Patience pays off for Kenya forces

There is an old Somali proverb that sums up Al-Shabaab’s situation following the entry of Kenyan and allied forces into the port of Kismayu in the dead of the night on Friday: When a man is drowning, he will grab anything, even the foam on the surface of the sea.

Al-Shabaab certainly remains a threat. Kenyan Defence Forces spokesmen may well be shown to have spoken too early in declaring Kismayu “captured” hours after Kenyan troops and Somalia army fighters moved into the city.

It will likely take weeks at the least to completely seize control of a strategic city which the Shabaab have held for so long and whose port was the last significant asset the militants controlled. Opportunistic attacks by remaining Shabaab sympathisers are likely to be a fixture in the days ahead. What is clear, though, is that Al-Shabaab is now badly weakened.

Sinking under the weight of a series of setbacks — most notably the collapse of local support that saw the militants driven out of the capital Mogadishu, the loss of more than a sixth of Somalia’s territory to Kenyan fighters in the South and a steady stream of defections –– the Shabaab is basically unrecognisable from the menacing force it was just over a year ago.

Security challenge

Most pundits expect that the group will continue to pose a security challenge in the region, with many predicting it will evolve into a guerrilla force with the capacity to launch terrorist attacks in Somalia and beyond.

Yet the big difference between now and October 14 last year when KDF rolled across the border is that the Shabaab can no longer operate with impunity anywhere near Kenya’s borders.

The severe diminution of Al-Shabaab’s capability ranks as a rare success for the African Union which first sent Ugandan and Burundian forces to Mogadishu over five years ago before Kenyan forces moved to protect the country’s interests in the South last year.

For Kenya, especially, the relative success of Operation Linda Nchi will cause satisfaction. The country has achieved its goals with a relatively small force — under 5,000 when the operation began — and suffering significantly fewer casualties than other actors who have entered into the war theatre in Somalia before.

They have not deployed the overwhelming numbers and muscular approach of the Americans and their allies who stormed Mogadishu with 25,000 soldiers in December 1992 and soon found themselves taking fire from all sides, forcing a hasty retreat.

Nor have they faced accusations of adopting a scorched earth approach as the Ethiopians did in 2006 when their intervention triggered a ferocious war between them and Somali nationalists, which contributed to the rise of the Shabaab as a major force.

The Kenyans, most crucially, have avoided repeating the mistakes of the American-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Early US success in Iraq was followed by a major insurgency that cost thousands of lives, both among the allied forces and the local population. This was largely blamed on the hubristic approach that took little account of local sentiment.

It took the Americans more than two years before they forged an alliance with Sunnis fed up with the war. The locals rose up against Al-Qaeda in what became known as the “Anbar Awakening,” a turning point that slowed the bloodshed.

In Afghanistan, the Americans managed to alienate most members of the powerful Pashtun community when they launched their war against the Taliban without attempting to distinguish between ordinary Pashtun tribesmen who are sympathetic to the Taliban and those at the top who were allied to Al-Qaeda.

Kenya has largely avoided those mistakes. In fact, historians may rank the country’s involvement in Somalia as a war of peculiar character in modern military history: it was a negotiated invasion.

Top Kenyan military officers swear that the incursion into Somalia was triggered by the abduction of a couple of tourists and aid workers last August.

In fact, as demonstrated most clearly by the US cables released by WikiLeaks, the military brass had decided that Kenya needed to get involved in Somalia a couple of years ago, certainly by mid-2009.

Important steps

One of the most important steps taken by military planners and intelligence officials was the negotiation of a pact between the Kenyan government and the golden-bearded veteran of Somalia’s many wars, Sheikh Ahmed Madobe.

Sheikh Madobe is one of the most influential members of the Mohamed Zubeyr sub-clan which dominates the Jubaland region in the south of Somalia.

If Kenya had gone in without the support of top leaders of this sub-clan, they would certainly have found the going much tougher than they have and would likely have confronted a broad-based popular insurgency against their presence.

In the event, circumstances conspired in Kenya’s favour. Sheikh Madobe, a former top member of the Islamic Courts Union, had grown, like many other Somalia heavyweights, fed up with the Shabaab leadership as it steadily became radicalised and alienated the local population.

He decided to launch an armed campaign to drive the Shabaab out of the South. Sheikh Madobe’s forces were repulsed by the better armed Shabaab fighters.

A turning point came on November 28, 2009 when Al-Shabaab captured Dhobley. That town is right next to Kenya’s borders, and its fall to the militants set alarm bells ringing in Nairobi.

According to a US cable dated December 4, Kenya convened a meeting in Garissa of top leaders of the Mohamed Zubeyr group, including a trusted confidant of Sheikh Madobe, Ibrahim Shukri, and other representatives such as Mohamed Amin and Yusuf Abdi Hassan representing Dhobley and Afmadhow.

Those meetings laid the ground for a vital alliance between the KDF and southern Somalia fighting groups.

The deal was that Kenya would train Somali fighters who would then be inserted into Somalia to fight against the Shabaab. To further broaden the appeal of the alliance, Gen Ibrahim Sahardid, a rival of Sheikh Madobe, was brought into the picture.

With time, however, Kenya concluded it had to send its own troops to the ground to achieve success. The order to attack finally came last October.

The benefits of the alliance with top members of the local clans showed with the rapid fall of a series of towns including Dhobley, Tabda, Beles Qoqani, Delbio, Hosingow and ultimately the capture of Afmadhow.

The fact that no major insurgency arose once the Kenyan and allied forces came in vindicated the patient strategy adopted by the KDF.

Following the seizure of the strategically vital Afmadhow, the deputy brigade commander of the Kenyan forces in the south, Col Daniel Bartonjo, revelled in the moment, explaining the factors that underpinned the relatively low levels of resistance Kenya was facing.

“Our success so far has been partially attributable to our understanding of clan politics in Somalia and our close cooperation with locals everywhere we have gone. We have been patient.

"After liberating an area we organise elections for a district commissioner, help them organise security and assist them in pacification of the area. This can take two to three months. We don’t need to move fast until we have achieved our objective. Our aim is to win hearts and minds. When we are sure an area is safe we move to the next area.”

Much of the burden of implementing the delicate mission fell on the shoulders of Lt Col Jeff Nyaga, the commanding officer of the troops at the frontline. He and his men found themselves having to juggle the task of public diplomacy by day and combat against the Shabaab by night.

A day after the fall of Afmadhow, Col Nyaga and Sheikh Madobe addressed a crowd of over 5,000 residents in the central square, explaining that they had no problem with the locals and were only hunting down the Shabaab.

Within a few days, Kenyan forces were able to mingle freely with locals. Soldiers could be seen bargaining for the giant water melons and mangos produced from the rich agricultural land nearby or haggling over the price of other supplies for the base camp.

On a brilliantly sunny June afternoon, Lt Col Nyaga took journalists on a tour of Afmadhow. When the convoy arrived in the middle of town, he jumped out of an armoured personnel carrier and began walking around chatting with locals.

“Asalaam Aleikum.” “Asalaam Aleikum wa Barakat.” He kept hailing the locals, occasionally stopping to chat or have photos taken. It was a remarkably relaxed scene, one you would hardly expect to see featuring a commanding African Union officer in Mogadishu.

Kismayu will prove tougher. The clan mix in that city is much more complicated than it is in places like Afmadhow, and the stakes there are much higher.

In making self-congratulatory messages very early in the battle for the city, KDF spokesmen missed a chance to prepare the public for the possibility of some tough days ahead.

The Shabaab no longer have the capability they boasted of in Mogadishu where they bitterly defended such installations as the football stadium and the national university which were their logistical bases.

The militants cannot stage such a stand in Kismayu. But they are instead likely to go for suicide attacks and other tactics that will make casualties on all sides quite likely.

Daunting challenge

Kenya must also face up to the daunting challenge of minimising civilian deaths while fighting in built-up areas. At the same time, there is the issue of likely Shabaab attacks within Kenyan borders in revenge of the inevitable loss of Kismayu.

Military officials will argue that these sacrifices are worth it considering the situation before the war where insurance premiums on ships coming to Mombasa had risen due to piracy, driving up the cost of imports; the tourism industry was under constant threat of armed thugs and a cloud of uncertainty hung over the Lamu port project.

KDF’s mission has rolled back the threat the Shabaab posed at the borders and put the militants on the run, a feat few on the local or international stage thought possible.

The Shabaab will certainly try to exact revenge. But their opponents will say that theirs will be the acts of a drowning man clutching at anything that appears to float.