"Landep News"
Kenyan Troops
Kenyan troops are trying to prove that this country is capable of protecting its citizens and the visiting ones, and for that matter it secured, in cooperation with the Somali pro-Western government, the towns of Tabda and Afmadow, which are 120 kilometers east of the Kenyan border.
The troops were slowed down by the heavy rain, but the Kenyan authorities said that the troops would press on and are “ready for anything.” “If it takes until December,” an official said, “they will celebrate Christmas there,” pointing to the town of Kismayo.
Kenyan defense minister and internal security secretary went to Mogadishu on Tuesday to discuss with the Somali president about the operation they have launched. A spokesman for the Somali presidency said that the Somali and Kenyan governments would cooperate in the fight against terrorism. Kenya has promised to assist logistically the Somali military.
Al-Shabaab officials have vowed to resist the Kenyan troops, saying that even though they came under attack by air and by land they must fight back until they clear the territory. A leader of the movement said that Kenya would lose a lot of people and assets because of this intervention.
Kenyan troops invaded Somalia on October 16, when some workers and some foreign citizens have been kidnapped from its territory. The idea of advancing toward the port of Kismayo is to cut Al-Shabaab off from the revenues it makes by controlling it.
Analysts consider that the Kenyan army is one of the more effective armies in Africa, very well equipped and well trained, with connections to the military of advanced countries like the United Kingdom and the United States.
Somalia has been at the mercy of the warlords since 1991, when the dictator Mohammad Siad Barre was removed from power. Since then, the country went through many conflicts and through terrible periods of famine.
Al-Shabaab is a powerful regional organization, which has pledged allegiance to the al-Qaeda and controls large portions of the country.
To counter its actions, the African Union dispatched a peacekeeping force composed of 9,000 Burundi and Ugandan soldiers. Ethiopian forces invaded the south of Somalia in order to prevent the al-Shabaab from exercising power there.
British citizen David Tebbutt was killed by the Islamist movement, and his wife was abducted last month from a place near the capital of Kenya, Nairobi. Marie Didieu, a 66-year-old disabled French woman was also abducted from the Kenyan territory.
On October 13, two aid workers of Medicins Sans Frontieres were also abducted by the Somali terrorists. All these abductions happened in a zone in Kenya that has an immense importance for tourism, which means that the Somali terrorists may be bent on hurting the neighboring country’s source of income.
More than 500,000 Somali people are being sheltered in refugee camps in Kenya after the United Nations declared two of the Somali provinces affected by famine. The Horn of Africa had to suffer because of three years of draught, but Somalia was the one to be the most affected because of the social and political instability and because of the actions of al-Shabaab.
The Islamist movement refused at first to acknowledge the fact that 12 million people in Somalia were being affected by hunger. Then they refused to accept the help of the UN agencies that fight hunger. They said that the UN is working with the “crusaders” and that the help they bring must not be accepted.
Then they tried to get their hands on the supplies when they arrived by air to Mogadishu, and finally they attacked convoys and harassed the UN workers making their battle against hunger a lot harder.
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