It may be in bad taste to question official government policy when members of our armed forces are engaged in hostilities on foreign soil, but it cannot be helped. Prof George Saitoti, who is not the Minister of State in the Office of the President for Defence, stated yesterday, after the Mashujaa Day festivities at Nyayo Stadium, that Kenya would go to all lengths to destroy al Shabaab as a threat to security in the region. Now, al Shabaab is not a national army; it is not even a national criminal-cum-terrorist organisation. Unlike the Islamist, anti-Hindu terrorist organisations fighting in the Kashmir Valley in India, it does not enjoy the semi-public patronage of any government or secret police of any country. It is not a global terrorist organisation; its attacks have overwhelmingly concentrated on Somalia proper, with brief forays into Uganda and Kenya. However, it claims affiliation with al Qaeda, the organisation responsible for penetrating US defences to murderously devastating effect on 11 September 2001.
Somalia, two decades after it descended into bloody, internecine war, is a pale shadow of a functioning nation-state. The Transitional Federal Government, which is simply the biggest and best-protected gang in Somalia, enjoys legitimacy only among the members of the clans that comprise its membership. Regardless of the bloodthirstiness of al Shabaab, the TFG is seen as venal, corrupt and heavily partisan, and it will never enjoy the same level of legitimacy that the Islamic Courts Union, that flourished briefly between June and December 2006 and was foolishly toppled by the US-backed Ethiopian armed forces, enjoyed.
The piracy taking place in the Indian Ocean is proof that the terrorism that was engendered by the collapse of the Somali state after the fall of Mohammed Siad Barre has morphed into a sophisticated and well-oiled machine in 2011. Rough and unconfirmed estimates put the haul from the Indian Ocean piracy at $400 million, much of it not going to Somalia, but to the true merchants of death to be found around the Gulf of Aden, especially in Yemen and Oman. It is presumed that it is these benefactors who have an interest in perpetuating the Somali civil war, hence their suspected support for groups such as al Shabaab, which is by no means the only Islamist organisation in Somalia today. So given this scenario, who exactly have the Kenya Defence Forces been sent to vanquish? How long will they be in Somalia, and will their campaign turn into an occupation?
Once more, I turn to the question of what exactly our foreign policy is. At least during President Moi's long and ruinous reign, we knew where we stood in the comity of nations. Since Mwai Kibaki was sworn for the first time in 2003, we have muddled from one policy to another without a coherent strategy or even a basic plan, for that matter. Other than rapidly washing its hands of the Somali and South Sudan problems as soon as they showed signs of being resolved, what exactly has defined Kenya's foreign policy engagements in the Greater Eastern Africa region, especially with regards to the Horn of Africa? The answers to these questions are crucial to determining what will constitute success in our Somalia adventure. Unless we are prepared to keep our soldiers in Somalia indefinitely, or until the idiots in Washington, London, Paris and Bonn come to their senses, the moment our troops come home a new rag-tag Islamist militia will rise up to take the place of al Shabaab and this cycle will repeat itself.
So while I am proud of the courage of our soldiers and I pray that they remain victorious in their engagements with the enemy, I must ask that they be recalled and deployed along the border until the mandarins in Nairobi tell the nabobs in Harambee House and the National Assembly the truth about the true state of affairs. Wars are always fought for political reasons; what was the rationale for invading Somalia, pursuing what amounts to a cross-border criminal organisation with delusions of world domination, that does not control the territory it fights in or enjoy the legitimacy of the people of Somalia?
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