Paul Goldsmith And Abdi Umar
29 June 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
By being neutral and keeping out of the fray Kenyan could attract all the warlords and sundry and host them in their inconclusive talks without itself becoming a factor in the talks.
True, the Harakat al Shabaab extremists are scary and the situation is pregnant with unknown unknowns. The military option, in this instance, is lose-lose, and the prospects of war is generating considerable angst within Kenya's Somali community.
For a number of weeks now, a creeping campaign demonising Somalis living in Kenya, caring little for facts, threatens to negate several decades of progress.
After four decades of being treated as a fifth column, Kenyan Somalis have a right to be afraid--very afraid, and have tried to keep under the radar as they prayed that the ill wind would blow itself out.
Curiously, like the TFG president, the alley cat has got the tongues of North Eastern Province MPs and civil society, despite their obvious interest in these affairs. It took Yusuf Haji, the Kenyan Defence Minister, to set the narrative straight.
In his interview with Harun Maruf of the VoA on June 24, he said Kenya had its own large Muslim population and did not feel threatened by the rise or non-rise of a Muslim state on its borders; for while it would defend its own territory, it had no interest in deciding regimes for its neighbours, but was willing to live and let live.
Hassan Aweis Dahir responded in a similar tone.
It is Kenya's interest to continue the demilitarisation of its northern region and refuse to be drawn into fighting for one group or another. Kenya's strength is soft power: the Foreign Minister should mobilise the country's Muslim ulama to sort out the problem with Quranic Aya and Hadith.
Reported by Paul Goldsmith and Abdi Umar. Paul Goldsmith is a researcher based in Meru, while Abdi Umar is a consultant on pastoralist issues in the Horn of Africa
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