Some months ago, I began setting up an investigation into the US role in East Africa and the Horn of Africa, in particular the impact of the large US military base in Djibouti. Last week, I finally received the necessary permissions and a small BBC World Update team travelled to Djibouti to transmit live radio programmes and report for BBC World TV and BBC Online.

Our visit was timely. The death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, alleged to be a senior Al Qaeda and insurgent leader in the region, added to the killing of Osama bin Laden in April and some recent military successes by African Union troops in Mogadishu have created a new set of circumstances. Al Shabaab is on the back foot. That seems clear from the murder of the Transitional Government’s interior minister last week by a young relative groomed to fool his security so she could meet him wearing a suicide vest under her clothes. Al Shabaab has used desperate tactics like that in the past when it was losing ground.

So my investigation became more focused. I could ask not only “what is America doing in East Africa and the Horn of Africa?” but also focus on how the US might respond to the changed situation in Somalia. I have learned on- and off-the-record that political and military leaders in Kenya and the neighbouring countries want the US to put much more effort into its regional policy now.

My investigation showed me that such an increased effort is most unlikely, at least to a scale that might consolidate change and bring about a lasting improvement in Somalia.

The killing of Fazul, accused of organising the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, should at least bring some comfort to those who lost loved ones or whose health was broken when the bombs hit. I reported from Nairobi in 1998, watching the desperate struggle of the volunteers to free the victims by hand from under the concrete slabs before the international rescue effort commenced. Many survivors were blinded by shards of glass sent flying in the blast. I guess few in Kenya will mourn Fazul’s passing from the East African scene.

His death could have a wider significance. America identified him as the leader of al Shabaab’s fighters. As Kenyan Brig. General Henry Onyango told me this week, a lot more military effort now might consolidate the gains against Al Shabaab. The brigadier general is one of the commanders of the nascent EASTBRIG East Africa Standby Force being developed here in Nairobi. “The Americans could do much better,” he told me. “More heavy airlift, more intelligence, more logistical support is needed.”

But for reasons linked to American domestic politics and its overstretched military resources, the US is unlikely to step up its direct involvement in Somalia. Instead, as I observed last week in Djibouti, the American Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) is using what it calls an “indirect 3D” approach to deal with the security crises in the region, of which Somalia is the worst.

“Indirect” means US soldiers using their skills and equipment to help ease social, health and infrastructure problems in the Horn of Africa and East Africa region rather than fighting. And “3D?” That’s Defence, Diplomacy and Development (the Pentagon, State Department and USaid) working together to improve the humanitarian and human rights situation, hoping to deny militants recruits amongst the region’s poor.

I travelled to the village of Guistir in the far south of Djibouti, right on the border with Somalia and Ethiopia. US soldiers have built a clinic for the nomads and refugees who live in one of the most inhospitable places in Africa. Village chief Adil Ali Adde told me there had been no significant rainfall there for three years. Many of his people have no animals left. The clinic and Western food aid keeps them alive. “So what do you think of Americans?” I asked. “We celebrate the American army, we welcome them!” he said. A devout, Muslim, ethnic Somali community leader with nothing but praise for Americans —just what the Pentagon hoped for!

But is that enough? The Roman Catholic Bishop of Djibouti, Giorgio Bertin, who has been trying to mediate in Somalia for 30 years, says it’s not. “It’s not the right policy. It is treating the symptoms but not the disease. I am not against the use of force when necessary,” he says.

There are occasional, undeclared US special forces operations to eliminate specific targets – Fazul Abdullah’s predecessor, Salih Ali Saleh Nabhan, is thought to have been killed that way. Drones based in the region — I glimpsed one in Djibouti - are providing intelligence on Al Shabaab. But what the late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke described as America’s ‘Vietmalia’ syndrome — dark memories of Vietnam in the 1960s and Somalia 1993 – makes any escalation of direct US involvement politically impossible.

Instead, the US will go on training local armies to provide the AU AMISOM force in Somalia and will try to ease unrest in those troop contributing countries so their armies can commit to that deployment.

The new commander of the Djibouti Base, Rear Admiral Michael Franken, proudly related the story of the CJTF mission to the pastoralists of the Karamoja region in north-eastern Uganda. The number of cows a man has is the measure of his worth, the Admiral told me. Cattle rustling was the traditional way of building up your herd and AK47 semi-automatic rifles became the weapon of choice. Violence was escalating. Uganda’s army moved in.

“We sent in a veterinary team to teach them how to breed better cows and keep them healthier. They no longer needed to steal to have a big herd. The Ugandan army could pull out, conflict was averted.”
A nice story, and symbolic of the limits to America’s military ambitions now.

So Kenya’s leaders, along with those from other capitals in East Africa, will have to decide whether they are willing to commit much greater military and political resources, to try to bring responsible government and peace to Somalia at this opportune moment. If they do, they will get plenty of support from America – but from the sidelines.

(Dan Damon is presenter of the BBC World Service programme World Update, on air in Nairobi Monday to Friday at 1200 Noon. Dan has just arrived in Nairobi after spending a week in Djibouti travelling with the US forces based there.)