Nairobi, Kenya
October 18, 2011
During the Second World War, Allied Forces composed of the present NATO members including USSR combined forces to invade Germany, defeated Hitler’s military might and occupied it for over 50 years. It was 50 years that the free world needed to stabilize war torn Europe and more so, permanently subdue belligerent Germany‘s policy of expansionism. Without taking this drastic action, the whole of Europe if not the whole world would have remained a theatre of war for generations.
The fact that Adolf Hitler had found allies in Italy and Japan meant that the war would have escalated beyond control with devastating consequences for the entire Free World considering that Hitler’s ideology of a superior race had claimed the lives of more than six million Jews whose only crime was that they were Jews. That war was so serious that it forced the Americans to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima to permanently subdue the Japanese. This was after the Japanese bombed America’s Pearl Harbour in 1941.
In the early 1990s, we saw the United Nations sanctioning the invasion of Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait, a sovereign state and a bona fide member of the United Nations Organization. The reason the Allied Forces invaded Iraq was to make a statement that weaker nations have an equal right to enjoy their freedoms and rights under the UN Charter. It proved that rogue nations would not be allowed to intimidate, bully and harass smaller and weaker ones at will.
When in 2002 Iraq was invaded for the second time in a decade by USA led Allied Forces, it was believed that Iraq and Afghanistan supported Al Qaida terrorists that had bombed American Embassies in East Africa and Yemen and three years later hit the Americans where it hurt most- the Twin Towers in the heart of New York. And as I write this article, thousands of Allied troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan battling terrorist insurgents in those two countries.
In the case of Hitler’s Germany, the whole world was threatened by Hitler’s policy of conquest and occupation. The same can be said of Iraq when it violated Kuwait territory.
In the Kenyan situation, the Al Shabaabs and their Al Qaida friends have in the past 13 years made Kenya a playground where they have bombed us at will without us really raising a finger due to our policy of non-aggression even if the same neighbours have harboured terrorists that have attacked and killed our people.
Memories of the Norfolk Bomb attack on the eve of Christmas in 1980, the America Embassy attack in 1998 and the subsequent Kikambala bombing in Mombasa are still very fresh in our minds. In those attacks, innocent people died while others were maimed for life.
Now that these thugs have chosen to make Kenya their playground, the only logical thing is for Kenya to take the war to them in their hideouts in the shrubs and deserts of Somalia just as the world took the war to Hitler in his territory and the Allied Forces took the war to the Al Qaidas in their hideouts in the mountains and valleys of Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Now that Kenyan soldiers have entered Somali territory, it is incumbent upon the rest of the East African states to unleash their military forces to join Kenyans in the campaign to wipe out these miscreants from our region.
Once they are driven into the sea, let our Allied Forces remain in Somalia for as long as it takes until all the thugs residing in Somalia are permanently neutralized. I am saying this because inside Somalia, there are so many good Somalis who equally hate Al Shabaabs and would long to see peace return to their country the way Somalilanders are enjoying their democracy. It is these good Somalis that we must wage the war of liberation on their behalf so that they can reclaim their country and stop exporting refugees in large numbers. If Somaliland can be at peace and democratic, there is nothing intrinsically different that makes Somalis in Somalia unable to embrace peace and democracy like normal civilized human beings.
War is a very costly affair. It has brought down America’s big economy to its knees. However, the fact that it is costly and painful did not stop the Americans from declaring war on Al Qaidas. Yes, sometimes it is better to die in freedom than to live under fear, terror and subjugation.
Even as Kenyan forces invaded Somalia to flash out Al Shabaabs, the same terrorists have been heard threatening to hit Nairobi. Let them know that Kenyans are waiting for them. No amount of threats and intimidations will stop our forces from taking this campaign to its logical conclusion. They must know that the decision to take the war to them was not knee-jack. We weighed all our options and came to the conclusion that we really had no choice in the matter but to wipe them out of the Horn of Africa’s region.
This is the time that Kenya must know who her real friends are in her hour of need. Those AU heads of State that were just too enthusiastic to support Kenya against the ICC must now stand up and be counted. Those international representatives that trooped to Kenya to quell civil riots in the streets of Nairobi and elsewhere in the country following the 2007 elections must now come back with troops and hardware in support for Kenya’s campaign against international terrorism.
Where is the East African Community with its joint military pacts and maneuvers? Kenya needs you now, not tomorrow.
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