Most observers would agree that the War on Terror that George W Bush declared some ten years ago did not go as well as might have been hoped. The costs, in terms of both human lives and resources, have been enormous, and the battles have dragged on far longer than expected. Now Kenya, after suffering the media humiliation associated with Westerners being kidnapped from Kenya by al Shabaab terrorists, has started its own war on terror, sending its army across the border into Somalia to pursue the aggressors.
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Somalia has been a sinkhole for foreign funds for the past 20 years, and the conflict has been so great that more than half of the residents of Somalia other than Somalilanders have either been killed or had to flee from their homes. The US army was humiliated there in the 1990s, and Uganda has suffered al Shabaab terrorist attacks in retaliation for its role in sending peacekeepers into the country.
So how is the Kenyan operation likely to pan out? It is of course impossible to predict the future, but given the fact that al Shabaab has already recruited numerous Kenyan operatives, the risk of terrorist reprisal attacks seems to be quite high. Given that numerous countries have tried to intervene in Somalia over the past 20 years without success, the prospects for the current Kenyan intervention cannot be too promising.