from People For Peace
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BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2011

Whether a helicopter that crashed at the Kenya-Somalia border killing five military personnel on Sunday was not brought down by enemy fire as the Department of Defence alleges, the fact still remains that Kenya has entered a war that it will never win. The chopper was part of a heavy military deployment in pursuit of al Shabaab militia following insecurity on the Kenya-Somalia border.

Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for a car bombing in Mogadishu that killed more than 50 people on October 4/ File

Before Kenyan troops and tanks crossed the border into war-torn Somalia Sunday the Al-Qaeda linked Al Shabaab offered Kenya a grim warming. “Kenya violated the territorial rights of Somalia by entering our holy land, but I assure you that they will return disappointed, God willing,” warned Sheikh Hassan Turki, a senior Al Shabaab leader. “Mujahideen fighters will force them to test the pain of the bullets.”

Last month at least one Kenyan soldier was reported dead and three others injured after coming under roadside bomb attack that took place in the border between Somalia’s Belet Hawo and Kenya’s Madera district. The bomb explosion was heavy as it could be heard in parts of Kenya border areas, according to local residents. No comments about the bomb attack were immediately available from the government of Kenya.

In July a roadside bomb targeted to Kenyan military checkpoint in Mandera district, which locates Kenya-Somalia border killed at least four Kenyan security forces. A witness told Shabelle Media Network that 8 others injured in the attack. “The bomb exploded as Kenyan forces were busy in searching the people traveling between Somalia and Kenya” he added.

The forces of Kenya had launched large security crackdown at the border area, according to the eyewitness, noting that at least 70 people were arrested. No group has claimed the bomb attack, but it came as the government of Kenya stepped up its internal security against a back drop of terrorist attacks from al shabaab which threatened to attack neighboring Kenya.

This is not the first time al Shabaab has warned it would attack Kenya. In February this year it threatened to attack neighbouring Kenya for training Somali government forces and allowing Ethiopian troops to operate from its towns.

“Kenya has constantly disturbed us, and now it should face the consequences of allowing Ethiopian troops to attack us from Mandera town,” al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told a news conference. Kenya has been a victim of al Qaeda strikes twice in the past — a 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi and an explosion at an Israeli-owned hotel at the coast in 2002.

Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang refuted allegations that Kenya is training al-Shabaab militias but instead is training recruits to help the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. The troops were seen undergoing training at the Kenyan coast.

If it is true of what Kajwang said then it can confirm why the al Shabaab threat to attack Uganda and Burundi for taking their soldiers there to fight them. That is why al Shabaab claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings in the Ugandan capital Kampala on July 11, which killed 79 people watching the World Cup final on television.

Since then Burundians are living in perpetual fear of terrorist attacks from the Somali al-Shabab. Al-Shabab is known to implement its threats. It warned Uganda and Kenya and carried out its threats. It was also behind the blowing up of a Ugandan coach bus in Nairobi in December 2010.

Burundi deployed its first troops in the Somali capital in 2007. Together with Uganda, they have to date deployed some 8,000 troops to Mogadishu to serve under the African Mission in Somalia, Amisom. A number of Burundian and Ugandan soldiers have been killed in Somalia, mostly in bomb explosions.

The worst Burundian casualties occurred in February 2009, when an al-Shabab car bomb killed more than 10 Burundian soldiers, including the Force deputy commander.
The Islamists also killed another six Burundian soldiers and injured more than 10 when Somali government troops supported by Amisom peacekeepers got into another battle in Mogadishu.

Kenya is launching an attack after two female Spanish aid workers were seized on Thursday by gunmen from Kenya’s crowded Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest with some 450,000 mainly Somali refugees. Tens of thousands of Somalis have arrived in Dadaab this year fleeing drought, famine and conflict in their home nation.

Al-Shabab, or the “youth”, is a Muslim group that aims to overthrow Somalia’s transitional government and impose sharia rule. Somalia has been without an effective government since the overthrow of the despot Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, allowing a flourishing of militia armies, extremist rebels and piracy.

The international community has made many attempts to prop up transitional and reconciliation governments over the past two decades, but the country has inevitably continued to fall to the control of various tribal warlords and Islamist groups.

While Kenyan Defence Minister Yusuf Mohammed Haji says: “If you are attacked by an enemy, you are allowed to pursue that enemy until where you get him. We will force them far away from our border,” some Kenyans fear their country could become a target for more al-Shabab attacks if it becomes more deeply embroiled in Somalia’s conflict.

Yusuf says article 51 of the UN charter allows them to send its soldiers inside Somalia. According to the article nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.

Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

This article has been cited by the United States as support for the legality of the Vietnam War. According to that argument, “although South Vietnam is not an independent sovereign State or a member of the United Nations, it nevertheless enjoys the right of self-defense, and the United States is entitled to participate in its collective defense”

But even so, article 51 has been described as difficult to adjudicate with any certainty in real-life situations. Kenyan government used the article to justify their move to send its army into southern Somalia to pursue al-Shabaab, which it blames for a series of kidnappings inside its territory.

The biggest military action in Kenya’s recent history comes five years after Ethiopia invaded Somalia with US approval and air support – an action that ended in ignominious withdrawal and helped to create al-Shabaab in its current form.

Al-Shabaab responded to Kenya’s move by calling for a holy war: “Are you ready to live under Christians?” one al-Shabaab official shouted on a radio station in southern Somalia. “Get out of your homes and defend your dignity and religion. Today is the day to defend against the enemy.”

Even though the UN charter might have allowed Kenya to send its troops inside Somalia, the UN-backed transitional government, which controls the capital Mogadishu with the support of 9,000 African Union troops, said it was not consulted before Kenyan forces crossed the border.

“As a sovereign country we cannot condone any country crossing our border,” Somalia’s ambassador to Kenya, Mohamed Ali Nur, told The Independent Sunday. He said while Kenya had the right to protect itself, it should do so within its own territory: “We will not allow any country to invade us.”

Al-Shabaab is very difficult to defeat due to its tactics of classic guerrilla tactics–suicide bombings, shootings, and assassinations. The group is believed to have formed in mid-2004 as the military wing of the Islamic Court Union, a radical group that controlled much of Somalia before being ousted by the Ethiopian army in a U.S.-backed invasion in 2006.

Al-Shabab’s membership is estimated to number in the thousands; its fighters are identifiable by their red-and-white scarves. The group began fighting Ethiopian troops and the weak interim government almost immediately after the invasion; today it controls large areas of the nation’s central and southern regions.

Members of the hardline Al -Shabaab Islamist rebel group parade through the streets of Mogadishu. Picture: File

Al-Shabab’s members are very clear about their objective: to overthrow Somalia’s government and enact the strict Islamic law known as Shari’a. The group has banned music, videos, shaving and even bras in the areas it controls and maintains control through often brutal methods. Women accused of adultery are publicly stoned to death; teenaged thieves have had their limbs severed.

Like the Islamic Union and Islamic Courts, al Shabaab believes that religious governance is the solution to Somalia’s ills. In addition to Shari’a, Al-Shabaab has implemented other rules designed to help it maintain power.

It has implemented rules directed at journalists “requiring that no reports be disseminated of which the administration was unaware, that only ‘factual’ news be presented, that nothing detrimental to the practice of Shari’a be reported, and that no music be played on the radio that encouraged ‘sin.

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