Kenya’s former Foreign Affairs minister, Moses Wetang’ula, who is today an opposition senator has asked President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration to end the military incursion in Somalia and “bring the boys back home.”
The call echoes that of his CORD co-principals – ODM’s Raila Odinga and Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka— who have insisted that securing the borders and Kenya’s territorial integrity was more important, now that KDF’s mission to cripple al Shabaab has been achieved.
Mr Wetang’ula, who spoke to The Standard on Sunday, said the mission in Somalia was “accomplished” and the Kenyan military has to return home and “secure our borders”.
“The job was done. Our boys must come back home. You ‘linda nchi’ (secure the country) by protecting your territorial integrity, not by occupying someone else’s territory,” said the senator, in the Thursday evening interview at Parliament Buildings in Nairobi.
Wetang’ula, who is also the Senate Majority Leader, said the withdrawal of troops from Somalia was the official position of CORD.
“That is our position shared by my brother Raila and my brother Kalonzo,” he said.
The chairman of the Defence and Foreign Relations Committee in the National Assembly, Ndung’u Gethenji (Tetu) dismissed calls for “immediate withdrawal” of Kenya’s troops from Somalia.
Mr Gethenji said the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) had a 2018 deadline, and therefore has to support the security situation of the Mogadishu government to allow it to take over “the liberated areas.” “The military objective was the liberation of Southern Somalia from the border to the sea from Al Shabaab. It was a huge success. Before we went in, there were terror attacks on civilians and military installations, cross-border kidnappings of aid workers, tourists and government officers. Now, those things have been significantly reduced,” said Gethenji.
Wetang’ula’s statement is significant because long before the decision was made to storm Somalia, he, together with then Defence Minister Mohammed Yusuf Haji (now Garissa Senator), former military boss Gen (rtd) Jeremiah Kianga and ex-spy chief Michael Gichangi were engaged in talks with world powers and other African countries seeking support for the Somalia operation.
Experiences
In fact, the Bungoma senator and Haji escaped a car bomb that Al Shabaab had planted on their route during their visit to Mogadishu to get a brief about the operation. This was on October 18, 2011, four days after the “go” order was given in Nairobi.
The meeting was to clarify to the Somalia government that the incursion was not an attack on that country’s sovereignty but an operation to “crush” Al Shabaab, combat terrorism and end piracy on the Indian Ocean coast.
Wetang’ula took his message to the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa. Then he went to the African Union headquarters where he explained the same to the then chairperson of the AU secretariat Jean Ping. The same week he was in a special meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) for the council of ministers. What he wanted from IGAD was unequivocal support.
A month later, Wetang’ula led Haji to Kampala, Uganda and then to Bujumbura, Burundi explaining the Kenyan incursion. He spoke in Parliament, in foreign visits, and in different meetings in Kenya in favour of the operation.
In the twilight days of the grand coalition government, KDF officials interviewed Wetang’ula about his experiences, and he was convinced that the operation was legitimate. Then, Westgate had not been attacked, 148 students had not been slaughtered at Garissa University College, and an unknown number of soldiers had not been killed and some captured when Al Shabaab struck the KDF camp in El Adde.
All these events have tilted the public opinion on KDF’s continued presence in Somalia, and now the same people who backed the operation and endorsed it in the Cabinet meeting have changed their minds. They want the troops withdrawn.
All the three CORD principals were part of the classified Cabinet decision of October 5, 2011 which authorised Kenya’s military deployment to Somalia. Raila was the Prime Minister, Kalonzo the Vice President and Wetang’ula the Foreign Affairs minister. In that same meeting, there was the current President Uhuru Kenyatta, then the Deputy Prime Minister and minister for Finance.
That day, five years ago at State House, the Cabinet was meeting to approve a memo that essentially asked Kenya to send its military to pursue Al Shabaab. After the meeting, the stand-in secretary to the Cabinet, Sam Mwale, signed off a letter instructing the then Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Julius Karangi “to go.”“I wish to inform you that the Cabinet committee considered the contents of the memorandum and ... approved the Kenya Defence Forces to invoke and execute the right to self defence in pursuit of Al Shabaab into Somalia territory including 12NM (nautical miles) territorial waters,” read the letter.
It also declared all Al Shabaab targets within Somalia as “legitimate targets” of the KDF. Nine days later after that letter landed at Department of Defence, President Kibaki gave the order, Gen Karangi executed it, and on October 16, 2011, five years today, the Kenya Air Force bombed Al Shabaab targets in Beles Qooqani, Dhobley and Afmadow. The bombardment marked the beginning of “Operation Linda Nchi”.
It was billed to be a quick engagement: run Al Shabaab out of town, create a buffer zone, and return home. But instead, after the fall of Kismayu, which appears to have been the acme of the operation, Kenyan security forces have remained in Somalia.
The official military record about the operation emphasises that Raila, Kalonzo and Wetang’ula “also visited the Middle East to lobby support from the international community in containing the Al Shabaab militia (sic)”.
Now, five years after the first bombs dropped, three of the senior people who sat at that table in State House, Nairobi when the decision to go into Somalia was made, are telling, President Kenyatta, who is now the Commander-in-Chief of the KDF that the time had come to withdraw the troops.
But President Kenyatta insists, that until Al Shabaab is totally defeated, the Kenyan troops will not leave Somalia.
