The fall of Kismayu will go down in history as the defeat of al-Qaeda’s first organized state. Until al-Shabaab took Kismayu after the failed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2007, no terrorist organization had a fully fledged government in place.

Over the next five years, Shabaab exerted full administrative control on Somali’s largest port city, estimated at around 200,000 with many modern facilities including a functioning harbor and university. The group imposed Sharia law and imposed a strict if oppressive peace.

Kismayu is the center of pirate activity in the Arabian Gulf and with the fixed taxes Shabaab imposed on the pirates and a burgeoning trade in concrete and fish, and an increasing trade in illicit drunks and weapons, Kismayu became the quintessential Joker’s capital.

It had never happened before. Terrorists had always been in hiding or on the run. By 2009 Shabaab had extended its full authority over at least a third of southern Somali and along all of the Kenyan border. It was now a country only slightly smaller than Britain.

Kenya announced its invasion of Somalia as a response to mounting attacks inside its territory near the shared border, but more because of the growing strain on Kenyan society of the huge Dadaab refugee camp.

The camp is now the largest in the world, and while funded principally by the United Nations, it is a massive and threatening city in the Kenyan desert, larger than all but four of Kenya’s other metropolitan areas. Although there is an undeniable economic benefit to the enormous resources being passed through the country by the United Nations, the net result is probably negative.

When the invasion happened on October 18, 2011, I predicted only bad news. I was wrong. There is much bad news, but there is also some good news.

The Kenyans have suffered many fewer casualties than I expected, principally because their army moved so slowly and carefully, avoiding huge clashes. In fact with time I began to wonder if Kenya had the right formula for modern warfare, actually trumping big powers like us.

But a year ago it was not clear – as it is today – how much the western world, particularly France and the U.S., have been involved. U.S. drones, French warships and even reports of actual special services embedded with the Kenyan troops suggest a massive clandestine effort by the west to assure Kenya’s success.

We know that the Obama administration has deployed special services throughout east and central Africa so it’s likely there are Americans on the ground in Somalia helping the Kenyans. Together with our drones, we’ve probably been involved from the get go.

Such proxy warring is disturbing. It’s unsettling to me, because in theory it means Kenyans are dying to protect me, an American. It’s unsettling because we as Americans (and French, etc.) can now play with fire and not get burned.

The Kenyan mission was very slow and marginally successful day-by-day. African Union Forces which had been deployed in Mogadishu since the earth was created had been totally useless before Kenya began making inroads in the south.

Today, AUF control Mogadishu and a relative peace pervades the city for the first time in a generation. There is no doubt that Kenya’s courage in the south provided peace further north.

There is a new Somalia president, a respected university academic. Aid organizations are returning, and the news Kenya most wants to hear, that soon refugees might be repatriated, is all a collection of very positive news.

But as Jeffrey Gettleman has pointed out again and again, Kismayu freed is the worst Pandora’s Box in Africa.

The warlord society of Somali, empowered by funds and weapons scattered by America’s mousey retreat from Blackhawk Down in 1993, is rivaled only in Afghanistan. These are not people who take kindly to city council zoning rules. There is now a real concern that even the combined military of Kenya, the AUF and newly inaugurated Somali Defense Forces can hold in place what Shabaab did with nothing less than abject terror.

Over the last year terrorist attacks on Kenyan soil have increased exponentially. Tourists have been killed, kidnaped, and grenade attacks on Christian churches have taken hundreds of Kenyan lives, and even Nairobi city has experienced a half dozen terrorist attacks.

None of these were as grand or apparently as carefully planned as the Shabaab attack in Kampala in July, 2010. That attack was specific retribution by al-Shabaab against the Ugandan military, which had been the lead force in the AUF for several years. Kenya was understandably worried it would suffer the same.

It didn’t. Yet the aggregate misery, deaths, injuries and destruction of all the little attacks now exceeds by far the single grand attack in Kampala.

So there are no parades or other celebrations. A milestone, yes, but the story is far from over.

Last week, Kenya successfully routed the insurgents from Afmadow, the last insurgent front before the rebel coastal capital of Kismayo. Today, Kenya’s major newspaper reported that “Al-Shabaab leaders are reported to be fleeing Kismayo, heading back to Puntland or leaving the country for Yemen.”

And all sarcasm aside, America’s NPR asked in a quick headline this morning “Has peace really come to the Somali capital of Mogadishu?” and implied yes, because a new dry cleaning service just opened up there this week.

Before this little business opened up, NPR went on to explain, businesspeople had to get their suits cleaned in Nairobi!

I was very skeptical of “Linda Nchi” the name Kenya has given for the operation, which roughly translates as “Protect the Nation.” Click on the Somali link to the right to read my pessimistic report after report. Will the occupation of Kismayo by the Kenyans – now widely expected – prove me wrong and Kenya right?

Before any mea verbum I have to increase my potential humiliation by also pointing out that America seems to be the principal paymaster (if not quarter master as well), info supplier and stealth assassin of top al-Qaeda and -Shabaab leaders.

Without U.S. assistance, money and assassinations, Kenya probably would have been dead in the mud last fall.

Does this make Kenya the lackey of the U.S.?

Many have argued this since this beginning. But that rude presumption I discount out of hand. One of the greatest motivations for war, or no war, around the world is the incredible cost of the host country’s dealing with refugees from a neighboring country’s violence.

It’s why South Africa continues to prop up Zimbabwe, why China continues to pander to North Korea and why Turkey is so aggressive in its stance against Assad’s Syrian regime. And there is no stronger example than the nearly million Somali refugees that have been taxing the Kenyan government for several years.

And much of this time has been exacerbated by drought.

Without America’s help, I think Kenya would have made the move.

So we won’t call Kenya America’s lackey. But I will insist that America is Kenya’s paymaster, info supplier and stealth assassin. And I don’t think there’s any question that without this assistance that Linda Nchi would not be the success it is, today.

As an American, I’m not necessarily proud of this. As a self-adopted Kenyan, I’m thrilled and scared.

Guantanamo is still open; Afghanistan still bleeds profusely and any day, now, we’re going to see a drone over Syria.

I don’t like war. And let me be practically immoral: I don’t like wars we can’t win.

And the reason America has lost or bungled so many wars, is because the people it fights are locals who have gone to the ballot box with their lives. What right do we have to impose our ideas on others? Human rights? Is our definition of individual human rights, or the UN’s, sacrosanct? Absolute enough to kill someone local who believes otherwise?

No. We are learning better than ever right now that democracy is terribly flawed. What’s the point in democracy if you can be swindled to vote against your true self-interest? It’s so easy it’s criminal. The right wing in America is the most successful brainwasher since Mao.

But it isn’t easy to lay down your life for what you believe.

Josef Kony’s child soldiers were brainwashed, and when they laid down their lives it was a tragedy, not a heroic statement of their beliefs. But the vast majority of al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab fighters are not brainwashed. They may be economically subverted, but I have little doubt that their reasoned beliefs carry them to war.

When they blow up the Twin Towers, we should retaliate, and we did. Because the Golden Rule Analog prevails: If we let you alone, you let us alone.

But the extent that we then go to insure it against happening again, is as insane as the amount of money an American must spend for medical insurance.

America is obsessed with everything being black or white, Left or Right, Progressive or Conservative, and compromise in my generation has become a naughty word. This obsession has led to an inability to discern the truth, a paranoia of failure, a self-cycling decline in happiness. It has taken America to war too many times.

And from my point of view, Obama has not changed that. He has been coopted by America’s obsession with war.

But Kenya, sweet Kenya? Are you really accomplishing what America never could? Have you been crafty enough to use America’s obsession for a war so that you can really win one?

Oh I so hope so. But it isn’t over until the Fat Lady Sings. And as far as I know, the work hasn’t yet begun on the opera house in Kismayo.