Somalia: Vengeance Is In The Air

[Valin]

Strategy Page:

December 15, 2014:

 

More and more al Shabaab groups are leaving central Somalia and heading for the Kenyan border, where they have access to the large number of Somali refugees (in well supplied Kenyan camps) and ethnic Somalis long resident in northern Kenya. These Somali Kenyans are easier to convince or coerce into cooperating with the Islamic terrorists than the Kenyans belonging to one of the many black African tribes native to East Africa south of Somalia. Al Shabaab is still angry at Kenya for sending troops into southern Kenya and, with the aid of local clan militias, set up a new government in the area that had long been under al Shabaab control. Traditionally Somalis invade Kenya not the other way around and the fact that the Kenyans got away with their “invasion” of southern Somali still annoys al Shabaab (and a lot of other Somalis.) So al Shabaab is moving south for revenge as well as to get away from peacekeepers, anti-al Shabaab militias and the trained soldiers the government now has available. The al Shabaab forces along the border are not yet strong enough to go to war with the Kenyan Army and the local Somali militias, but terrorism is another matter. So groups of al Shabaab gunmen have been crossing the border and murdering non-Moslem civilians they come across. This has angered Kenyans who are demanding that their government do something. In response Kenyan warplanes have bombed suspected al Shabaab camps and Kenyan troops are aggressively seeking out al Shabaab men on both sides of the border. Despite that there is panic among non-Moslem Kenyans living near the Somali border and thousands are leaving.

 

Kenya currently has 3,000 troops on the Somali side of the border and even more on the Kenyan side (in addition to police). The government is apparently going to send more troops and police to the Somali border and Kenyans up there who are ethnic Somalis are being asked to help. Some do, but many do not and a few actually support al Shabaab. At the moment the Kenyan security forces are held in low esteem by most Kenyans and political and military leaders are under a lot of pressure to actually do something.

 

The UN and other foreign aid groups gave become increasingly strident about foreign donors not providing enough money to deal with growing food shortages in Somalia. So far only about a third of the money (over 800 million) needed to handle the coming food crisis has been pledged. There are 20 percent more Somalis in need of aid this year than last. Foreign donors are reluctant to spend a lot of money on Somali aid because over the last two decades so much aid has been stolen by Islamic terrorists, warlords, bandits and whatever passes for government. The drought in 2011 killed a quarter of a million, largely because al Shabaab banned the “un-Islamic” food aid from those needing it. But the donor nations note that the aid groups play down the theft and subsequent investigations revealed this and the fact that the aid groups simply paid off the thieves, often with a portion of the aid. Donor nations want better security before they provide all that is demanded.

 

(Snip)