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow clarified the US position by telling Kenyan officials that while "you have our understanding, you do not yet have our support."[22]
It is enough for Washington to offer its "understanding" to confer a much-sought-after privilege in the domain of international affairs: what Edward Herman and David Peterson have called "client-state impunity."[20] As a beneficiary of this privilege, Kenya is like Ethiopia in that it's free to pursue a criminal policy without fear of punitive action, like sanctions.
Impunity by right of geopolitical alignment is the leading cause of what the Monitoring Group has identified as an "international norm of non-compliance"[23] toward the longstanding Somali arms embargo and, more generally, international law. A "norm" that runs right to the present and is being actively defended.
Echoing Kimemia's interpretation of the UN Charter in more typical diplomatic verbiage, US Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration defended the Kenyan intervention, saying, "We respect the right of a nation to take any decision to defend its borders as per article 51 of the UN charter on self defence and pursuit of hostile elements across international borders."
More than just "understanding," there are unconfirmed reports alleging that the US is offering its "support" in the form of airstrikes. France is also suspected of taking part in the invasion, with unconfirmed reports of the French Navy bombing Al Shabaab positions. Both governments deny direct military involvement.
For the Obama administration, authorizing airstrikes would only be a continuation of, rather than departure from, a policy that increasing relies on committing "substantive violations" of the embargo and acts of aggression. For example, numerous sources claim that the administration authorized airstrikes against Al Shabaab targets in late June and early July, just weeks before the exploding humanitarian crisis reached famine levels throughout southern Somalia.[24]
Kenya, now with official backing from the East African regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the AU,[25] has been actively seeking greater involvement from the US and other "big countries." Nairobi has been lobbying its Western patrons to push through a UNSC resolution authorizing an international naval blockade on Kismayo and a NATO intervention.
So far, the UNSC has refrained from passing a resolution pertaining to the Kenyan intervention. The result has been to give Kenya the green light to continue waging its criminal invasion, thus making clear the UNSC's failure to take direct measures to "restore international peace and security," as stipulated in Article 51.
When the UNSC finally weighs in, it is unlikely that it will authorize all of Kenya's demands, especially a NATO intervention, as the Obama administration has made clear that it will not become bogged down in a full-fledged intervention in Somalia. The administration instead will likely (if it is not already) support the invasion through surveillance and drone attacks on Al Shabaab suspects, a capacity that has grown significantly in recent years with the construction of its "constellation of drone bases" in the region.[26]
While the direction that the invasion will take remains uncertain, what's clear is that the dire consequences of these policies for Somalis are regarded much like the violations of international law committed by those who bestow and possess "client-state impunity": a mere sideshow to strategic pursuits.
Footnotes:
[1] "Somalia - Famine & Drought," Situation Report No. 21, 8 November 2011.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
By Stephen Roblin, Truthout | News Analysis
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Kenyas Criminal Assault on Famine-Stricken Somalia
A view of the skyline beyond the northern suburbs of Mogadishu is seen through a bullet hole in the window of a hotel in Yaaqshiid District, where Al Shabaab militants have been pushed beyond the city's northern fringes to the outskirts of the Somalia seaside. (Photo: Stuart Price / United Nations Photo)
On October 15, Kenya's top security chiefs declared war on Al Shabaab, the loose coalition of Islamist militias that controls southern Somalia. The next day, hundreds of Kenyan soldiers in armored trucks and tanks reportedly "stormed" across Kenya's northern border and into the region with the goal of decimating an Islamist coalition that was originally catapulted to dominance in 2007 consequent to a US-backed Ethiopian intervention.
Since then, Kenyan airstrikes have been clearing the way for Kenyan soldiers and their Somali proxy forces as they move deeper into southern Somalia, a region from which Al Shabaab has waged a bitter war against Somalia's Mogadishu-based Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the African Union (AU) "peacekeeping" mission (AMISOM) that has prevented its collapse. Ethiopian troops have reportedly joined the invasion where they are primarily targeting Al Shabaab strongholds in central Somalia.
Southern Somalia is currently the "epicenter" of a famine that the UN believes could claim up to 250,000 lives in coming months. Famine relief efforts have been crippled by three major factors: Al Shabaab's partial ban on aid agencies, the large-scale theft of food aid by TFG-affiliated militias, and US aid restrictions - the last of which have effectively criminalized humanitarian assistance in southern Somalia since 2008.
The Kenyan intervention now joins the factors cited above as a primary obstacle to overcoming "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today." In fact, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has already found that intervention is limiting humanitarian access and has stated unequivocally that "[t]he hostilities threaten the lives of those in crisis and the ongoing humanitarian efforts to assist them."[1]
Pushing hundreds of thousands of Somalis closer to the brink of starvation, however, has done nothing to deter Kenya, nor its backers, from pursuing what is clearly an illegal intervention.
Good Launchpad
The primary target for the military campaign, called Operation Linda Nchi (Protect the Nation), is Kismayo, the highly strategic port city in southern Somalia and Al Shabaab stronghold. According to Kenyan military spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir, "We are going to be there until the (Somali government) has effectively reduced the capacity of al-Shabab to fire a single round ... We want to ensure there is no al-Shabab."
The expressed war aim, however, has nothing to do with the alleged reason, nor with self-defense, as is claimed by Kenyan officials and its Western and regional backers.
The Kenyan government in Nairobi initially used the recent series of kidnappings inside Kenya as the pretext for the campaign. From early September to mid-October, unknown gunmen suspected of being Somalis had on four different occasions kidnapped five civilians (two Western tourists and aid workers and a Kenyan man working for a Western aid agency) and reportedly taken them to southern Somalia.[2]
Nairobi has failed to provide a shred of evidence on the identities of the kidnappers. Al Shabaab has denied responsibility. Quite tellingly, Nairobi has not bothered advancing the pretext of a rescue mission. The reason is clear: if the captives are in fact held in southern Somalia, the invasion jeopardizes their safety.
Recognizing this peril, the organization representing the two kidnapped aid workers, Doctors Without Borders, immediately criticized Kenya's irresponsible actions and dissociated itself from "any military or other armed activities, declarations or presumptions of responsibility related to this case."[3]
Instead of a rescue mission, Kenya used the kidnappings to justify the invasion on grounds of "self-defense." In an October 17 letter to the UN Security Council (UNSC), the Kenyan government cited the "latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the Al-Shabaab terrorists" as reason for "remedial and pre-emptive action" undertaken "to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security."[4]
Less than a week later, Nairobi collapsed its own pretext by admitting that the identities of the kidnappers were completely irrelevant to the government's decision to invade. Confirming what many analysts suspected, on October 23, the government's chief spokesman, Alfred Mutua, called the kidnappings a "good launchpad" for an operation that had "been in the pipeline for a while."
Kenyan officials continue to characterize the pre-meditated invasion as an act of "self-defense." In an attempt to give legal cover for the government-approved doublespeak, Nairobi invoked Article 51 of the UN Charter, part of which states: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."
Government spokespersons have interpreted the Article to mean that states have the right "to hit anybody who hits you or is planning to hit you.... [and] pursue those who have hit and ran away," Kenya's Internal Security Permanent Secretary Francis Kimemia put it.
With responsibility for the kidnappings consigned to irrelevancy, we can only interpret the Kimemia standard to mean that Kenya can "hit" anyone of their choosing, pending (we can presume) approval from appropriate authorities.
This viewpoint contrasts strikingly with the opinion of the UN body responsible for investigating violations to Somalia's longstanding general and complete arms embargo.[5]
Self-Defense?
To be clear, Kenya's right to self-defense is not in question. Since Kenya has not received UNSC approval for its invasion, the question to be asked is: does Kenya have a right to use force on Somali soil?
Without UNSC approval, international law allows the right to force on foreign soil only when all peaceful means to a conflict have been exhausted, leaving no alternative but the resort to force to defend against an attack under way or one that is "demonstrably imminent." Furthermore, the right to self-defense against an armed attack in only temporary and subsists "until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security," as stated in Article 51, with the intention being that the UNSC will act quickly to end the attack.[6]
Cases where there appear to be legitimate cause for self-defense raise crucial questions regarding necessity and measure.[7] For the Kenyan intervention, such questions don't even enter in. For one, the government already collapsed its own pretext. Secondly - and more importantly - aggressors forfeit their right to self-defense.
Since early 2009, the Kenyan government has implemented a military program called the "Jubaland Initiative" in blatant violation of the Somali arms embargo. The program was responsible for assembling, training and arming Somali proxy forces to carry out operations along the Somali side of the Kenyan border.[8]
The objective was to develop proxy militias capable of pushing Al-Shabaab out of Somalia's Juba Valley, a region that contains Kismayo and overlaps with the hydrocarbon-rich Kenyan-Somalia Lamu basin (which Kenya and its Western patrons are eager to exploit). By transforming the region into a "buffer zone," Nairobi's hope was for its proxies to prevent Somalia's crisis from spilling into Kenya, both in terms of insecurity and refugees.[9]
Ethiopia essentially mirrored the initiative along its Somali border, and achieved similar results to its counterparts. Rather than helping to establish "emergent local authorities" capable of delivering "enduring peace and security," the UN Monitoring Group in its July 2011 report warned that Kenya and Ethiopia
"resort to Somali proxy forces ... represents a potential return to the 'warlordism' of the 1990s and early 2000s."[10]
Kenyan and Ethiopian efforts to re-establish "warlordism" in the region violated the embargo on two fronts: first, arming and training Somali proxies without UNSC approval; and, second, carrying out military operations alongside proxies on Somali soil.
As stipulated in UNSC resolutions 1744 and 1772 (2007), arming and training Somali "security sector institutions" - which the Monitoring Group takes to include Somali factions formally aligned with the TFG - are eligible for exemption to the embargo on the condition that the UNSC Committee is notified "in advance and on a case-by-case basis."
Kenyan and Ethiopia proxy forces are nominally under the command of the TFG and therefore eligible for exemption. But because neither government has notified the sanctions Committee about their programs, the entire Jubaland Initiative and Ethiopia's like programs constitute "technical violations" of the arms embargo.[11]
Both governments have also committed "substantive violations," defined by the Monitoring Group as "contraventions of the embargo that would under no circumstances be eligible for exemptions."[12] The Monitoring Group has made clear that foreign military incursions on Somali soil fall into this category.
In response to joint operations carried out against Al Shabaab by Ethiopian forces and Addis Ababa's proxy militia, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama (ASWJ), the March 2010 report states: "The Monitoring Group does not believe that operations of foreign military forces on Somali soil correspond with the definition of support to the Somali security sector under Security Council resolution 1772 (2007), and therefore constitute a substantive violation of the arms embargo."[13]
Since then, Ethiopia has continued to carry out military operations inside Somali territory, with Kenya increasingly following suit.
In February 2011, the TFG and AMISOM spearheaded a military offensive against Al Shabaab that, according to credible sources, was supported militarily by Ethiopian and Kenyan forces and their proxies. For example, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report on August 15 documenting how "nits of the Ethiopian and Kenyan armed forces have been deployed in support of operations in southern Somalia since the beginning of 2011."
The report cites the shelling of the town, Bula Hawo, by Ethiopian forces in March. Kenyan troops allegedly were present in the town.[14]
Throughout March and into early April, Kenyan tanks and artillery reportedly shelled the town of Dhobley from the Kenyan side of the border. According to Human Rights Watch, during the final day of shelling on April 4, a hospital was severely damaged in an act the organization suspects may have been deliberate.[15]
The Monitoring Group corroborates the presence of Kenyan military operations in Dhobley during March: "According [to Kenyan] governmental sources, artillery for these incursions was provided by the Kenyan military, which included military helicopters to provide air support," the July 2011 report states.[16]
Kenyan and Ethiopian military operations on Somali soil in support of the TFG/AMISOM offensive fall squarely in the category of "substantive violations." In keeping with the Monitoring Group definition, the TFG does not possess the legal authority to override the embargo and grant permission for foreign incursions. The Monitoring Group made this point clear in its opinion on the US-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia (December 2006 - January 2009).
Like Nairobi, Addis Ababa argued that its invasion was consistent with the UN Charter because it was at the request of the TFG and was undertaken in "self-defense."[17] The Monitoring Group responded to Addis Ababa's argument by stating unambiguously: "the presence of Ethiopian forces on Somali territory constituted a violation of the arms embargo, notwithstanding the bilateral agreements between the Government of Ethiopia and the Transitional Federal Government under which that deployment had taken place."[18]
This point bears significantly on the Kenyan invasion because it nullifies the October 17 joint Kenyan-Somali communiqué sent to the UNSC, which, at best, only implies TFG approval for the invasion. (The communiqué is careful not to specifically authorize Kenyan troops on Somali soil. The closest it comes is to state that both countries will "[c]ooperate in undertaking security and military operations, and to undertake coordinated pre-emptive action and the pursuit of any armed elements ...")[19]
In short, Kenya is without a legal justification for the right to force on Somali soil. This fact entails that the invasion not only constitutes a "substantive violation" of the arms embargo, but also foreign aggression - the "supreme international crime" in the determination of the Nuremberg Tribunals.
Client-State Impunity
It is now known from US embassy cables released on WikiLeaks that as of February 2010 Kenya's "counter-terrorism" chief and top Western patron did not support the Jubaland Initiative on tactical grounds, fearing that the policy would "backfire."[21] That month, Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow clarified the US position by telling Kenyan officials that while "you have our understanding, you do not yet have our support."[22]
It is enough for Washington to offer its "understanding" to confer a much-sought-after privilege in the domain of international affairs: what Edward Herman and David Peterson have called "client-state impunity."[20] As a beneficiary of this privilege, Kenya is like Ethiopia in that it's free to pursue a criminal policy without fear of punitive action, like sanctions.
Impunity by right of geopolitical alignment is the leading cause of what the Monitoring Group has identified as an "international norm of non-compliance"[23] toward the longstanding Somali arms embargo and, more generally, international law. A "norm" that runs right to the present and is being actively defended.
Echoing Kimemia's interpretation of the UN Charter in more typical diplomatic verbiage, US Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration defended the Kenyan intervention, saying, "We respect the right of a nation to take any decision to defend its borders as per article 51 of the UN charter on self defence and pursuit of hostile elements across international borders."
More than just "understanding," there are unconfirmed reports alleging that the US is offering its "support" in the form of airstrikes. France is also suspected of taking part in the invasion, with unconfirmed reports of the French Navy bombing Al Shabaab positions. Both governments deny direct military involvement.
For the Obama administration, authorizing airstrikes would only be a continuation of, rather than departure from, a policy that increasing relies on committing "substantive violations" of the embargo and acts of aggression. For example, numerous sources claim that the administration authorized airstrikes against Al Shabaab targets in late June and early July, just weeks before the exploding humanitarian crisis reached famine levels throughout southern Somalia.[24]
Kenya, now with official backing from the East African regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the AU,[25] has been actively seeking greater involvement from the US and other "big countries." Nairobi has been lobbying its Western patrons to push through a UNSC resolution authorizing an international naval blockade on Kismayo and a NATO intervention.
So far, the UNSC has refrained from passing a resolution pertaining to the Kenyan intervention. The result has been to give Kenya the green light to continue waging its criminal invasion, thus making clear the UNSC's failure to take direct measures to "restore international peace and security," as stipulated in Article 51.
When the UNSC finally weighs in, it is unlikely that it will authorize all of Kenya's demands, especially a NATO intervention, as the Obama administration has made clear that it will not become bogged down in a full-fledged intervention in Somalia. The administration instead will likely (if it is not already) support the invasion through surveillance and drone attacks on Al Shabaab suspects, a capacity that has grown significantly in recent years with the construction of its "constellation of drone bases" in the region.[26]
While the direction that the invasion will take remains uncertain, what's clear is that the dire consequences of these policies for Somalis are regarded much like the violations of international law committed by those who bestow and possess "client-state impunity": a mere sideshow to strategic pursuits.
Footnotes:
[1] "Somalia - Famine & Drought," Situation Report No. 21, 8 November 2011.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
The objectives given by the Kenyan government for the invasion were both confused and confusing. Spokesman Alfred Mutua initially claimed the KDF was pursuing the alleged kidnappers across the border but later admitted that the kidnappings had been an excuse to launch a plan that had “been in the pipeline for a while.” Despite the fact that the al Shabaab had strongly denied having anything to do with the kidnappings and the government produced no evidence to back up its allegations, it still dispatched a letter to the UN Security Council citing the “latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the Al-Shabaab terrorists” as reason for “remedial and pre-emptive action” undertaken “to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security.”
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
Interesting article, one worth of reading.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
I don't see how this article is relevant at this moment of time since the Kenyan government made peace with The Somali FG.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
The real peace is when Kenyan army leaves SomaliaMuseyusuf wrote: Fri May 12, 2017 4:04 pm I don't see how this article is relevant at this moment of time since the Kenyan government made peace with The Somali FG.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
Canuck2 what are your views of the kenyan (2011) and the ethiopian invasion of (2006/7)?
Neo colonialism at play?
Neo colonialism at play?
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
you should thankful,with out kenya,somalia will be afghanistan 2.0 and terrorism will infest that shithole place.
while zooomalis are starving and dying of famine every 5 year and killing eachother over qabiil and my qabiil is better non-sense,their arch enemies totalling 90+43 million people are advancing at the speed of light.i wouldnt mind mogadishu and the south joing KENYA REPUBLIC.!
f.uck USC and Zoomalia.
while zooomalis are starving and dying of famine every 5 year and killing eachother over qabiil and my qabiil is better non-sense,their arch enemies totalling 90+43 million people are advancing at the speed of light.i wouldnt mind mogadishu and the south joing KENYA REPUBLIC.!
f.uck USC and Zoomalia.
■ In Africa, OBOR will include a 471-kilometre railway between Nairobi and Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast. Passenger trains will zoom at 120 kilometres per hour, while freights will run at 80 kilometers per hour and carry 25 million tons of cargo per year.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
It is not neo colonialism but the same old colonialism instead of white man we have Kenyan and habashi. I blame Somali men for letting us to be occupied by second poorest country in world (Ethiopia) and Kenya. You men supposed to be our protectors of the children and women but you started killing each other for barren lands. Beside, Never in modern history that African countries occupied other country expect in Somalia case. See how low we degraded ourselves.Xaldoon wrote: Fri May 12, 2017 6:21 pm Canuck2 what are your views of the kenyan (2011) and the ethiopian invasion of (2006/7)?
Neo colonialism at play?
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
Strategic wrote: Fri May 12, 2017 6:38 pm you should thankful,with out kenya,somalia will be afghanistan 2.0 and terrorism will infest that shithole place.
while zooomalis are starving and dying of famine every 5 year and killing eachother over qabiil and my qabiil is better non-sense,their arch enemies totalling 90+43 million people are advancing at the speed of light.i wouldnt mind mogadishu and the south joing KENYA REPUBLIC.!
f.uck USC and Zoomalia.
■ In Africa, OBOR will include a 471-kilometre railway between Nairobi and Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast. Passenger trains will zoom at 120 kilometres per hour, while freights will run at 80 kilometers per hour and carry 25 million tons of cargo per year.
Somalis in Kenya are suffering from ethnic cleansing, join them if you want. There will be cage waiting for you and Bantu man waiting to rape your wife and daughter.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2 ... alis-kenyaStrategic wrote: Fri May 12, 2017 6:38 pm you should thankful,with out kenya,somalia will be afghanistan 2.0 and terrorism will infest that shithole place.
while zooomalis are starving and dying of famine every 5 year and killing eachother over qabiil and my qabiil is better non-sense,their arch enemies totalling 90+43 million people are advancing at the speed of light.i wouldnt mind mogadishu and the south joing KENYA REPUBLIC.!
f.uck USC and Zoomalia.
■ In Africa, OBOR will include a 471-kilometre railway between Nairobi and Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast. Passenger trains will zoom at 120 kilometres per hour, while freights will run at 80 kilometers per hour and carry 25 million tons of cargo per year.
Re: How The Invasion Of Somalia Changed Kenya
http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2 ... alis-kenyaStrategic wrote: Fri May 12, 2017 6:38 pm you should thankful,with out kenya,somalia will be afghanistan 2.0 and terrorism will infest that shithole place.
while zooomalis are starving and dying of famine every 5 year and killing eachother over qabiil and my qabiil is better non-sense,their arch enemies totalling 90+43 million people are advancing at the speed of light.i wouldnt mind mogadishu and the south joing KENYA REPUBLIC.!
f.uck USC and Zoomalia.
■ In Africa, OBOR will include a 471-kilometre railway between Nairobi and Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast. Passenger trains will zoom at 120 kilometres per hour, while freights will run at 80 kilometers per hour and carry 25 million tons of cargo per year.
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