Somalia: The threat next door

• How Kenya’s hope of economic prosperity and peace is threatened by the land of unending war

The statement last week of Kenya’s intention to help “crush” the insurgency in Somalia is the strongest government response so far to the crisis in the troubled eastern neighbour.

Foreign minister Moses Wetang’ula did not specify what sort of intervention Kenya could make in support of the beleaguered Transitional Federal Government of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed Sharif, but the strong terms he used echoed the positions already taken by the African Union and the regional organisation, Igad (Inter-governmental Authority on Development).

Both have in recent days taken positions in unequivocal support of the Somali government and condemnation of the al Shabaab militia and the Islamist grouping led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.

Somalia has been Kenya’s most enduring security headache since independence, starting with the Shifta movement that waged a secessionist war supported by Mogadishu in the 1960s; onto the present threats posed by the infiltration of global terrorist groups like al-Qaeda into the governance vacuum in Somalia.

Al Shabbab, the Islamist militia group currently engaging government forces in Mogadishu, makes no secret of its links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, and that would be a major concern to Kenya.

The devastating 1998 bombing targeting the US embassy that killed more than 200 people in the heart of Nairobi was traced to radicals who had infiltrated the country through Somali.

The Paradise Hotel bombing in Kikambala in which more than a dozen people died in 2002 was also coordinated from Somalia.

Some of the key leaders of the East African Al-Qaeda cell that planned the two bombings are believed to be still operating in Somalia and playing key roles in managing the Islamist militias that now threaten to topple the transitional government.

As of much concern to Kenya is that the militia leaders have also openly espoused the “Greater” Somalia dream that drove the shifta war, aiming at bringing under one flag all the Somali-speaking areas in the region including Kenya’s North Eastern Province, the Ogaden province in Ethiopia and the Republic of Djibouti off the Red Sea.

The possibility of a radical administration in Somalia that speaks proudly of its admiration for al-Qaeda and its methods and also covets the North Eastern Province and Ogaden presents a security nightmare for both Kenya and Ethiopia.

The two countries have been military allies since they jointly countered the shifta threat in the 1960s. They remained allies even in the 1970s and 1980 despite diverging sharply ideologically — Ethiopia under Mengistu was a Soviet client state while Kenya was in the western orbit — but remaining united by a common threat.

Kenya has always sought to play the honest broker in Somalia, hosting the lengthy talks that formed the transitional government (TFG), while Ethiopia has been more aggressive.

When Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia in 2006 to drive out the Union of Islamic Courts regime that had kept the TFG out of Mogadishu, Kenya officially remained on the sidelines, but covertly was deeply involved, particularly with a heavy military presence that virtually sealed the border in order to catch the fleeing militants.

Some of those arrested at the time were handed over to the Ethiopians or to the Americans, and those considered most dangerous were shipped off to the infamous US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay.

Some of the key Islamist leaders nabbed, particularly the political and religious leaders rather than military commanders, were however quietly allowed to fly out to exile in Eritrea and Yemen. Some of them, including Sheikh Aweys, now look poised to regain power as the TFG has become increasingly weaker since the departure of Ethiopian troops.