Kenya has a dual mission in Somalia

When a peaceful country engages in flexing muscles and war activities, the provocation is big and often a matter of honour.

This is particularly the case when the country concerned has a reputation for not responding quickly to incidents of aggression.

It avoids violent gestures and might be dismissed as cowardly.

This is the situation that Kenya found itself in. By moving troops into Southern Somalia, not as a force of occupation, but a force of liberation, it is discarding the negative image of military inability to act.

It was forced to do so as a matter of national honour.

Although Kenya is one of the sub-regional powers in Africa, it has not behaved like one when compared to other African regional powers. Apartheid South Africa, for instance, used to flex its muscles in the frontline states while post-apartheid Pretoria did it in Lesotho.

Nigeria repeatedly flexed its muscles in West Africa at times to restore “democracy” although people doing it, like Sani Abacha, were not democrats. But since Kenya hesitated to flex its muscles to protect its perceived interests in the region, calls for it to lead from the front and to show that it is not a country to be trifled with have been on the rise.

There comes a time, however, when the country must defend its honour.

When an aggressor puts fingers in another person’s nose by getting into the home and attacking the visitors, the host has to act in defence. This happened to Kenya where repeated attacks on Kenyans and their guests was an insult to the country’s dignity.

The Al-Shabaab, based in Somalia, had insulted Kenya’s honour by attacking visitors. Kenya had no choice but to act.

Although Somalia had previously been a source of security trouble, Kenya had not made open incursions into the source of the problem. What it did was to engage in a defensive quasi war, in Kenyan territory, with the Republic of Somalia whose irredentist proclivities incited and funded the “shifta” in the 1960s.

Not an inch of Kenyan soil, President Kenyatta had declared, would be ceded to expansionist Somalia. None was ceded and the quasi war became training field for young officers.

The United Nations entrusted Kenyan soldiers to keep the peace in such transitional places as Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and even Eritrea. They had a difficult task of keeping the peace amongst warring factions but not of defeating anyone.

And occasionally they were caught in the crossfire and even temporarily captured, as happened in Sierra Leone. Kenyan soldiers, therefore, have experience operating in different and volatile environments.

That experience is being tested in Somalia where the mission this time is primarily to defeat Al-Shabaab, not necessarily to keep the peace. Al-Shabaab provoked the action but in the attempt to defeat Al-Shabaab, however, peace will be kept in Southern Somalia.

This implies that Kenya has a dual mission, not one. First is to defeat Al-Shabaab and second is to teach Somalia how to keep the peace.
The people of fragmented Somalia, having suffered immensely under different regimes, want peace kept and Kenya will help.

They suffered under Siad Barre whose expansionist dreams failed and his regime collapsed; so did the sense of Somali unity.

There was a power vacuum as the state fragmented into warring entities; people continued to suffer.

The fragmented state became an open field for warlords, vigilantes, militias, and international terrorists.

Among them were Al-Qaeda proxies in Somalia, Al-Shabaab.

Both repeatedly insulted Kenya’s hospitality. Kenya had to act, and it rightly did it. It was a matter of honour.

Munene is a profesor of history and International Relations at USIU-Nairobi