Kenya Massing Troops for Intervention in Somalia
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Related subjects: Africa, Diplomacy & Politics, East Africa, Global, Security & Surveillance, The Global Intercept Comments (2)
The Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki has ordered troops to the border with Somalia, in an apparent effort to bolster Ethiopian efforts to stabilize the war-torn, largely ungoverned country. Ongoing unrest and the prospects that a range of Islamist militia might take full control of Somali territory have stirred Ethiopia and Kenya to discuss means of strengthening the UN-backed provisional government, which has until now failed to bring order to the troubled nation, even as piracy and other international security threats have been spreading.
The Christian Science Monitor reported on Thursday that:
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki called together his National Defense and Security Council in Nairobi yesterday, and while Interior Minister George Saitoti assured Kenyans that Kenya would not intervene in Somalia, it was clear that other ministers and defense officials were preparing for such a step.
Raila Odinga, a Kibaki rival turned prime-minister in a coalition government, has publicly urged east African nations to join together in sending troops to Somalia to bolster the weak provisional government and seek a stable Somalia. Moses Wetangula, the foreign minister, has said “It will be most inappropriate and inadvisable to do nothing when our national security and regional stability is threatened”.
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Kenya appears increasingly likely to intervene in Somalia, perhaps to force militia into a war on two fronts that would stretch their resources and undermine local support for their claims to securing the country against anarchy. The new security posture comes as the coalition government joining Kibaki’s PNU and Odinga’s ODM parties seems to be slipping.
The two parties have been engaged in a tug of war for procedural control of parliament, and a united front in the face of a border threat from unrest in Somalia could delay any further breakdown in the tenuous political coalition. But intervention could be risky: Kenya’s military is not as battle-hardened as Ethiopia’s and its intelligence network is thought to have less reach.
There are concerns a full-scale military intervention —with the purpose of taking on Islamist militia groups in Somalia— could stoke tensions between Kenya’s large muslim population and the government. It could also have the undesired effect of opening Kenya’s border region to infiltration by large numbers of Somali refugees and even militia groups seeking to bring the battle back to Kenya.
As a result, a range of observers speculate that Kenya will not launch full-scale military operations inside Somalia, but might simply seek to secure its border and engage in targeted “policing” operations aimed at reducing unrest that could spread across the border. Rashid Abdi, an International Crisis Group specialist in Horn of Africa affairs, has indicated there is some skepticism about the wisdom of intervention among those who have admired Kenya’s “pragmatism” in weighing regional security issues.
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