Kenya should not attack Somalia

In the past week, some political leaders in North- Eastern Province have stated that Ethiopia and Somalia’s TFG’s security forces were waging attacks against Al Shabaab into Somalia from the Kenyan town of Mandera, with the explicit support and involvement of Kenyan security forces.
Al Shabaab in Bula Hawa retaliated by shelling Mandera, and consequently several Kenyans lost their lives and thousands were displaced. As expected, the Government denied this, and a ministerial statement requested by the area MP could not be given as the House went on recess.
To Mandera residents, Kenya has become a combatant in the Somalia conflict despite past pledges before that it will never be engaged in the Somalia war. The Government’s decision to allow foreign forces to strike into Somalia from its soil, provoking the response from Shabaab in control of Bula Hawa, may have been intended to give our Government the pretext for an impending invasion of that country.
In its March, last year, report to the UN Security Council, the Monitoring Group on Somalia (MGS) confirmed that ‘all of Somalia’s immediate neighbours – Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya – are militarily involved in the conflict or are planning to become involved’.
In the Kenyan case, MGS ‘confirmed existence of a military training programme for TFG forces not authorised by the Security Council’ who according to it number about 2,500 including youth of Kenyan citizenship. Internal Security Minister George Saitoti, in December 2009, announced a plan to establish ‘Jubaland Policy’ to establish a buffer zone between Shabaab-controlled Mogadishu and the Kenyan Border
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