MARK COLVIN: Somalia’s Al Shabaab militants are on the run. The key southern port of Kismayo has fallen to Pan-African forces. The strategy for the offensive was laid last year. It led to a deliberate slow creep across the country – first by Kenyan forces, but later backed by Somali and African Union soldiers.
When Kenyan soldiers crossed the border in October last year, it was explained as a retaliatory action against the abduction of a couple of tourists and aid workers the month before. But as Africa correspondent Ginny Stein reports, Kenya’s decision to get involved was already well planned.
GINNY STEIN: While Kenya’s defence force spokesman may have spoken too early about having seized the southern city of Kismayo, African forces definitely have the port. Control of the city may take longer, but Al Shabaab’s economic lifeline has now been slashed.
The second-largest port in the country, for half a decade they were able to tax all goods coming in and out, but no more. Their office is shut, the world informed of their withdrawal in a tweet which declared, ‘Last night, after more than five years, the Islamic administration in Kismayo closed its doors.’
Operation Sledge Hammer, the code name for the secret night attack saw Kenyan troops set foot in Kismayo, not from land, but by sea. It’s been labelled the first-ever amphibious landing by an African contingent, and Kenya has been revelling in its success.
A relatively small force of 5,000 soldiers seized its objective with far fewer casualties than any other military might that has entered the battlefields of Somalia before.
When American forces came ashore in 1992 under the glare of lights of a waiting large international media presence it was with five times the number of troops. They took fire on all sides; the mission ultimately ending in disaster and tragedy, and forcing a hasty retreat.
And while Kenyan forces have admitted to civilian casualties, the numbers have been few compared to scorched-earth invasions of the past. It appears where Kenya got it right is to have engaged clan leaders and communities before they even crossed the border, and continued to do so as they moved across the country.
While they’ve had the support of clan leaders and villagers up until now, Kismayo is a different story. For the past five years, Al Shabaab controlled the city by fear; they seized it, not from one clan leader, but many. As the local sayings goes: ‘He who controls Kismayo controls southern Somalia’.
No other city in Somalia has ever been as hotly contested and haggled over as Kismayo. And it has surely not escaped Kenya, Somalia or anyone else interested in oil: that this is where it is most likely to be found.
Tony Burns is an Australian aid worker who has spent the past 15 years working in Somalia with a local aid organisation. He says the battle for Kismayo is significant, but so is what comes next.
TONY BURNS: Symbolically it’s very significant. The reality is Shabaab is already a beaten force; most of their key management money and fighters have gone to North Africa and into the Middle East; this is just an end game and the African Union is rolling it up.
GINNY STEIN: Australia funds AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia). It sees it as the only force, the only way to provide protection in Somalia. Is this is that a logical thing to do?
TONY BURNS: It’s not a logical thing to do. While the African Union troops has provided a professionalism that isn’t in Somalia they have to leave at some point, and in their place there needs to be a genuine Somali police force and a genuine Somali military, and there has been virtually no money put into those structures, so until that happens there will be a void.
GINNY STEIN: Kismayo has changed hands, according to one estimate, 12 times since 1991. Who controls it now, and for how long, remains the ultimate question.
This is Ginny Stein reporting from Mogadishu for PM.
Source Abc.Net