Kenyan sources aver that al-Shabab has stated its intention to invade Kenya's Northeast Province and annex it to Somalia. While the Kenyan Assistant ForMin, Richard Onyonka, has pooh-poohed the warning and alleged in reply that Kenya has "the capacity and ability to stave off incursions by anybody," others in the Government of Kenya are not so sanguine.
Kimeu Maingai, the Provincial Commissioner, is among the worried. He is all too well aware of a pair of realities which may be eluding the Deep Thinkers of Nairobi.
The first of these factors is demographic. The majority of the population of the Northeast Province is Somali. While some of these ethnic Somalis have lived in the NEP for years, even generations, most are recent arrivals, detritus from the twenty years of war.
The second disconcerting reality is the flow of weapons from Somalia into the NEP. For all practical purposes the border is no more than a polite fiction on pieces of irrelevant paper. Since the density of automatic weapons per person in Somalia is so high as to make the US population look disarmed in comparison, it is not at all outre to see a flow of AK's from Somalia into Kenya.
The large and growing refugee stream still pouring into Kenya provides more than ample cover for the introduction of al-Shabab agents provocateurs and weapons by the ton. The Kenyan refugee camps, including the largest in the world with an estimated Somali population in excess of 23,000, provide an excellent recruiting source.
To expect the Kenyan government to adequately secure either the border or the 173,000 or so Somalian refugees is to expect the impossible. The GOK is fully aware of the menace in the country's midst. Mere realization is not sufficient. It is essential to take action.
Taking action is well neigh onto impossible. The ongoing stasis in the Kenyan government in the aftermath of the December 2007 election violence assures that nothing is or can be done. Public disenchantment with the government's total inability (or unwillingness) to come to grips with the numerous problems confronting the country have reached such a pass that a coalition of women's activist groups has called for a one week sex boycott to force the guys off their duffs and on to the job of fixing Kenya.
Corruption pervades Kenya. Even temporary suspension of IMF and World Bank programs failed to inveigle the government into effectively addressing the problem. The miasma of government for sale not only drastically lowers the faith of the Kenyans generally in their government, it enhances the appeal of al-Shabab in the NEP where Muslims are routinely mulcted by the money grubbing governmental officials.
Al-Shabab, in common with Islamist groups everywhere, makes much of its stern anti-corruption stance. "The Youth" promise justice which is impartial and totally uninfluenced by a person's deep (or shallow) pockets. This "Death to Grafters" message has an appeal to folks on the bottom of the heap which should never be underestimated.
The takeaway is simple. Al-Shabab has a message. The NEP is filled with eager to hear Islamist tilted ears. Weapons in hands both actually and potentially hostile to the Kenyan central government are proliferating faster than post-rain mosquitoes. The GOK is flaccidly paralysed. The Kenyan population generally has no particular faith in the capacity or honesty of the Nairobi regime.
That leaves the Kenyan armed forces.
Afflicted with May Day charity, the Geek can only say that based on its past performance in African Union "peace keeping" missions as well as internal security missions, the Kenyan military is a mighty slim pole on which to lean. Not only has the Kenyan army shown a lack of leadership at all command levels, it is not well equipped or trained.
More fatal to any optimistic conclusion concerning the Kenyan army's capacity to suppress al-Shabab or any indigenous Islamist jihadist movement are the observations by foreigners that the army personnel moved into the NEP recently with the mission of collecting weapons have become arms merchants themselves. These observations comport perfectly with the overall atmosphere of corruption.
The Kenyan government has not yet released the text of the latest warning from al-Shabab. It prefers to point to past such threats in 2008 which amounted to nothing beyond a war of words. The necessary implication is the Nairobi authorities believe (or hope) this case will be the same.
However, the realities on the ground have changed over the past few months. Not only have the number of refugees and other border crossers grown geometrically since last fall. Not only has the weapons flow done likewise. The fighting in the NEP between pro- and anti-al-Shabab Somali clans has done the same.
More worrisome is the apparent success of the pro-al-Shabab faction in the fighting. Their success has grown in tandem with al-Shabab's victories in Somalia. This should not have surprised the Kenyan government or its intelligence service. Nothing attracts support more than victory on the battlefield.
As usual the High Minded have invoked the need for security and economic development in Somalia as the sovereign remedy for the ails of the region. Another influx of doomed-to-fail cash for these ends has been promised by the participants of the recently concluded conference of donor nations. The quarter of a billion dollars promised will not end piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Neither will it prevent the subversion of or armed incursion into Kenya's NEP.
The continued impotence of the Kenyan government, the lack of competence resident in the Kenyan armed forces and the probable total success of al-Shabab in Somali do not combine to make one optimistic about the future of the Kenyan border region. Short of a miracle al-Shabab seems destined to carry the Banner of the Prophet out of Somalia--and into Kenya.
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