Category: War

Our War for Their Peace

Our War for Their Peace

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This week of violent anniversaries leads me to wonder if The West has exported its militarism to Africa.

The West – and I don’t just mean the U.S., for France is a monster military force in Africa – has ratcheted down its military, pulled back from conflicts around the world, even as I watch Africa heating up. And most of the heat involves al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Islamic Maghreb and similar loosely affiliated fanatical Muslim jihad movements.

Today is the 100-day anniversary of the Kenyan invasion of Somalia. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the revolution in Egypt. Neither is completed, both look increasingly fragile. Yet clearly the empirical achievement of both is that they have relieved pressure on The West.

The West’s Muslim adversaries – as divergent as the Taliban and Iran – are at the very least distracted by these revolutionary African events, and in the case of Somalia, have actually led to significant victories for The West.

The killing of bin Laden and the routing of al-Qaeda is directly linked to America and France’s covert involvement in the revolutions of the Arab Spring and the later Kenyan invasion of Somalia. The cost to France and the U.S. for these covert operations has been infinitesimal compared either to their earlier adventures like Algeria or Afghanistan. A few stealth gunships in the Gulf, a few drone airfields in Ethiopia, focused air strikes, Seal 6 mission impossibles – pennies.

But these effective covert operations succeed only under a larger public umbrella of traditional war. The cost to the Libyans for the downfall of Gaddafi, to the Egyptians for their unended revolution, or the cost to Kenyans for invading Somalia has proved enormous and strains those national fabrics in a way The West would never tolerate itself.

Have we exported conflict, because we don’t know how to end the fighting, just how to send it elsewhere?

For us westerners it’s a time for imagining the flowers may soon bloom, again. In Africa, after the adrenalin of liberation, it’s a caffeine downer. The future looks awfully grim.

Accept, or Die. Nigeria, today.

Accept, or Die. Nigeria, today.

by Arusha ♥ 6 Comments

Nigeria is blowing up. There’s martial law in four of its 36 states, bombings and other violence is escalating, and religious war threatens to inflame shaky Chad, Niger and even Mali.

Economic instability always, always produces political instability, and Nigeria as one of the leading world oil producers has economic graphs with low and high points that are remarkable for their spread, showing extreme potential and extreme fragility.

During the relatively prosperous years of most of the last several decades, the country has developed significantly. In fact its economic development sped right past its social and cultural development, and this led in its own way to serious corruption that only recently was considered its greatest challenge.

No more. Nigeria’s challenge right now is to avoid self-annihilation. And tiresome as it seems, it is the classic battle between Christians and Muslims. One which permits no compromise. Accept, or die.

I’ve spent my whole life in Africa watching religion tear apart Africa and mostly as a battle between the world’s two greatest religions, Christianity and Islam, and now I even have to enduring watching it creep into the daily life of America.

One wonders what would happen if youth’s greater perception of the impoverished theologies of the world took hold. How fast can we hope this will develop? Yet if suddenly, miraculously, religion were removed from the bombs of the world, would something else take its place, like ethnicity or poverty?

That’s a question way too complicated to think about right now. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, the underground, illegal but increasingly organized terrorist group proudly affiliated with al-Qaeda, takes responsibility for much of the violence, today. Sharia oriented, today they demanded all Christians leave the Muslim north.

And Nigeria is far more developed than neighboring countries like Niger and Chad which also suffer from Christian/Islam battles. Many Nigerian Muslim clerics are screaming for peace, recognizing that all Nigeria has gained economically is at stake. But the economic gains, the level of prosperity, may not have been enough fast enough to help these clerics get their messages accepted.

The fuel inflaming this always simmering religious battle is the economy. The President of Nigeria has begun to eliminate fuel subsidies, and the scale of the reaction is unprecedented, even in this turbulent country. Many think these will now be rolled back, but it may be too late.

Religious conflict, pricked by economic decline, is happening round the world. In the more developed west fortunately the tone of the religious conflict is moderated into a less violent social/cultural one. Instead of Jesus fighting Mohammed it’s abortionists fighting evangelicals, but in the end it’s all the same.

It’s intolerance, a battle empirically governed by those who have the money and power and are fearful of losing it. When will we ever learn…

Top Ten 2011 Africa Stories

Top Ten 2011 Africa Stories

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Twevolution, the Arab Spring [by Twitter] is universally considered the most important story of the year, much less just in Africa. But I believe the Kenyan invasion of Somalia will have as lasting an effect on Africa, so I’ve considered them both Number One.

1A: KENYA INVADES SOMALIA
On October 18 Kenya invaded Somalia, where 4-5,000 of its troops remain today. Provoked by several kidnapings and other fighting in and around the rapidly growing refugee camp of Dadaab, the impression given at the time was that Kenyans had “just had enough” of al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorism group in The Horn which at the time controlled approximately the southern third of Somalia. Later on, however, it became apparent that the invasion had been in the works for some time.

At the beginning of the invasion the Kenyan command announced its objective was the port city of Kismayo. To date that hasn’t happened. Aided by American drones and intelligence, and by French intelligence and naval warships, an assessment was made early on that the battle for Kismayo would be much harder than the Kenyans first assumed, and the strategy was reduced to laying siege.

That continues and remarkably, might be working. Call it what you will, but the Kenyan restraint managed to gain the support of a number of other African nations, and Kenya is now theoretically but a part of the larger African Union peacekeeping force which has been in Somali for 8 years. Moreover, the capital of Mogadishu has been pretty much secured, a task the previous peace keepers had been unable to do for 8 years.

The invasion costs Kenya dearly. The Kenyan shilling has lost about a third of its value, there are food shortages nationwide, about a half dozen terrorist attacks in retribution have occurred killing and wounding scores of people (2 in Nairobi city) and tourism – its principal source of foreign reserves – lingers around a third of what it would otherwise be had there be no invasion.

At first I considered this was just another failed “war against terrorism” albeit in this case the avowed terrorists controlled the country right next door. Moreover, I saw it as basically a proxy war by France and the U.S., which it may indeed be. But the Kenyan military restraint and the near unanimous support for the war at home, as well as the accumulation of individually marginal battle successes and outside support now coming to Kenya in assistance, all makes me wonder if once again Africans have shown us how to do it right.

That’s what makes this such an important story. The possibility that conventional military reaction to guerilla terrorism has learned a way to succeed, essentially displacing the great powers – the U.S. primarily – as the world’s best military strategists. There is as much hope in this statement as evidence, but both exist, and that alone raises this story to the top.

You may also wish to review Top al-Shabaab Leader Killed and Somali Professionals Flee as Refugees.

1B: TWEVOLUTION CHANGES EGYPT
The Egyptian uprising, unlike its Tunisian predecessor, ensured that no African government was immune to revolution, perhaps no government in the world. I called it Twevolution because especially in Egypt the moment-by-moment activities of the mass was definitely managed by Twitter.

And the particular connection to Kenya was fabulous, because the software that powered the Twitter, Facebook and other similar revolution managing tools came originally from Kenya.

Similar of course to Tunisia was the platform for any “software instructions” – the power of the people! And this in the face of the most unimaginable odds if you’re rating the brute physical force of the regime in power.

Egypt fell rather quickly and the aftermath was remarkably peaceful. Compared to the original demonstrations, later civil disobedience whether it was against the Coptics or the military, was actually quite small. So I found it particularly fascinating how world travelers reacted. Whereas tourist murders, kidnapings and muggings were common for the many years that Egypt experienced millions of visitors annually, tourists balked at coming now that such political acts against tourists no longer occurred, because the instigators were now a part of the political process! This despite incredible deals.

We wait with baited breath for the outcome in Syria, but less visible countries like Botswana and Malawi also experienced their own Twevolution. And I listed 11 dictators that I expected would ultimately fall because of the Egyptian revolution.

Like any major revolution, the path has been bumpy, the future not easily predicted. But I’m certain, for example, that the hard and often brutal tactics of the military who currently assumes the reins of state will ultimately be vindicated. And certainly this tumultuous African revolution if not the outright cause was an important factor in our own protests, like Occupy Wall Street.

3: NEW COUNTRY OF SOUTH SUDAN
The free election and emergence of South Sudan as Africa’s 54th country would have been the year’s top story if all that revolution hadn’t started further north! In the making for more than ten years, a remarkably successful diplomatic coup for the United States, this new western ally rich with natural resources was gingerly excised from of the west’s most notorious foes, The Sudan.

Even as Sudan’s president was being indicted for war crimes in Darfur, he ostensibly participated in the creation of this new entity. But because of the drama up north, the final act of the ultimate referendum in the South which set up the new republic produced no more news noise than a snap of the fingers.

Regrettably, with so much of the world’s attention focused elsewhere, the new country was hassled violently by its former parent to the north. We can only hope that this new country will forge a more humane path than its parent, and my greatest concern for Africa right now is that global attention to reigning in the brutal regime of the north will be directed elsewhere.

4: UGANDA FALTERS
Twevolution essentially effected every country in Africa in some way. Uganda’s strongman, Yoweri Museveni, looked in the early part of the last decade like he was in for life. Much was made about his attachment to American politicians on the right, and this right after he was Bill Clinton’s Africa doll child.

But even before Twevolution – or perhaps because of the same dynamics that first erupted in Tunisia and Egypt – Museveni’s opponents grew bold and his vicious suppression of their attempts to legitimately oust him from power ended with the most flawed election seen in East Africa since Independence.

But unlike in neighboring Kenya where a similar 2007 election caused nationwide turmoil and an ultimate power sharing agreement, Museveni simply jailed anyone who opposed him. At first this seemed to work but several months later the opposition resurfaced and it became apparent that the country was at a crossroads. Submit to the strongman or fight him.

Meanwhile, tourism sunk into near oblivion. And by mid-May I was predicting that Museveni was the new Mugabe and had successfully oppressed his country to his regime. But as it turned out it was a hiatus not a surrender and a month later demonstrations began, twice as strong as before. And it was sad, because they went on and on and on, and hundreds if not thousands of people were injured and jailed.

Finally towards the end of August a major demonstration seemed to alter the balance. And if it did so it was because Museveni simply wouldn’t believe what was happening.

I wish I could tell you the story continued to a happy ending, but it hasn’t, at least not yet. There is an uneasy calm in Ugandan society, one buoyed to some extent by a new voice in legislators that dares to criticize Museveni, that has begun a number of inquiries and with media that has even dared to suggest Museveni will be impeached. The U.S. deployment of 100 green berets in the country enroute the Central African Republic in October essentially seems to have actually raised Museveni’s popularity. So Uganda falters, and how it falls – either way – will dramatically alter the East African landscape for decades.

5: GLOBAL WARMING
This is a global phenomena, of course, but it is the developing world like so much of Africa which suffers the most and is least capable of dealing with it. The year began with incessant reporting by western media of droughts, then floods, in a confused misunderstanding of what global warming means.

It means both, just as in temperate climates it means colder and hotter. With statistics that questions the very name “Developed World,” America is reported to still have a third of its citizens disputing that global warming is even happening, and an even greater percentage who accept it is happening but believe man is not responsible either for it occurring or trying to change it. Even as clear and obvious events happen all around them.

Global warming is pretty simple to understand, so doubters’ only recourse is to make it much more confusing than it really is. And the most important reason that we must get everyone to understand and accept global warming, is we then must accept global responsibilities for doing something about it. I was incensed, for example, about how so much of the media described the droughts in Africa as fate when in fact they are a direct result of the developed world’s high carbon emissions.

And the news continued in a depressing way with the very bad (proponents call it “compromised”) outcome of the Durban climate talks. My take was that even the countries most effected, the developed world, were basically bought off from making a bigger stink.

Environmentalists will argue, understandably, that this is really the biggest story and will remain so until we all fry. The problem is that our lives are measured in the nano seconds of video games, and until we can embrace a long view of humanity and that our most fundamental role is to keep the world alive for those who come after us, it won’t even make the top ten for too much longer.

6: COLTAN WARS IMPEDED
This is a remarkable story that so little attention has been given. An obscure part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act essentially halved if not ultimately will end the wars in the eastern Congo which have been going on for decades.

These wars are very much like the fractional wars in Somalia before al-Shabaab began to consolidate its power, there. Numerous militias, certain ones predominant, but a series of fiefdoms up and down the eastern Congo. You can’t survive in this deepest jungle of interior Africa without money, and that money came from the sale of this area’s rich rare earth metals.

Tantalum, coltran more commonly said, is needed by virtually every cell phone, computer and communication device used today. And there are mines in the U.S. and Australia and elsewhere, but the deal came from the warlords in the eastern Congo. And Playbox masters, Sony, and computer wizards, Intel, bought illegally from these warlords because the price was right.

And that price funded guns, rape, pillaging and the destruction of the jungle. The Consumer Protection Agency, set up by the Dodd-Frank Act, now forbids these giants of technology from doing business in the U.S. unless they can prove they aren’t buying Coltran from the warlords. Done. War if not right now, soon over.

7: ELEPHANTS AND CITES
The semi-decade meeting of CITES occurred this March in Doha, Qatar, and the big fight of interest to me was over elephants. The two basic opposing positions on whether to downlist elephants from an endangered species hasn’t changed: those opposed to taking elephants off the list so that their body parts (ivory) could be traded believed that poaching was at bay, and that at least it was at bay in their country. South Africa has led this flank for years and has a compelling argument, since poaching of elephants is controlled in the south and the stockpiling of ivory, incapable of being sold, lessens the funds that might otherwise be available for wider conservation.

The east and most western countries like the U.S. and U.K. argue that while this may be true in the south, it isn’t at all true elsewhere on the continent, and that once a market is legal no matter from where, poaching will increase geometrically especially in the east where it is more difficult to control. I concur with this argument, although it is weakened by the fact that elephants are overpopulated in the east, now, and that there are no good strategic plans to do something about the increasing human/elephant conflicts, there.

But while the arguments didn’t change, the proponents themselves did. In a dramatic retreat from its East African colleagues, Tanzania sided with the south, and that put enormous strain on the negotiations. When evidence emerged that Tanzania was about the worst country in all of Africa to manage its poaching and that officials there were likely involved, the tide returned to normal and the convention voted to continue keeping elephants listed as an endangered species.

8: RHINO POACHING REACHES EXTREME LEVELS
For the first time in history, an animal product (ground rhino horn) became more expensive on illicit markets than gold.

Rhino, unlike elephant, is not doing well in the wild. It’s doing wonderfully in captivity and right next to the wild in many private reserves, but in the wild it’s too easy a take. This year’s elevation of the value of rhino horn resulted in unexpectedly high poaching, and some of it very high profile.

9: SERENGETI HIGHWAY STOPPED
This story isn’t all good, but mostly, because the Serengeti Highway project was shelved and that’s the important part. And to be sure, the success of stopping this untenable project was aided by a group called Serengeti Watch.

But after some extremely good and aggressive work, Serengeti Watch started to behave like Congress, more interested in keeping itself in place than doing the work it was intended to do. The first indication of this came when a Tanzanian government report in February, which on careful reading suggested the government was having second thoughts about the project, was identified but for some reason not carefully analyzed by Watch.

So while the highway is at least for the time being dead, Serengeti Watch which based on its original genesis should be as well, isn’t.

10: KENYAN TRANSFORMATION AND WORLD COURT
The ongoing and now seemingly endless transformation of Kenyan society and politics provoked by the widespread election violence of 2007, and which has led to a marvelous new constitution, is an ongoing top ten story for this year for sure. But more specifically, the acceptance of this new Kenyan society of the validity of the World Court has elevated the power of that controversial institution well beyond anyone’s expectations here in the west.

Following last year’s publication by the court of the principal accused of the crimes against humanity that fired the 2007 violence, it was widely expected that Kenya would simply ignore it. Not so. Politicians and current government officials of the highest profile, including the son of the founder of Kenya, dutifully traveled to The Hague to voluntarily participate in the global judicial process that ultimately has the power to incarcerate them.

The outcome, of course, remains to be seen and no telling what they’ll do if actually convicted. It’s very hard to imagine them all getting on an airplane in Nairobi to walk into a cell in Rotterdam.

But in a real switcheroo this travel to The Hague has even been spun by those accused as something positive and in fact might have boosted their political standing at home. And however it effects the specific accused, or Kenya society’s orientation to them, the main story is how it has validated a global institution’s political authority.

War: Month 2

War: Month 2

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It’s clear that Kenya’s invasion of Somalia will be lengthy. The army is not moving quickly, there is hardly any action at all, and Kenya seems content to occupy the bit of land they’ve conquered while letting the initially stated objective of Kismayo disappear.

In the end the strategy could work. Al-Shabaab while ruling much of Somalia is not really a very good governing entity: they are fighters not administrators. Kenya and France seem to have laid a siege over the port of Kismayo. Starving al-Shabaab might be the prudent “way out.”

The respected African analysis, Robert Rotberg, said last week he thought the Kenyan slowdown was because of heavy rains. But the emeritus prof has got that a bit wrong; rains in eastern and southern Somalia have abated considerably in the last several weeks. The Kenyans haven’t been stopped by water.

But the rest of Rotberg’s analysis had some compelling aspects to it. “Al-Shabaab’s days as a sustainable and robust fighting force are rapidly coming to an end,” and I agree. He also posits a UN trusteeship for what will “come after” the Kenyan/Ethiopian victory, very much as Southwest Africa was established under South Africa following World War II.

Kenya roared into Somali nearly two months ago, then screeched to a dead stop when it became clear that al-Shabaab was fortifying a city northwest of Kismayo, which could conceivably clench the Kenyan military in a pincer action if they continued to the sea.

As the war begins its second month, Kenya’s 3-4,000 troops have lost 4 in action, 6 in accidents and ten more wounded. Not bad.

So… Kenya stopped, and there it’s been for some time. In place of fighting a remarkable diplomatic effort by Kenya has laid the ground for their lengthy involvement. First, they reversed the initial displeasure of the puppet government in Mogadishu. Then, they exposed Eritrea as supplying al-Shabaab’s military. And finally, they’ve kept both America with its drones and France with its naval gunships involved.

At home the terrorist threat of al-Shabaab has diminished. The first couple weeks saw grenade attacks in Kenyan churches, bombs in Nairobi bars and a restless Somali population. That’s settled. Personally, I still don’t think it wise to restart tourism in Kenya, but I’m very glad that the threats to the Kenyan population seem to have diminished.

But the war is a terrible drain on Kenyan resources. The country is preparing for its first election after the new constitution. Its shilling is in the tank with no indication it will recover. Economically this war is the last thing Kenya needs.

Kenya believes this effort will, literally, keep al-Shabaab at bay, the bay at Kismayo. And if the siege ultimately works, perhaps Kenya can walk to the seaside without firing a gun. It sounds crazy and beautiful. We’ll just have to wait it out … with the Kenyans.

War Week 6

War Week 6

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Very little of anything happened last week with Kenya’s invasion of Somalia. Some are beginning to see it as an occupation rather than a specific campaign. Kenyan forces continue to decline engaging al-Shabaab in their fortified towns of Afmadow and Kisamyo.

Kenyans at home who have until now been unwavering in their support are beginning to falter: “In the wake of Operation Linda Nchi, there has been anxiety that there is little action in Somalia… If you are excited by war, the one in Somalia has been disappointing,” a leading Kenyan journalist wrote Sunday.

The 5th week of the war included a flurry of diplomatic activity as well as the invasion of Somali by Ethiopia. I had thought these both positive developments. But many African analysts see it differently.

Tanzanian Evarist Kagaruki of Dar’s main newspaper, The Citizen, claims “there are no signs yet to show that support for Kenya was forthcoming. The whole burden has been left to the Kenyan army [and African Union troops that have been there for a number of years as peacekeepers].”

Kagaruki concludes that the Ethiopian invasion won’t help the Kenyan effort, either. He says that “Ethiopia is not the right “partner” in the adventure” because Somali/Ethiopian enmity is centuries deep. He points out that it was in the wake of the last Ethiopian invasion that al-Shabaab gained so much power.

“It is time Kenya wrapped up the campaign before war fatigue sets in,” was the lead editorial in Sunday’s East African newspaper.

But the military insists the campaign is going as planned. Apparently siege rather that engagement is that plan. Friday military commanders claimed that the last five ships that were at the port of Kismayo had departed, and that the Kenyan air force and Navy would now not allow any others to enter.

Other reports said the Kenyan air force was successfully aggressively bombing al-Shabaab positions.

There have been no more terrorist or revenge attacks in Nairobi, but that isn’t true near the Somali/Kenya border, where multiple attacks and skirmishes have left a number of civilian casualties.

This is clear evidence of the strategy al-Shabaab is employing, a guerilla campaign that is quite content to withdraw from the line of battle into the bushes and hills.

And while increased security in Nairobi and Kenya’s main cities may being helped by many arrests of suspected al-Shabaab sympathizers, the military nature of their detainment is not going over well with the Kenyan population, and certainly not with the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Somali living in Nairobi.

So last week’s glimmer of hopeful excitement is gone.

War or Peace, At This Very Instant

War or Peace, At This Very Instant

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I started this blog to write about animals. Today, like so many days, it’s about elections and wars. And in this wrap-up blog before our Thanksgiving holiday, the preeminent news is at this very moment in time. Better than I would have a hoped a few moments ago.

It’s so ephemeral. It’s easy to argue that things change so quickly, that news and blog-news is disseminated so instantly, that clearly seeing a trend to events becomes more and more murky. Well, bring it on!

So let me wage a huge gamble about Kenya, Egypt and The Congo – three volatile yet extremely promising societies – which I promise to revisit next week: Last weekend the situation in all three looked nothing short of awful. This morning, at this very instant, it looks different and better.

Kenya’s advancing invasion of Somalia for the first time in six weeks has an optimistic cast. Despite unbelievable clashes in Egypt over the last few days, at this very moment in time the military seems to actually be negotiating away its position to the people, and even in the Heart of Darkness I see glimmers of goodness in the November 28th election in The Congo.

It’s only logical that the Kenyan invasion of Somali begun more than a month ago would fail and strangle the country’s developing economy and polity in the process. And the quick entry, then total abortion of the process which resulted in a Kenyan decampment less than half way to its stated objective, the port of Kismayo, looked threateningly like Kenyan defeat earlier than any could have predicted.

But then chips we didn’t know we’re in the game started to fall into place. The dysfunctional Somali transitional government got in line. Coordination began with African Union forces that have been in the country since its seems the industrial revolution. And last week, Kenya’s sometimes adversary Ethiopia resent troops into the country presumably to fight alongside Kenya.

I am not one to believe wars work very well, but reports this morning suggest that the size of the combined effort by Kenya, Ethiopia and the AU is such that routing al-Shabaab might just be possible.

In Egypt all hell broke loose last week following the military’s very ill-advised November 1 edicts setting the final rules for the election process and simultaneously entrenching itself in a cocoon of immunity from civilian authority.

Like so many countries in South America and Asia in the recent past, military autocracies justify themselves as the only cohesion to otherwise dysfunctional and often ethnically divided societies. It is laughably early for me to post this as the meetings are actually in progress in Cairo, at this very instant in time, but my intuition is on the line. I think the military is going to back down.

The poor Congo was crippled in the 1960s at the very moment of its independence, when Belgium and the U.S. teamed up to murder the duly elected first president of the country, Patrice Lamumba, for fear he was a “communist.” That body blow to its polity has seemed to fester rather than heal.

The current president is the son of the “liberator” who forcibly ousted the long-time ruthless dictator, Sesi Seko Mobutu. But Mobutu had held power for so long that throngs of people and institutions depended upon him. Chaos reigned in the eastern Kivu Province, where child soldiers and blackmarketed Star Wars rare metals fueled Dante’s inferno.

But with a little help from its friends, most notably a little acknowledged provision in the Dodd-Frank banking act, the temperature in The Congo has plummeted to near normal highland rain forest levels. The bad guys have fled north. Next Monday’s election might just actually go off well.

If these possibly irresponsible optimistic predictions come true there is an important lesson I for one should learn and could easily forget if not pointed out, now. Trust youth.

It has been us fuddy duddies predicting gloom and doom. We have nothing but history to reference. The rest of our lives would make a very short line.

It’s the youth in Tahrir Square, in Nairobi, and in the jungles of Kivu who have been insisting throughout all the ups and downs in their situations that “we will prevail.” It’s new tour companies that have contacted me from Kivu-Congo, and Nairobi and Cairo.

Tour companies? New tour companies in the midst of fire and smoke?

WAR : Week 5

WAR : Week 5

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Little or no advancement by Kenyan troops in Somali this week ended today with reports this morning of 400 new Kenyan soldiers amassing on the border north of Lamu, and a limited movement of the existing forces towards Afmadow.

It’s hard to tell this morning if this heralds a real new military push — which would mean the week which was otherwise one strictly of global diplomacy was successful — or if the Kenyans are simply rattling sabers.

Until this moment the entire week had been quiet. Rains subsided but troops didn’t move. American drones and French naval vessels were completely quiet. It was a week of frantic diplomacy around the world.

And not diplomacy between combatants. Al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda in The Horn) continued to fortify the towns of Afmadow and Kismayo, the objectives of the Kenyan assault. And the Kenyans dug their own trenches.

The diplomacy was between African countries, the U.S. and France. The Kenyan UN ambassador – now clearly seen as more senior than the actual ambassador to the United States – spent a frantic week in Washington courting American generals.

And this morning, Kenyan news sources claimed that the Obama administration had agreed to consider a greater involvement.

The U.S. and France are widely presumed to have participated in the killing of around 50 combatants in weeks three and four with drones flown from a secret base in Ethiopia, and from French naval vessels just off the port of Kismayo. Both the Americans and French denied this, but there’s enough eye witness reports to be credible.

And I believe the silence of American and French guns this week is a reflection of them not wanting to outpace the Kenyans, and for everyone involved to become better coordinated.

In addition to the frantic attempts by the Kenyans to get the Americans and French reinvolved, the Kenyans mastered a situation within Somali that now has all the players opposed to al-Qaeda on the same page. This was not the case in the beginning.

The transitional Somali government, put in place and supported by Ugandan and Burundi soldiers in the capital of Mogadishu, originally criticized the Kenyan invasion. They now accept and support it.

The 8000 Uganda and Burundi soldiers ostensibly a part of an African Union sanction of peace-keeping publicly indicated their efforts were now coordinated with the Kenyans.

And finally, Kenya announced that it had obtained greater support from other African nations and hinted that a larger “peace-keeping” force was in the works. This Kenyan diplomatic success followed Kenya’s decades’ long reversal not to participate in the African peace-keeping forces that have been in Somali on and off since Blackhawk Down.

My view is that the Kenyans plowed into Somalia believing the element of surprise was more important than coordination with the players on the ground and around the world capable of supporting them. Last week they took a step back and began that process.

The 400 new soldiers on Somalia’s souther border does suggest a new chapter may be opening, but my sense is that the Kenyans will not begin until they feel all the players are in place … including the French and Americans.

But the larger question remains. Even if the al-Shabaab forces in Afmadow and Kismayo are displaced or beaten, what then? Are those militants so weak that a military strike can extinguish the movement?

An excellent analysis by Seth Meyers in South Africa’s Business Daily concludes that Kenya will be successful only insofar that “it avoids the mistakes Ethiopia made” in 2006. Ethiopia tried exactly what Kenya is doing, now, in 2006. The Ethiopian army is much larger and arguably much better than Kenya’s, but after five months the Ethiopians retreated with their tale between their legs.

They did “sort of liberate” Mogadishu and led to the 8000 Uganda and Burundi peace-keepers that have ever since fought daily to retain control of parts of Mogadishu. So there was some success. But it was small.

Meyers believes one of the failures of the Ethiopia was that their Sherman putsch was so bloody that Somalis were alienated not liberated, believing that Ethiopia was worse than al-Shabaab. This could explain this week’s hesitations by the Kenyans and numerous television spots in Kenya showing soldiers fraternizing with locals, passing out food to children and participating in school soccer matches.

There is a massive number of out-of-country Somali news media mostly on the internet, reflecting the huge diaspora around the world. Like the transitional government in Mogadishu, many of these are now supporting the Kenyans.

I concur with Meyers that the greatest threat is a prolonged battle for Kismayo. Kismayo is the heart and soul of Somali insurgency, a large functioning port that is essentially the capital of insurgent Somalia. A quick and successful battle by the Kenyans could be the proverbial nail in the coffin for al-Shabaab.

But a prolonged struggle “risks … the unintended effect of forging a dangerous new “alliance of necessity” between criminal and terrorist networks in Somalia” and by that Meyers means the innumerable pirates, clans, bandits and all sorts of other heavily armed bad guys might rally behind al-Shabaab, something that hasn’t yet happened.

I guess I feel more hopeful this week than in the past. I’m especially glad there were no more grenade attacks in Nairobi bars or tourists or aid workers kidnaped. But this could just be the lull in the storm.

Guided by a Child’s Remembrance

Guided by a Child’s Remembrance

by Arusha ♥ 5 Comments

Clemantine Wamariya, a 23-year old Yale student and Tutsi who lived through the Rwandan genocide when she was 6 years old, has been appointed by President Obama to the board of the Holocaust Museum. Is this wise?

Ms. Wamariya’s life is a fairy tale story, and I mean her no ill will. In time she may mature into this role thrust upon her and become one of the most vital advocates of justice in the world. But that’s going to be a singular challenge likely greater than her escape from being hacked to death in Rwanda in 1994.

Ms. Wamariya appears a gifted person, so there’s hope. But I am concerned that her unusual prominence displaces the masses to such a degree that she will fall prey to conceptualizing the disaster and ultimately rationalizing it … the American way, so to speak.

Because preserving facts that cannot be altered with time is the first important step to understanding genocide. Look at what a mess we have right now between Turkey and Armenia, between teams of scholars arguing what actually happened.

Even the mass slaughter of Jews in World War II comes under constant challenge.

So fixing reality in time is fundamental to any attempt to analyze and ultimately reverse the evil. Ms. Wamariya cannot do that. She was too little.

Ms. Wamariya was only 6 years old when she escaped the Rwandan genocide. No six-year old anywhere on earth has enough continuous memory of the time to be a true witness. I think it much more likely that she honestly and hopefully rigorously has worked to confirm that what she would have been told by others older than her with her at the time, was true.

Step two is to assess blame. In such massive exterminations as took place in Armenia, Germany, Russia and Rwanda, there is blame enough for virtually everyone who was living at the time. Ms. Wamariya’s capacity for functional analysis might be stellar. It’s hard to know that of a 23-year old.

Step three: prevent its recurrence.

Ms. Wamariya may be the smartest person on earth. She may have an intellect uniquely capable of piloting us away from self-destruction. Her infancy in Rwanda may provide some subconscious authenticity to her reasoning, and that would be invaluable.

But she is not a witness. And she is not yet capable of rigorous analysis. She is a product of Oprah Winfrey. And I for one could nominate many others who I know personally, also nationalized American Watutsis, who would be better for the board. Much older at the time, their memory was mature and remains in tact. Reality is preserved with them. It simply cannot be with Ms. Wamariya.

Her subsequent years in refugee camps before being rescued is that part of her story I’ve been unable to establish completely. All that’s in the record is that she was granted asylum in 2000 and came to Chicago and entered a Christian grade school.

Who brought her? Who picked her out of hundreds of thousands?

That’s the red herring, folks. And this has nothing to do with Ms. Wamariya, nor is it a commentary alone on Ms. Wamariya’s performance since or potential from this point on. But as I’ve often written of the many plagues on Africa, perhaps the greatest was the proselytizing by Christianity.

Livingstone’s famous “3 C’s” – Christianity, Commerce and Civilization – says it all. The old explorer was one of the first to know you needed buzz words to raise money, and those three ideas were interchangeable in the European mind at the time. They remain so, today, particularly among the Christian community.

Christianity as redefined by the world’s superpower elite was an untouchable first principal of how to live life. Commerce is capitalism is the paradigm by which Christians condone greed. Civilization is a presumptive elevation of self-esteem, the notion that I know what is right for you.

This soup of ideas is the perfect formula for genocide.

Christianity as carried into Africa was bad for Africa. It’s one of the most important causes of Africa’s floundering in contrast to Asia’s blooming. But Christianity seems to be an important reason Ms. Wamariya bloomed in America.

From then all it took was an Oprah to find her, nurture her and escort her into prominence.

Today’s Morning Edition on NPR featured the touching story. And it did so with all the American proclivity to redefine the past in a better light. I was annoyed, for example, that Renee Montagne claimed the genocide in Rwanda happened during its “spring.” There is no spring on the equator. There is no universal rebirth as in New York city in April. The contrast is meaningless, but was not intended to be.

Americans are wont to deny that anything is wrong. On the one hand that’s probably a positive component of optimism. But when things do go wrong, Americans more than others retreat into the fantasy that “everything will be ok.”

In my early grade school days, there was a lesson as a common denominator that was carried from grade to grade and after school from aunt to aunt. “Don’t complain, child!” (I guess I did.) And that polemic has its own good and bad inferences, but as I lived in different parts of the world I came to see America more and more as a place where if it weren’t true that things were the best in the world, we had to believe so, anyway.

The appointment of a yet to fully develop Mozart as a custodian of one of the most horrendous moments of mankind’s past may make us feel warm and fuzzy. But it misses the mark by a good decade or more.

War : Week 4

War : Week 4

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

The Kenyans never said how long it would take, but it’s taking too long. And while opinion in Nairobi remains ludicrously supportive analysts outside the country are painting a gloomier and gloomier picture. The Kenyan invasion might have given a terrorist organization its first opportunity to win a conventional war.

There was little fighting last week. The military commander explained that they were giving civilians time to get themselves out of harm’s way, and pacifying the areas they now control, but analysis suggests otherwise. The heaviest rains have ended, but the roads remain a muddy mess, not easy for military equipment to travel.

Moreover, the Kenyans may have decided that a wave of diplomacy launched by Kenya’s Prime Minister simultaneously pleading for more western help while starting a second if diplomatic war with Eritrea needs some time to develop. The Kenyans accuse Eritrea of supplying weapons to al-Shabaab.

The 2-3,000 Kenyan soldiers (we haven’t been given a firm count yet) are equipped with 1980s military equipment, mostly HumVees and old mini-tanks called “technicals.” The New York Times’ >>> estimates al-Shabaab fighters in Somali at 25-30,000. So that’s ten times the Kenyan forces.

But there are also 8,000 African Union troops supporting the tiny Somali Transitional Counsel’s military, so the true numbers might be around 10,000 invaders to 30,000 locals.

The invaders, though, have the assistance of America and France. America has been very infrequently but significantly sending out drone missile attacks to areas in and around Kismayo. The French Navy has twice bombarded the port. So with this additional support the Kenyans position is probably better than it looks by the numbers.

Reports of al-Shabaab softening its pitches among the local population and kindly asking elders of various clans to allow their sons to join “the resistance,” as well as finally allowing outside aid organizations to distribute food, is an indication al-Shabaab believes it still has influence if not total power.

Or that they are legitimately worried. The Kenyans only real advance last week was from the south, its second front. There a smaller contingent, followed by two miserable Kenyan Navy boats offshore, pushed militants out of southern towns to about 100 km south of Kismayo.

As a result the Kenyans claim to have stopped piracy, indeed all shipping, into and out of Kismayo. (Undoubtedly with the help of rather larger French naval vessels nearby).

But the main force that entered from the west almost 4 weeks ago is stalled. Afmadow 30 km to the north of this main force is where al-Shabaab is concentrating fighters, and Kismayo, 80 km to the southeast remains the objective.

As I said last week, al-Shabaab’s brilliant military move to consolidate Afmadow means the Kenyans could fall victim to a pincer action is they continued onto to Kismayo. This is the real reason they’re stopped. Roads are bad, equipment is old, and they may be overall better outfitted than al-Shabaab, but al-Shabaab currently is winning the war of strategy and has already won the war of numbers.

There’s a lesson it’s taken America a dozen wars in my life time to learn: you can’t win without the locals.

War : Week 3

War : Week 3

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It’s clear that a major battle is brewing, but it isn’t at all clear who is going to win. America is worried. Kenyans are growing increasingly anxious. More deaths, including tourists.

The Thursday afternoon killing of a safari vehicle driver in the Shaba Reserve, and the wounding of a Swiss tourist inside, has no clear motive. There is no clear evidence that it is linked to any retribution from those Kenya is fighting in neighboring Somalia.

The safari vehicle was on a routine game drive and was returning to the lodge when several gunmen opened fire. The driver accelerated the vehicle but there was a second batch of gunmen waiting and they pummeled the vehicle with additional gunfire.

The driver was killed, the vehicle rolled over, one tourist was hit by a bullet and one was uninjured. Kenyan Wildlife Service agents at Archer’s Post were first on the scene.

Nevertheless this is exactly the area that I warned was unsafe only a a month ago. Whether these were bandits or ideologue militias doesn’t really matter. Kenya’s rule of law is falling apart as all its resources are funneled to the conflict in Somalia.

Go back and read the hostile comments I suppose understandably left by Kenyans who read that article. But wouldn’t it have now been much better if all had taken heed, and the tourist was now not dead?

Definite links have been established, however, with additional kidnappings around the border area of foreign aid workers, and of a grenade attack on a church in Garissa, a major town not far from the Somali border.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan offensive seems stalled. This is my view, not the view expressed by the Kenyan military, which claims to be on track in its liberation of Kismayo.

The army, though, has not yet even taken Afmadow, a northern town distraction that Kenyans learned was being fortified by al-Shabaab militias, and which they announced they would first have to pacify before continuing the progress towards Kismayo.

In the course of last week, French fired from naval vessels into Kismayo and America launched drone attacks from a base in Ethiopia. Kenya claimed a number of small skirmish victories, but its army does not seem to be moving.

This could be because of new reports of how heavily fortified Kismayo has become. During an African leaders conference last week, Prime Minister Raila Odinga literally pleaded with the west for more assistance.

Meanwhile Kenyan society is growing increasingly anxious with the war.

“The worst case scenario,” writes blogger Abdi Sheikh, is that Kenya gets deeply embroiled in the “conflict for years and disenfranchise both Kenyan Somalis and Somali refugees living in Kenya.”

“Any major mistake will bring the conflict into Kenya,” he goes on, and “may also stir xenophobia against Somalis living in Kenya.”

That may already have happened. Additional police are seen regularly in the densely populated Somali suburb of Eastleigh in Nairobi. New government policies demanding Kenyan Somalis disarm themselves are likely only going to inflame the situation.

Several newspapers reprinted old publications of WikiLeaks documents of American embassy dispatches detailing al-Shabaab recruiting within Kenya.

One thing everyone seems to agree on, which I don’t think is quite as evident as presumed is that “Kenya has taken an action that is irreversible” (Abdi Sheikh). “It has sparked a war with a shadowy group that has no clear frontline. This means those responsible for military action must think carefully not to create new enemies or inflame the conflict further.”

And yet if it isn’t reversible, it may be doomed. Sheikh reminds us, “There has been no foreign military invasion that has ever been successful in Somalia.”

Sharpen the knives for that Turkey!

Sharpen the knives for that Turkey!

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In a topsy-turvy world where rain is not good and war is fought in daylight as you sleep, the sum total of the world’s misery explodes, and you prepare for Thanksgiving.

Kenya’s invasion of Somalia will be long and self-destructive unless the west decides to increase its military involvement, or unless Kenya figures out a way to spin failure and go home. For the sake of Kenya, I hope the latter.

The BBC reported today that the Kenyan military chief has conceded that the operation is taking longer than expected. As we well know from our own adventures, this is soldier-talk that the original drawing board was pure fantasy. I said a week ago that we would know today whether the operation was going to achieve some success in a reasonable time or not.

Not.

All we can hope for now is that Kenya will study carefully the history of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia five years ago and go home, and hopefully much more quickly than Ethiopia did.

But I doubt that, too. It isn’t just a matter of Kenyan national pride, now, but enough hard evidence emerged last week that we are now certain both France and the U.S. are pushing Kenya hard to do exactly what it’s doing, softening the enemy.

Whether either of those super powers, which are sending occasional missiles from off-shore and drones from secret bases in the area, has a threshold for greater involvement is hard to say. France is never shy about military involvement, but Obama’s reelection could be seriously jeopardized by more overt action.

Today, Kenya’s prime minister told a meeting of African leaders “not to blame foreigners, but ourselves” for the military involvement in Somalia. Hopefully, local Kenyans took that to mean “giving room to the West to intervene.”

The week started miserably when Kenya’s poorly trained air force bombed a refugee camp killing dozens of civilians. “Most of the victims were women and children,” the New York Times Josh Kron reports citing Doctors without Borders.

“Military action risks worsening the effects of famine on the Somali people, and pushing more people ‘beyond the reach of aid agencies’,” the international aid group, Oxfam said Friday.

And there are more and more refugees.

And while the BBC reported today that good if not better than expected rains “have eased the drought“ that news isn’t welcomed. There are so many displaced persons, no crops that have been planted and no plants to hold the water, that the effect of the rain is erosion and disease.

And within Kenya a “Patriot Act,” similar to our own despicable human rights atrocity, is gaining momentum as Kenyans fear retribution is certain.

It is a very grim story to tell, today. I can’t help feeling that it’s our fault, and by “our” I don’t mean the Democrats and President Obama, I mean western society for a hundred a years of selfishness and greed. There is just so much wealth in the world, we can extract natural resources at just a certain rate. There is limited comfort as a result, and we have reached the point that to maintain a modicum of what we historically achieved, much of the world must squander in abject misery and war.

Yes, to use a favorite nonpartisan political phrase, we are blessed… to be here, rather than there.

A Sacrifice So Far Far Away

A Sacrifice So Far Far Away

by Arusha ♥ 4 Comments

From far, far away, Kenya is being sacrificed to quell the war on terror. A young and dynamic, growing country with a tremendous future has been thrown to the wolves.

The war in Somalia is not going well for Kenya. The army advance is bogged down, more aid workers and civilians have been kidnaped or killed and many more injured near the front and by two grenade attacks in Nairobi city. The shilling is tanking and local prices are skyrocketing.

But it may be going well for America. Depending on your point of view, of course.

“Several of the missiles fired at jihadist fighters … on the Somali side of the border seem to have been fired from American drones or submarines,” the respected magazine, the Economist reports.

I want to stop al-Qaeda’s terrorism, who doesn’t? But fighting these endless proxy wars is inhumane. Go ahead, fire the drones, but don’t make Kenya the sacrificial lamb.

From the Kenyan border to the stated objective, the coastal city of Kismayo, the path using existing roads and tracks is about 150 miles. After 40 miles, the Kenyan military got bogged down in mud following heavy rains.

Fighting to that point was minimal. Skirmishes by al-Shabaab supporters and guerillas resulted in random and rapid firing by Kenyan troops. At the crossroads of Bilis Qoqani, 45 rebels ambushed the convoy and in the ensuing battle, the first real encounter between Kenya and al-Shabaab, the militants were routed, 9 killed and several Kenyans wounded.

At that point it was learned that an unexpectedly well organized al-Shabaab force was digging in at the city of Afmadow. This is actually north of the planned assault and now means the Kenyans have to confront the militants there or risk being attacked from their flank if they proceed directly to Kismayo.

So while today they are only about 85 miles from their objective, it looks like they must head north for the great battle at Afmadow, first.

And back at home, things couldn’t be worse for the everyday Kenyan. The city’s main newspaper calls it a “Nightmare.”

The world is surprisingly learning that a significant portion of the prewar Kenyan economy was linked to the port at Kismayo that the Kenyan military is now trying to take over.

“Supplies such as sugar, rice, cooking fat and powdered milk” and “even electronic goods and vehicles” come from Kismayo, even though it is controlled by al-Shabaab. Sugar in Kenya’s northeast today costs four times more than two weeks ago.

In the center of the country in Nairobi, the concern is not so much with sugar as shillings. A year ago the shilling traded at about 65-70 for one U.S. dollar. Today it returned to just under 100 after peaking yesterday at 106.

The median interest on a business loan shot up to 20% today, after the government’s request for a $65 million loan from the IMF was answered with only $25 million.

Tourism is being decimated. If everything ends well and Kenya is the super hero, tourism will rebound rather quickly. But that doesn’t look likely to me. I think we’re in a very long period of declining tourism.

More and more Kenyans are beginning to question the war, as I believe they should. “Let Us Rethink Our Somali Intervention” was the lead editorial in today’s Nairobi Star newspaper.

We all want al-Qaeda’s ruthlessness to stop, most of all Kenyans who have lived with it day in and day out for much of their lives. But violent eradication of an entrenched fighting force is not something Kenya can accomplish. If we as Americans have accomplished it in Iraq (which is very uncertain) look at the effort it took. Kenya cannot undertake that.

Obama knows that. Hillary knows that. But their allegiance is to their home. The sacrificial lamb comes from far, far away.

Chant of the Impatient & Vanquished

Chant of the Impatient & Vanquished

by Arusha ♥ 8 Comments

Within a week we’ll know whether the Kenyan invasion of Somalia is the true beginning of the end of al-Qaeda or the start of increased instability and terrorism in Kenya. I’m pretty pessimistic and damn mad. But the outcome of the battle of Kismayo will tell all.

Kismayo is a city. A functioning, wealth-producing large coastal city with a proud university and clean streets. It’s the defacto capital of al-Qaeda in The Horn, the center for terrorist planning, administration and growth.

It’s the only true geopolitical epicenter of terrorists in the world. In Kismayo terrorism leaders don’t hide in caves. They go to work in offices. They collect taxes. They use big computers to concoct strategy, to build internet sites, to train young militants in actual schools, to organize and implement arms deals. This isn’t Wajiristan.

And until this moment, Kismayo was untouchable. Since Sunday, planes have bombed the city. Sea-launched missiles hit the city center. The Kenya military is marching towards Kismayo.

Kenya’s major newspaper called the expected encounter “The Mother of All Battles.” Western terrorist experts see it as a “high stakes game for Kenya.”

There is remarkable calm in Kenya. In fact, it’s absolutely ridiculous! The rest of the region and much of the world is overwhelmed by news from the front, including the first two Nairobi city bombings as al-Shabaab begins its guerilla war inside Kenya. But one reading the Kenyan newspapers today has a hard time finding any war reports at all!

The country is in denial. The diaspora is in denial. Even if the battle is successful, the effort is likely to bankrupt the country. Tourism is doomed for the forseeable future. Even political stability, so creatively accomplished for the last four years, shows the first stages of unraveling.

I hate making this prediction, and I really want to be proved wrong. But Operation “Linda Nchi” will fail. It will likely fail the same way Ethiopia failed five years ago when western powers propped up its invasion of Mogadishu the same way they are currently propping up Kenya’s of Kismayo.

Ethiopia – with a far more sophisticated army than Kenya’s – marched into Mogadishu and installed a very weak government then rapidly returned home leaving behind a mess that was supposed to be cleaned up by 8-9000 non-Ethiopian African Union soldiers in a few months. It’s been three years. It’s still a mess.

Even though Kenya’s military is far less sophisticated than Ethiopia’s, I think this is the likely outcome, because terrorists survive by running away, never by making a stand. Their success comes in suicide and car bombs, subway attacks and shoe bombers. They don’t do tanks well.

The west seems to think that we’ve got al-Qaeda on the run. It’s true that an arm’s length list of al-Qaeda leaders have been wiped out by American drones and stealth attacks by the Obama administration. The question is, is it enough that Operation “Linda Nchi” is the nail in the coffin, or just the positioning of another sacrificial lamb.

If the latter, Kenya will become rocked by terrorism for years and years. Unless it becomes the horribly ruthless, dictatorial regime of Ethiopia where you need permission to sneeze on the streets of Addis Ababa.

Kenya doesn’t understand — which America maybe finally does – that a ground war against terrorism won’t work.

Defense against terrorism is critical and can be successful. Diplomacy and sanctions against terrorists works. Stealth raids and maybe even drones to kill terrorists might even work, but war doesn’t work. Kenya was managing all of these things masterfully! Until last week.

My friends in tourism in Nairobi are near panic. Bookings are canceling in the droves. And no one in their right mind would suggest a foreign vacationer visit the country, now.

This is so damn sad. For so long Kenya tread the perfect balance with regards to its chaotic terrorist neighbor, Somalia. It refused to join African peacekeepers in Somalia. It tolerated but repelled incessant incursions into its Somalia border towns. And it quietly assisted the big guys by rounding up terrorists on its own soil.

But then the Somalia famine quadrupled the size of the refugee camp in Kenya at Dadaab to a third of a million people, in less than three months; the world economic collapse bludgeoned the shilling, and finally the spat of kidnapings was just too much for this until now adroit and up-and-coming new world to take.

“We had to do something.”

The chant of the impatient and vanquished.

No War Games on Safari

No War Games on Safari

by Arusha ♥ 4 Comments

Today Kenya invaded Somalia. The speed and size of the mission surprised me and I’m sure greatly pleased Leon Panetta. It’s hard to predict the outcome, but one thing strikes me as certain: this is not a time to take a Kenyan safari.

Most news sources reported the Kenyan military operation as a response to a spat of recent kidnapings, and I don’t doubt this has something to do with it. But it could also be a partial excuse for a more globally organized effort against what appears at the moment to be a successful rout of al-Shabaab from Somalia.

The size of the Kenyan excursion is secret, but there were enough eye witness reports on the ground to confirm a major operation. The BBC and AlJazeera (who has a reporter embedded with the Kenyan forces) reported “lines of Kenyan tanks and trucks” and multiple air strikes against an al-Shabaab base about 75 miles inside Somali territory.

The local Nairobi newspaper The Nation reported at least 32 trucks and tanks and London’s Guardian newspaper reported multiple aircraft bombing al-Shabaab positions to the east.

Africa Union forces led by Ugandan soldiers in the last several weeks have routed al-Shabaab from the Somali capital of Mogadishu. The BBC reporter Will Ross said these forces were now working in tandem with the Kenyans, moving south from the capital towards the conflict area where the Kenyans are, headed to what could be a pincer action to rid a large portion of Somali of al-Shabaab.

Last week the Obama administration sent 100 Green Berets into Uganda for deployment further west into central Africa. The statement of deployment claimed a mission totally separate from this conflict, but last night on CBS Panetta said the operation was integrated with fighting terror in Africa.

With Obama’s long list of al-Qaeda captures and kills recently, we know that the al-Qaeda/al-Shabaab power has been significantly diminished. Is this their last hurrah? Might the Ugandans, Kenyans and Americans actually be getting rid of these terrorist organizations?

I wish I felt the answer was a definitive yes, but frankly I think rather it’s a hopeful maybe. I’m no expert historian, but I just don’t see ridding any part of the world of anything, unless the people actually living there do it themselves.

And the Somalis haven’t. The parallels with Afghanistan and even Iraq are substantial. I don’t even believe that Iraq will be stable in ten years. And if I’m wrong and it is, then the question becomes was it worth the 20 years of war and investment we made to make it so?

That’s the greater, global question. But for those of us much closer to the situation, our lives and our businesses are immediately effected. Tourism must go on hold in Kenya, now, until we see what happens.

It’s been widely reported that al-Shabaab has now threatened Kenya. Last year al-Shabaab killed more than 70 people in two simultaneous bomb blasts in Kampala sports bars where patrons were watching the World Cup. They specifically threatened such before it happened because of Uganda’s lead role in the African Union forces in Mogadishu, and immediately then took responsibility. The parallel with Kenya can’t be starker.

I don’t think it will happen in Kenya. I think al-Shabaab is too much of a spent force and now too engaged outside Kenya. And Kenyan security is better than Uganda’s. So my visceral concern for my own Kenyan employees and friends is minimal.

But you don’t take a vacation where you have to keep looking over your shoulder. That’s not what a good safari is supposed to be. So while I’m not expecting trouble, the chance is more real than before, and equal if not better alternatives are available elsewhere, particularly in Tanzania.

Until the battles end and the dust settles, Kenya has become too troubled a place for tourists.

War Games in Africa

War Games in Africa

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

The Green Beret deployment last week in Uganda reflects an increasingly militaristic Obama policy that like all war endeavors ends up compromising other very important policies, like democracy. Is it working, and why now?

The Obama Administration went out of its way to emphasize that U.S. troops will not operate in Uganda but are simply using it as a staging area to catch the renegade militia leader, Joseph Kony.

Kony is probably in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Apparently there’s not the right airports or staging areas in the new South Sudan, and certainly not in The Congo or CAR to handle even a few (100) soldiers and their equipment. Possibly no easy political entry, either.

Nevertheless, many will think otherwise. Uganda, as I’ve written, is not the most stable place right now. And the bad guys are those in power who will obviously get a boost locally from the arrival of American troops, no matter where they’re supposed to go.

But Obama’s on a roll nailing al-Qaeda and its allies, and last week Uganda led the forces in Somalia which routed al-Shabaab from the capital, Mogadishu.

Kenya, this weekend, moved its troops across the border into Somalia, something I’m sure that America has been encouraging it to do for some time.

So as the saying goes, it’s payback time.

Al-Qaeda is of equal if not more interest to the U.S. than to many countries in East and Central Africa. Those countries’ biggest concern has always been the militias in the eastern Congo and South Sudan, including the old Interhamwe and the newer Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Like al-Qaeda, both those and other lesser militias are on the run. I see this as tit for tat. You (East Africa) help us wipe out al-Qaeda, and we’ll help you wipe out the LRA.

This isn’t just my analysis. The Enough Project and The Long War Journal, among a number of other NGOs heavily involved in the area, postulate the same.

War has an ugly history that way.

The LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) is a spent but still active guerilla force most famous for its abduction and enslavement of child soldiers. It wrecked havoc in northern Uganda/southern Sudan for nearly 15 years until it was forced out of the area almost ten years ago.

Oh, and by the way, there’s two interesting side stories to note as well.

The first I’m sure the Obama administration is sensitive to, but it’s remarkable so little has reached the world press:

The Obama Administration’s avowed explanation for entering deepest, dark Africa is to hunt down the LRA captain, Joseph Kony, just like they’ve been hunting down al-Qaeda leaders. Interestingly, Kony’s second-in-command was just ordered freed by a Uganda court after being apprehended and put on trial.

Thomas Kowyelo was apprehended by Ugandan military about a year ago. Two weeks ago, a Ugandan Appeals Court ordered his release upholding the agreements that offered amnesty signed in 2006 and 2007. (Kowyelo remains jailed pending a prosecution appeal to Uganda’s Supreme Court.)

Seven years ago a peace agreement was signed between what was left of the LRA and the Ugandan government. This agreement among many good things had a flawed section which awarded undefined “amnesty” to any LRA soldier.

Both Kony and Kowyelo have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. This technically mandates any country that recognizes the ICC (most of Africa including Uganda) to arrest them and send them to The Hague for trial.

But so far Uganda’s courts have given priority to the peace agreement signed with the LRA over international treaties. Perhaps Obama is worried Uganda will actually catch Kony before he does.

The other side story is a bit more amusing.

I wrote Friday about Michele Bachman’s faith advisor having been deeply involved in clandestine organizing of African militias to kill Kony. He was even jailed in Uganda for illicit arms dealing and other mercenary charges.

The only Republican candidate to criticize the deployment was, you guessed it, Michele Bachmann.