Kenya admits to secret police training for Somalia

The TFG has not disclosed where exactly it trains its troops. But this month, it emerged that Djibouti was one of the countries that conduct training when the first batch of trainee soldiers estimated at 500 were received at the Villa Somalia, the presidential palace in Mogadishu.

According to Radio Garowe, which broadcasts from Puntland, French military advisers assisted in the training. Some of the freewheeling Somali blogs claim that Sudan, Uganda, Burundi and Ethiopia are assisting the TFG with military training, but the reports have not been confirmed.

Whereas the extent of Al-Shabaab’s possible penetration into northern Kenya remains unclear, the reach of the Islamists’ recruitment outside their homeland appears to be extensive. The TFG itself has repeatedly circulated reports of fighters allied to Al-Shabaab trickling in from Yemen, the Persian Gulf and even Pakistan.

Ethnic Somalis driven to join the Islamists have been uncovered coming from as far away as Minnesota in the US. However, it is the reported presence of so-called international jihadists with links to Al-Qaeda that the US and Somalia’s secular neighbours are particularly alarmed about.

This is the element believed to have introduced into the Somali conflict the signature jihadist method of suicide bombing. Last month, such a suicide attack targeted premises occupied by AU peacekeeping troops in Mogadishu and resulted in several fatalities.

In the same month, a Kenyan fugitive accused of Al-Qaeda links, Ali Saleh Nabhan, was killed in a helicopter attack staged by US special forces in southern Somalia. The circumstances that prevailed at the time the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) were scoring their successes in Somalia are markedly different from those Al-Shabaab and its allies are encountering presently.

Though in most cases the same militias who fought for the ICU are the same ones who reconstituted themselves into the ranks of the Al-Shaabab insurgency, the ICU had a more coherent programme of extending civil order among the population and were able to win popular support for being a bulwark against the hated clan warlords of old.

Thus, the ICU was able to rapidly entrench its authority in much of Somalia and to wrest control of the capital Mogadishu before the Ethiopians intervened in December 2006 and crushed them militarily. Despite the air of invincibility Al-Shabab’s hold is limited to south and parts of central Somalia. Control over Mogadishu – the biggest prize – remains stalemated between the Islamists and TFG forces.

The all-important port of Mogadishu still remains in the hands of the TFG. The Islamist front in Somalia has actually been significantly weakened by open differences between Al-Shabaab and their chief ally Hizbul Islam. These differences recently degenerated into brutal gunfights in Kismayu.

The control of Kismayu is critical for the levying of port taxes which the militias appropriate. It is also crucial as the entry point of clandestine shipments of weapons needed by the Islamists. Analysts do not discount further fragmentation within the Islamist ranks, especially if the overall situation in Somalia continues to be a stalemate and the international community remains steadfast in ensuring the TFG does not collapse.

They believe that the strategy is to keep the TFG standing with the hope that Al-Shabaab will lose steam and fragment as the deadlock persists.