Operation Linda Nchi: The War That Should Not Have Been!

On 13th September 2011, a British couple, the Tebbutts, holidaying on a Kenyan island in the Indian Ocean are attacked by what was widely reported, without sufficient evidence, as Somali gunmen. David Tebbutt, is killed and his wife Judith is kidnapped. And, then, on 13th October, two Spanish aid workers with medical charity MSF are abducted near Dadaab refugee camp. Suddenly, there was panic! Kenya's chief foreign exchange earner was being threatened and Al-shabab were fast becoming the main suspects and, with Kenya never being involved in wars, few predicted what was to come next.

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Kenya's Somali Adventure turning into a nightmare

Kenya's first foreign war, which began triumphantly in October with embedded reporters sending breathless reports from the front, is coming off the rails. "The military operation is going nowhere," says Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst with the International Crisis Group. "I'm not sure it has really damaged the Shabaab."

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Kenya-Shabab War Goes Online.

Last October, Kenya did something it had never done before: it went to war. Its army was never known for victorious exploits in wars, something its next door neighbour, Ethiopia, can lay claim to, yet it dared to tread where the seasoned warrior so shamelessly fled from.The Kenyan army is well known for beign a class of priviledged people; getting paid really well, having access to duty-free goods, exempted from taxation and fed well enough to show their might during public holidays, at least in the eyes of ordinary Kenyans. They really had a few things to do, if anything and certainly aren't war-material, many Kenyans would agree.

Apparently, it is not just Kenyans who believe that!! Just some six days ago, Al-shabab jumped on the twitter bandwagon (tweeting as @HSMPress) to give their side of the confusing and tragic Somali story. As of the time of writing this article, the Shabab Twitter account had just over 3,000 followers. And true to their guerrilla spirit, the Shabab follow no one. Through Twitter, what has so far been an actual battle between Kenya and al-Shabab, seems to be turning into a war of words. Here are a few exchanges between Al-shabab and the KDF spokesman Major Emmaneul Chirchi (@MajorEChirchir) :

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Ethiopia in Somalia again

Compiled by: Abdikarim

It is a noose tightening on the Somalia’s Islamist rebels as second round of Ethiopia’s troops enters Somalia. It was December 2006 when thousands of Ethiopian troops invaded neighbouring Somalia and helped overturn a fundamentalist Islamic government.

Somalia became the region's sole concern for the U.S. government when in early 1990s. U.S. troops, sent to Somalia as part of a peacekeeping and humanitarian mission, withdrew in 1994 after a failed attempt to capture a clan leader led to the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers in 1993. The incident was later amplified and exaggerated in the book and movie Black Hawk Down.

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