How I silenced the ghosts of Somalia war

Just as one never forgets their first love, a soldier never forgets their first kill in combat. So it was for Colonel (Rtd) Joseph Owuoth of the Kenya Defence Forces.

His very first elimination of the enemy was of an Al-Shabab terrorist in Somalia, and it left him “disturbed”.

A sniper, Owuoth recollects how one night, from his own idea, he was a solitary figure stationed well outside the defences (1km) at an Amisom camp in Somalia, to keep watch.

He was to stay in that position two days, three nights - a total of 60 hours.

In his hands he had a sniper rifle, fitted with a silencer, and a maximum range of 1,200 metres.

For food to last the 60 hours he had five litres of bottled water, fortified with glucose, in camel pack with a pipe leading to his mouth for ease of drinking.

He also had an additional four bottles, a litre each, in his waist pouches.

“With this (water), I knew I was capable of staying in this location and survive up to three weeks.”

The terrorists, seven in number, finally came at midnight, armed with mortars and other deadly weapons. Owuoth, through his weapon’s night scope, studied the terrorists as they prepared to lob bombs to the Amisomposition.

It was from that position that he gunned them down. He saw an injured terrorist shoot himself instead of risking capture.

In his new book Somalia: Voices from the Front, Colonel (Rtd) Joseph Owuoth presents a remarkable and candid account of the war against Al-Shabaab terrorists in their backyard, Somalia.

It was the job of the KDF to rid Somalia of the militants. Fighting to restore peace came with at great cost to Kenyan troops, including to the battle-hardened Owuoth, a soldier and counseling psychologist who says he’s deeply spiritual.

On coming back, the colonel was left deflated and it took professional counselling and a traditional cleansing ritual at his rural home, for restoration.

Owuoth had in October 2011 left Embakasi air base in Nairobi for Somalia. As a formation commander in Amisom, he had been allocated two choppers to aid his movement to the horn of Africa country. He requested his pilot to overfly Dadaab refugee camp, home to about 400,000 refugees who had fled the war ravaged nation.

From the sky looking below, Owuoth committed to play his part in restoring peace in their country.

It is the scourge of the Somalis that different clans cannot live peacefully together even when sharing the same tormenting experiences as refugees. 

“Even (in Dadaab) every major clan had settled in a different location (of camp) with the unwritten code for the other clans to keep off,” he writes.

When Owuoth and the troops arrived in Somalia they found Al-Shabaab ruled vast parts and were in charge of important services, including collection of taxes from hapless communities.

They liberated many towns including Dhobley, Beles-qoqani, Tabda, and Afmadow. This came at great cost.

And when his tour of duty ended the commander handed the reins to his replacement and flew back to Kenya.

Following demobilization, he retreated to his Nakuru home but found it hard to cope now that he was away from the military. He confesses he suffered anger, guilt and shame. He resorted to drinking. He got angry.

“Anger at myself, anger at Somalia, anger at Al Shabaab, anger at the military, anger at life, anger at God.”

“And then the nightmares began and persisted and the daily dose of alcohol seemed incapable of keeping them away from me.”

He says to revive his spirits, he frequented wines and spirits joints. He became irritable.

That came to a head when a civilian asked him if he ever killed anybody in Somalia. “What answer did he expect? If I said yes would it make me be labeled as a cold blooded killer? If I answered in the negative, would I be fair to my fellow soldiers who killed as part of their sworn duties?”

Owuoth hit the man. The man’s friends attacked him and he found himself in a hospital ward.

From the hospital he went back to the military, and he had to undergo psychological intervention.

Yet it took much more than that for him to recover fully. His family back home said he must undergo a traditional cleansing ceremony.

“Specifically, a traditional baptism of some sort to make society to accept me back in its own way, it was a harrowing ordeal.”

He had to eat humble pie in the traditional ritual, in which he at some point had to strip naked, which Owuoth humorously describes in the book.

The horror of a tough soldier being made to strip made the colonel involuntarily gasp.

Owuoth says he went into a sleep of the dead and when he woke up, he was a changed man.

“The ghosts of Somalia had finally been silenced.”

In retirement, he runs a security services company.