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| Africa Horn |
| Kenyan President Says Troops Will Stay in Somalia |
| 2015-06-18 |
| [AnNahar] Kenya's president vowed Wednesday to keep troops in Somalia to fight Islamist Shabaab rebels, apparently dismissing suggestions the country may be drawing up an exit strategy in order to focus on attacks on its own soil. Kenyan troops crossed into Somalia in 2011 to fight the Al-Qaeda-affiliated myrmidons, and later joined the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... force, AMISOM, which is supporting Somalia's internationally-backed government. The Shabaab have since stepped up their operations in Kenya, dealing a blow to plans for the troops to serve as a buffer and protect the long, mostly non-existent border. President Uhuru Kenyatta, who met with other leaders contributing troops to AMISOM -- including Burundi, Djibouti, Æthiopia and Uganda -- at an AU summit in South Africa last week, said Kenya's role was clear. He insisted Kenya "will continue with the mission to support the stabilization of the Horn of Africa country," a statement from the presidency said. "We are a nation that appreciates and recognizes the rights of every individual and their freedom of worship. We will not allow any person to force on us a way of life that is not ours," he was quoted as saying during a visit to soldiers maimed in a recent attack. The chairman of the Kenyan Senate's National Security and Foreign Relations Committee, Yusuf Hajji, signaled earlier this month that an exit strategy was no longer taboo and that Kenya wanted to create "a strategy on how to fight insecurity in Kenya". The comments prompted widespread speculation about whether Kenya could be laying the ground for a pull-out. Shabaab units -- hunted by African Union troops and U.S. drones inside Somalia -- have outflanked the Kenyan contingent inside Somalia to mount a string of gruesome cross-border raids. The upsurge in attacks and the emergence of Kenya-based Shabaab cells is now Kenya's number-one security headache. Kenyan defense chief, General Samson Mwathethe, said the military would spare no efforts to drive the Lions of Islam out of the country. "We will follow them in the bush, we will follow them at sea and we will follow them everywhere they go until we make sure they are out of our borders," Mwathethe said. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |