Africa News blog
African business, politics and lifestyle
Operation Somalia: The U.S., Ethiopia and now Kenya
By Aaron Maasho
Ethiopia did it five years ago, the Americans a while back. Now Kenya has rolled tanks and troops across its arid frontier into lawless Somalia, in another campaign to stamp out a rag-tag militia of Islamist rebels that has stoked terror throughout the region with threats of strikes.
The catalyst for Nairobi’s incursion was a series of kidnappings by Somali gunmen on its soil. A Frenchwoman was bundled off to Somalia from northern Kenya, while a British woman and two female aid workers from Spain, abducted from a refugee camp inside Kenya, are also being held across the border.
The incidents caused concern over their impact on the country’s vital tourism industry, with Kenya’s forecast 100 billion shillings or revenue this year expected to falter. The likes of Britain and the United States have already issued warnings against travel to some parts of the country.
Kenyans have so far responded with bravado towards their government’s operation against the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group. Local channels regularly show high approval ratings for the campaign, some as high as 98 percent.
“The issue of our security is non-negotiable,” one commentator told a TV station in the wake of the announcement. Another chipped in with: ”We’ve been casual to the extent of endangering our national sovereignty. Kenya has what it takes to get rid of this dangerous threat once and for all.”
You’re kidding, right?
The attack on the AMISOM compound AND DynCorp office — good luck finding much coverage of the latter or any discussion of its ramifications — were a preemptive strike against foreign fighters in Mogadishu, reportedly timed during a meeting b/w several international representatives, at a stage where reports of AMISOM’s enhanced mandate to wage counterinsurgency operations abound.
Same situation that took place in Beledweyn a few months back when a hotel bombing took out the TFG’s security minister and others who had just returned from Ethiopia leading fresh forces planning on conducting operations in Central Somalia as they were holding meetings.
It was only the western media that “billed” the attacks last week as revenge, leaving out, among other important contexts, that of its strategy. That’s essentially propaganda – you leave out the context to shape the reader’s perception of what took place, which in this case strips one of the parties of any logical catalyst, substituting, instead, that of irrational & reactionary behavior.
This then sets up the opportunity to cherry pick quotes from select individuals — assuming they exist at all & were not constructed out of whole cloth — that reinforce the framing of a narrative that biasedly supports one of the parties in the conflict at the expense of the population at large, relying on several unquestioned premises to do so: the TFG is a legitimate, constituted govt of the people of Somalia; the foreign fighters propping it up on behalf of its foreign sponsors are “peacekeepers” and wearing the white hats; the rebels are extremists, unpopular in Somalia, and should be destroyed.
This blog entry is no different. It purports to tell us that we can learn (“may be instructive”) from the quoted reaction of a businesswoman, trying to make sense of the reason provided her for the bombing, that there is likely popular support for “a real international force” to invade Somalia and “[take] the fight to them in Mogadishu and elsewhere,” w/ “them” being conflated into “al Qaeda” in the third-from-last paragraph.
The real instructive lesson to be learned from all the attacks against foreign forces in Somalia is that the people of Somalia are just like most everybody else on the planet – they do not like uninvited foreign militaries in their neighborhoods, especially when they have been sent their to protect rulers imposed on them by outsiders. Advocation of sending “a real international force” – one supposes that this implies U.S. leadership – into “Mogadishu and elsewhere” only indicates a failure of comprehension at the most fundamental levels.
Eritrea and Somalia: did they or didn’t they?
As Somalia goes up in flames again , fingers are being pointed at Eritrea for its alleged role in fuelling the conflict. East African regional body IGAD and the continent-wide African Union have both called for sanctions on Eritrea – including a no-fly zone and blockade of its ports – for allegedly supplying arms and equipment to Al Shabaab and other militant Islamist insurgents fighting Somalia’s interim government.The accusations have been around for years, and have surfaced in U.N. reports on breaches of a weapons embargo for Somalia. Asmara says its arch-enemy Ethiopia is driving the accusations, helped by CIA agents in the region, and denies it has given any material aid despite its antipathy towards President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s government.Asmara says the government, formed in January during a U.N.-brokered process in Djibouti, is an illegitimate administration imposed by foreign powers. It challenges its critics to produce hard evidence, and says the accusations are particularly hypocritical given Ethiopia’s recent armed intervention in Somalia.Analysts say the spat plays into the wider, unfinished conflict in the region between Ethiopia and Eritrea. They fought a border war between 1998-2000 – just a few years after Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia – and their armies still face each other, while the governments spit enmity between them. So who is right? How can the rest of the world know the truth? What should Eritrea and Ethiopia both do to further peace in Somalia?
Betri haki teketen enber aytesberin!Why do ppl to infect the whole horn of africa situation more than it is infected now?? Journalist are the termoil of all this problem because they don´t take any kind of responsability for what they publishe on there daily news pappers.What i still don´t understand yet is We all see what is going on on this planet war, poverty, climate changing and even most feerd leders comes and goes as post delivery. Why can´t any resonabel person can come with the whole truth nothing but the truth and let the intier world know the cause and consiquens of the whole history from the very begining until today? It would solve so many un answered questions and even save our brain and sole from argument agrement disagrements of what it has been said until now.
All talk about peace and democracy but what they want in reality is war as long as it is not in their own backyard and love “friendly tyrants” like Meles Zenawi who is willing to sell his land and people.