Independent analysts in the United States tend to accept the Obama administration’s claim that it did not push Kenya into launching military action in southern Somalia.

But some of those same analysts say it is likely that the US is now providing Kenyan forces with intelligence assistance in hopes of inflicting a fatal blow on their mutual enemy: the Al Shabaab insurgency.

American officials speaking on condition of remaining anonymous told reporters late last week that the US was not notified in advance of Kenya’s move into Somalia.

The State Department and Pentagon have not publicly criticised the operation, however, and are refusing to comment on whether the US is now giving Kenya reconnaissance information on Al Shabaab’s tactical response.

However, according to one of the documents released by the whistleblower website, Wikileaks, dated 2009, US has been helping Kenya secure its borders.

“We are providing assistance to Kenya’s army to help them better react to major security incidents along the porous Kenya-Somali border and we are initiating a program to help the Administration Police and Wildlife Service to provide the first line of security along the border according to their mandate,” former US ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger was quoted as saying.

The document further stated that US was also providing support to the Navy and the Maritime Police Unit to better police Kenya’s territorial waters.

Kenya military spokesperson Emmanuel Chirchir, denied reports that America was offering Kenya logistical support, saying the country had the capacity to fight the militants.

“Reports that America is giving us logistical support are erroneous. We only exchange intelligence information with America, and we have been doing it for long,” said Major Chirchir.

The United Nations has also been silent on Kenya’s move into Somalia. A UN spokesman says Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has “nothing to say” on this subject.

An expert on the Horn who works in one branch of the US government told the EastAfrican that the US is almost certainly supplying the Kenyan military with intelligence gathered from American drones flying in southern Somalia.

But this analyst and others suggest that the US may simultaneously fear that Kenya’s action will backfire and leave the country even more vulnerable to Al Shabaab attacks. Al Shabaab may be weakened, they say, but it is not defeated and it does retain the ability to launch punishing operations against Kenyan civilians as well as soldiers.

Bronwyn Bruton, a Somalia expert at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, points out that US diplomats had expressed opposition to Kenya’s plan to establish a buffer zone in a part of Somalia that the Kenyans refer to as Jubaland. American resistance to that scheme is detailed in secret diplomatic cables published recently by WikiLeaks.
Peter Pham, another Africa specialist at the same think tank, says he doubts the US “greenlighted” Kenya’s incursion. The Obama administration has been grappling with a full array of international crises, Pham notes, and probably saw little to be gained — and potentially much to be lost — by opening another front in the battle against an already weakened Shabaab.

Other Somalia watchers with military experience point out, however, that Kenya’s operation must have been in the planning stages for at least a few months. And that makes it difficult for these analysts to accept the Americans’ claims that they were blindsided by such a radical departure from Kenya’s generally cautious policies in the Horn.

The US government expert who did not want to be identified emphasises that “Kenya is perfectly capable of acting on its own.”

Nairobi has a history of taking “unadvertised actions” regarding Somalia that have not always been congruent with US positions, this expert notes. In addition to the Jubaland initiative, he points to Kenya’s efforts to train Somalis living in the Dadaab refugee complex and in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood to function as a militia on the Somalia side of the border.

That plan did not come to fruition due to opposition on the part of the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu. But if it had, the US government official speculates, “you might not be seeing the kidnappings and infiltrations that have been occurring.”

In a sense, adds John Norris, a Somalia commentator at the non-governmental Centre for American Progress, it does not matter to public opinion in East Africa whether the US actually did or did not collude with Kenya in the run-up to the foray into Somalia.

Many East Africans will assume that the US must have instigated Kenya’s direct military action against Al Shabaab, Norris suggests.

Those making such an assumption, he says, will recall the “opaque and dishonest” claims by the US that it did not push Ethiopia to invade Somalia in 2006.

The unsuccessful outcome of that operation may presage what will befall Kenya, some of the American analysts warn.

“It will be a big mistake” if Kenya does try to make good on its threat to attack the Al Shabaab stronghold in Kismayo, Bruton says.

She argues that with only 2,000 troops on the ground inside Somalia, Kenya lacks the capacity to take and hold Kismayo. And even if it were able to push Al Shabaab out of that town, the Kenyan military would likely soon be caught up in the same enervating guerrilla warfare that forced the Ethiopians to retreat from Somalia in 2009 and that also caused the Americans to pull out in 1993, Bruton adds.
“Somalis may not like Al Shabaab,” Pham observes, “but they also do not like foreigners coming into their country.” In addition, he and other analysts add, Al Shabaab does have the capacity to launch retaliatory terror strikes in Nairobi.
For those reasons, Pham suggests, Kenya is probably not serious about fighting its way into Kismayo. Those pronouncements are “bombast intended for public consumption,” Pham says.

He notes that with national elections approaching, Kenyan politicians of all parties have a shared interest in stoking patriotic sentiments and in persuading the electorate that they are willing to take strong action to defend the country.

The US government official offers a similar view. It’s likely, he says, that Kenya will end its operation inside Somalia within the next couple of weeks, especially if it is able to push Al Shabaab away from the border and to bolster local Somali militias friendly to Kenya.
All the analysts agree that Kenya’s military response is understandable and justifiable.

“Kenya absolutely has a legitimate right to defend itself” from the kidnappings and incursions carried out by Somalis who may or may not be directly linked to Al Shabaab, said Pham.

Additional reporting by Jeff Otieno