Terrorism in AfricaTerrorism in Africa: Kenyan troops invade Somalia

Four years ago the United States created a new military command – the Africa Command. For nearly a decade now, Western military and intelligence services have been focusing on Africa as the source of a variety of problems threatening U.S. national interest and economic welfare.

Two main problems were of special concern:

• Terrorism: some African countries offer terrorists a hospitable environment because these countries are large and are poorly governed – if they are governed at all. Countries such as Somalia, Niger, Mauritania, and Chad, among others, are in this category. Other countries, like Nigeria, have a restive Muslim population in which terrorist groups find recruits.
• Climate change: the geography of Africa makes it vulnerable to climate change, as 70 percent of the continent’s population relies on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods. The combination of desertification, longer and more intense droughts, and over-population has led intelligence and military services in the West to conclude that within a few short years, large groups of impoverished people will begin to move from their drying land to areas where water is more available, in the process plunging areas of the continent into bitter conflicts and war.

At least when it comes to terrorism, more and more African governments have show willingness to take action. The latest example is the deployment of Kenyan troops inside Somalia.

On Wednesday, Kenya sent its troops some 100 miles inside Somalia to take the battle to the Islamic Al Shabaab organization, killing some 75 militants. The official reason given for the incursion was that it was meant to help find two kidnapped aid workers. In fact, the incursion was meant to inflict a heavy blow on the Islamic Al Shabaab and discourage it from conducting terrorist activities inside Kenya.

The incursion is similar to the one undertaken by Ethiopia five years ago. That incursion was similar to the none taken by Kenya in that both were motivated by growing Al Shabaab activity inside Ethiopia and Kenya, respectively.

Note that Ethiopia’s action went further: at the urging of the United States and the African Union (AU), Ethiopian troops went beyond the border region and drove all the way to Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, in order to drive the increasingly more powerful Islamic Court Union out of the city. The Ethiopians were promised that the AU would put together a force of 8,000 peace keepers to replace the Ethiopian troops in the city, but by 2009 the AU has been able to recruit on 3,400 troops for the peace keeping mission. Ethiopia had enough and pulled its forces to bases inside Ethiopia, from which they continue their policy of periodic raids against Islamists inside Somalia.

Kenya’s military action is more modest than the ambitious Ethiopian invasion of 2006. The Kenyan army is well equipped and well trained, and there is little doubt that it can keep the border area quiet with periodic raids into Somali, the way the Ethiopians have managed to do in the past five years.

Moreover, the invasion was coordinated with Somalia’s Transitional National Government (TNG), the nominal ruling authority bin Somalia. Since the TNG controls no more than a few buildings in downtown Mogadishu, it relies on the Ethiopian and Kenyan militaries to engage the Islamists. The TNG has been reduced to providing intelligence information to Ethiopia and Kenya about Al Shabaab concentrations in spots along Somalia’s borders, then inviting those two countries to come in and engage the Islamists (officially, the TNG denies that it coordinates military action with its two neighbors against Al Shabaab)

Yesterday, AU troops stormed a stronghold of Al Shabaab militant group on the outskirts of Mogadishu, while a militia backed by Kenyan troops simultaneously attacked another Shabaab stronghold along the Kenya-Somalia border, taking it over and forcing Shabab fighters to flee. The Kenyan military has been coordinating its activities with clan-based militias in southern Somalia – especially with the Ras Kamboni Movement.

One interesting aspect of Kenya’s military action is that, according to the New York Times, the United States was not informed ahead of time of the incursion. This is surprising, since “Kenya is one of the closest American allies in Africa,” the Times reports, “frequently cooperating on military and intelligence issues, and American officials have branded Islamist militants in Somalia a serious threat to the United States.”