Does Kenya really interfere in Somalia's affairs?

Does Kenya interfere with Somalia affairs? Are there countries out there that do not want Somalia to have a stable and fully functioning government? If there are, is Kenya one of them? These are questions that I always ask myself whenever I meet some highly educated Somali who thinks they very well know what ails Somalia. To this lot, the civil strife in Somalia is solely as a result of the wicked machinations of external forces, mostly Somalia’s neighbouring countries. To them, Ethiopia is the devil incarnate and Kenya trailing not so far behind.

The only reason they mostly pick on these two countries is the fact that they both have a sizable indigenous Somali population. With the issue boiling down to Somali Irredentism and the how it causes both Ethiopia and Kenya to shudder at the very thought of having a powerful neighbour in the name of Somalia. So, in their opinion, the most prudent thing for these states to do is to ensure that peace never prevails in Somalia and whatever government is installed remains largely powerless and ineffective.

However, as regards the issue of Somalia’s neighbours, their analysis in most cases, of the debacle that is Somalia, is flawed. They don’t seem to get the picture correctly. One thing that anybody with an objective mind needs to understand is that Somalia between 1993 and 2006 has had no foreign forces. This was the period immediately after the infamous ‘Black Hawk down’ but before the Ethiopian invasion. Thus, the fact that Ethiopia, acting as a proxy for the American ‘war on terror’, did get involved in internal Somalia affairs by toppling the much affable Islamic Courts Union (ICU) does not justify lumping Kenya in the same group as with Ethiopia.

Granted the ICU was arguably one of the best efforts at reinstituting the Somali State. The only other initiative that came close was the Djibouti one that installed Abdiqassim Salad as the president. These were the only efforts by Somalis themselves, if you consider Djibouti as a Somali nation. However, in both instances there were sizable opposition forces present within the country, whose only objective was to derail these good works and selfishly seize power for themselves.

Though America was involved, during the short-lived reign of the ICU by funding some of the warlords opposing the Islamists, the blame should thus be apportioned where it rightly belongs; these mercenaries for hire. If within Somalia there exists elements that care not about the welfare of the masses but concerned only with their pockets, and how to enrich the same, then no other country deserves blame in this case. Any right thinking Somali should therefore, with whatever possible, fight these lowly turncoats.

Even in the case where there is evidence that shows that Somalia’s neighbours are hell-bent in denying the good people of Somalia their deserved right then the Somalis themselves should come up with strategies to defeat these scheming. However, the Somalis never ever see their own shortcomings and are always quick to judge others. Somalia’s Achilles’ heel – clanism – is rarely mentioned as another contriving factor that has denied Somalia the much needed stable and effective government.

Therefore, whereas the motives behind Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia is understandable; a sizable local population that wishes to secede from the same either as an independent state or join Somalia, Kenya does not share the same problem. On the other hand, Kenya, unlike Ethiopia, has never gone to war with Somalia. Furthermore, almost all the residents of North-eastern Province of Kenya are happy with their current status of being Kenyan nationals. They have no qualms with being Kenyans unlike their cousins in Ogadenia or Somali Galbeed. Another important distinction is the fact that the Transitional Federal Government formed in Kenya preceded the ICU’s rose to prominence. Therefore, the intent here matters; whereas Ethiopia went to topple the ICU, presumably because of her fears, Kenya’s only intention then was to end the vacuum created by the expiration of the mandate of the Transitional National Government. Lastly, Kenya has never sent any troops to Somalia either to topple or support an existing government.

As an ethnic Somali and a Kenyan I think what the Somalis should do to is stop the blame game and see to it that the present government of Sheikh Shariff is supported. I do not believe that Kenya, and the West as well, would be comfortable with an Al Shabaab government in Somalia; they would rather have him (Shariff) forever there than accept the al Shabaab miscreants as an alternative. How, for example, will Kenya gain from such an eventuality when it is not lost to her what Al Shabaab did in Uganda recently? Somalis should tackle their clanism and fight the traitors within them while abandoning these conspiratorial narratives. In their pursuit of a Utopian State Somalis should be contented with whatever little they have and however imperfect it is. Thus propping the current regime should be an essential obligation as they strive to make Somalia better and more governable.