Why are we in Somalia? When are we leaving?

 

Al-Shabaab recruits walk down a street on March 5, 2012 in the Deniile District of Mogadishu, Somalia. Reports indicate that foreign troops have October 5, 2013 attacked an Al-Shabaab stronghold in the Somalia town of Barawe, south of Mogadishu. PHOTO|FILE.  NATION

 

By L. Muthoni Wanyeki

Perhaps predictably, it has taken less than a week for the “We Are One” reaction to the
attack on Westgate Mall to fall apart.

It has taken less than a week for Kenyans to move from appreciation of the state response to the attack to being outraged by what we are learning in the aftermath. About the shocking theft from bodies and businesses in Westgate Mall. About the equally shocking evidence that either the army, the police or both filled the hours of the siege by drinking through the stocks of Westgate Mall’s bars and restaurants.

It has taken less than a week to realise the attack did nothing to lessen divisions that have pertained since the general election. That institutional failures around the polls extend from the electoral management body and the judiciary to the security services.

The Commission of Inquiry that has been appointed will do nothing to get at some of the issues not yet on the table for debate and discussion.

First, what are we doing in Somalia? Evidently, Kenya continues to have a stake in ensuring the Somali state’s ability to exercise territorial control. Equally evidently, Kenya continues to have concerns about bearing a disproportionate burden of the Somali refugee caseload.

But Kenya continues to resist proposals for permanent residency (if not full citizenship) to be granted to Somali refugees, a generation of whom has now grown up in Kenya. The state continues to be concerned about Al Shabaab’s ability to execute cross-border attacks, including from within the camps.

Thus Kenya remains determined to do what it went into Somalia to do. Create a so-called buffer zone within Somalia to which the Somali refugee community can be repatriated.

It is for this reason — the creation of Jubbaland — that Kenya is flirting with Ras Komboni, a flirtation that underscores the tension between the Kenyan and Somali states.

The question is the extent to which that Kenyan determination still requires the military backing and muscle of the African Mission in Somalia. To the extent that it does, why does Kenya need to supply that muscle?

Remember that, until Kenya went in, the Igad and AU position was that no state directly bordering Somalia would be involved.

Second, how are we to respond to what the attack showed about Al Shabaab’s capabilities, both within Kenya and in Somalia? If there have been, as we are informed, arrests of alleged perpetrators, who are these perpetrators and why have they not yet been brought to court?

The attack involved any number of recognised criminal offences and, as far as we know, normal criminal law has not been suspended. If those perpetrators included, as we are told, members of a domestic Al Shabaab franchise, Al Hijra, what do we know about it, its recruitment, its capacity, its operations?

What is drawing Kenyans to Al Hijra? Is it as prosaic as material considerations? Or is it ideological, drawing on historical and contemporary grievances as well as fundamentalist teachings? What are those teachings and where are they propagated?

These are not questions the Commission of Inquiry will ponder. But we need not only to look backward, at our known failures. We need to look forward, to what we’re trying to achieve, both here and in Somalia, and how best to do so.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is doing her doctoral studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London