Talking to Al-Shabaab should remain on the table as a path out of Somalia

It was good to see President Uhuru Kenyatta making friends in America in the last few days.

One of the most baffling things about Jubilee Administration leaders has been their consistent and aggressively hostile posture towards the West, simply because harsh words were exchanged during the campaign period.

They forgot that there is little room for sentimentality in foreign affairs and that decisions should be guided mainly by interests.

Washington, London and others quickly moved on after the results were announced.

They were obeying a dictum coined by Hans Morgenthau, one of the great foreign policy thinkers of the last century, who argued that nations deal with one another “under an empty sky from which the gods have departed”.

There is little point in chewing over past hostilities and it is good to see Nairobi has finally moved on.

The Kenya Government should proceed to play the game everyone else around the world from Europe to Latin America is playing, of trying to get the best deal out of the two big boys in the schoolyard, China and America.

JOINED AT THE HIP

There was one agreement that requires greater clarification, though. It was announced that Kenya is one of six African countries that will benefit from a new Joint Security Governance Initiative that will see the US help its allies to battle terrorist groups.

This is an encouraging step because Kenya and the US are joined at the hip when it comes to terrorism, with the attack on the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998 having marked the start of Al-Qaeda’s global campaign.

It will be fine if those funds are to be used to boost the capacity of the security forces to detect and stop terrorists.

But it will be a mistake if they are disbursed to finance a prolonged deployment in Somalia.

It is neither in Kenya’s nor America’s interest for the KDF to stay in Somalia indefinitely.

There is simply no way an external force will impose a lasting military solution in that country.

My reading is that the only two feasible options to resolve the mess there include the emergence of a Somali faction with overwhelming force that can pound rivals into submission, a bit like what happened in Chechnya where the former rebel Akhmad Kadyrov struck an alliance with Moscow and proceeded to steamroll rivals and impose a dictatorship in 2004.

He was killed three years later and his son succeeded in maintaining the status quo after taking office.

The other, less bloody and more difficult option, is to have effective decentralisation and hope you will have many Puntlands and Somalilands that are relatively homogenous clan-wise and reasonably peaceful.

KENYA ESPECIALLY EXPOSED

The current arrangement is a charade because, if the Ugandan troops pulled out of Mogadishu, for example, Al-Shabaab would take the capital within weeks.

Kenya is especially exposed because it is a democracy and a weak state with corrupt policemen and immigration officials.

Unlike other countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Yemen and others where terrorists vanish after arrest, in Kenya they are bailed.

That, in a way, is a good thing because it means Kenya is a better bet for long-term sustainability as a society but it can’t afford to battle endless wars with extremists.

Nairobi should exit the cauldron in Somalia and leave the job to troops from further afield whose countries are less exposed.

One pathway out would be to use the American Afghan exit strategy where they are talking to the Taliban through the Qataris, who finance many extremists. WikiLeaks cables claim Washington thought Qatar has links with the Shabaab, too.

There would be no harm in talking to the Shabaab through back-channels including the Gulf monarchy to strike a deal that Kenya will uphold the old IGAD framework which required that frontline states should not send troops to Somalia.

America can then channel funds to improve internal security capabilities in Kenya and maybe send West Africans to tackle the Shabaab.

Nations operate under an empty blue sky where each looks out mainly after their own best interests.

Pulling out of Somalia and restoring calm in the country free from a wave of indiscriminate attacks is a better option than fighting on.

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