Time to give al Shabaab killer punch

The future of conflict and the future of Kenya’s defence establishment depends on its preparedness to face the new challenge of unconventional conflict. The winds of change are blowing, driven by a radically altered geopolitical situation, an evolving information-oriented society, and advancing technology. Military institutions are by their very nature conservative. History has shown that success has often sown the seeds of future failure. Kenya can ill-afford to follow in the footsteps of those who have rested on their laurels and failed to stretch their imaginations. The threat caused by Somalia’s extremist militants, the Harakat al Shabaab al Mujahideen (Arabic for “Movement of Warrior Youth”), more commonly known as al Shabaab is real. The group has occasionally threatened to attack Kenya and its neighbours. This threat became manifest with the twin bombings in Kampala a fortnight ago. The attack bore the hallmark of its ally, the al Qaeda. On July 20, the group ambushed a Kenyan patrol contingent and wounded several of our security personnel. With these attacks, the insurgent group should no longer be dismissed as a ragtag militia.The group is an off-shoot of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which splintered into several smaller groups after its removal from power by Ethiopian forces in 2006. The group became fully operational from January 19, 2007 under the leadership of Sheikh Mukhtar Adan Eyrow Robow Abu Mansoor. One of its current leaders is Moktar Ali Zubeyr.The group describes itself as waging jihad against “enemies of Islam” and is engaged in combat against the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and African Union Mission to Somalia (Amisom). It has reportedly “declared war on the United Nations and on Western non-governmental organizations” that distribute food aid in Somalia, killing 42 relief workers in the past two years. Al Shabaab has various foreign fighters from around the world, with recent media reports citing Egyptian and Arab jihadists as the core elements training Somalis in sophisticated weaponry and suicide bombing techniques.With the group not organised and therefore unable to wage a conventional warfare, Kenya’s security forces should not wait for them at the border in order to engage them. They should employ a Hybrid Warfare. This involves a mix of direct and covert counter-insurgency operations — pushing the group, scattering it, and partitioning the country into sectors manned by various international occupation forces until the nation is pacified. With UN approval, Kenya should work with neighbouring countries like Ethiopia and Uganda in restoring order in Somalia. The international community will come in handy in delivering the requisite and appropriate equipment. These actions should be real and objective and devoid of past adventurism for them to gain support of the country to be ‘liberated’. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) experiment has failed.Similarly, the involvement of some nations in the conflict, notably Eritrea and some Egyptian elements, should be condemned. Egypt has a long-standing policy of securing the Nile River flow by destabilising Ethiopia, widely seen as the major threat in the Nile basin to its hegemonic use of the Nile waters. This it does by keeping Ethiopia busy in other theatres and diverting its attention from the important international resource.According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading global authority on security issues, restoring the rule of law in Somalia will have a multiplier effect, the leading being putting to an end the piracy menace in the Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea. Piracy has resulted in the increase in cost of transportation along the high seas bordering the Somali coastline and threatens global petro-energy security.Analysts say international efforts should, besides sending warships, focus on financial networks recycling the tens of millions of dollars of ransoms paid every year. “There’s a financial network that needs to be tracked down. There needs to be a multi-agency response,” said Jason Alderwick, a maritime defence analyst at the IISS. “There just isn’t the naval capacity to cover the area they now threaten. So a military solution is not the answer,” said Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House think-tank in London. A stable government in Mogadishu or wherever else in Somalia will be the answer to regional security. This should form the main agenda for the African Union Summit to be held in Kampala next week.

By Emmanuel Mokoro  Mr Mokoro is a communications and international relations expert: emokoro@psrpc.go.ke