Kenyan President Tells Somalia to Put its House in Order
Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday told Somalia to “put their house in order.”
This call, which has been seen as a sign of frustration over the instability in the neighbouring country, comes a few weeks after a group of terrorists from Al-Shabaab – a Somali militant group – attacked a Nairobi mall killing 67 people. Al-Shabaab on Tuesday reiterated its warnings of more attacks if Kenyan troops do not pull out of Somalia.
President Kenyatta has however vowed that the country’s troops will stay put saying that he will not be bullied into withdrawing the soldiers who are part of the African Union peace keeping force.
“If their desire is for Kenya to pull out from Somalia, my friends all they need to do is what they should have done 20 years ago, which is to put their house in order and Kenya will come back to Kenya,” he said.
“Let me remind them that it is they who, having had enough of killing themselves in their own country, decided to come and interfere in Kenya,” Kenyatta said. “We did not go there. They came here. I want to be categorically clear: We will stay there until they bring order in their nation,” he added.
The Somali government did not immediately react to this but Somalia’s ambassador to Kenya had said on Friday that his country was collaborating with Kenya following the mall attack.
The Al-Qaeda linked, Al-Shabaab militia responded in a statement that Kenya’s reluctance to withdraw from Somalia showed that they hadn’t learnt “any valuable lessons” from the recent attack.
“Harakat Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahideen is fully determined to intensify attacks inside Kenya until the last KDF boots exit Somali soil,” the militants’s said.
“If Kenya’s political leaders are still persistent in their quest to occupy our Muslim lands and carry out heinous atrocities against our people, then let them know that Kenyans will never find peace and stability in their country.”
The militant group once controlled most of Somalia including the capital of Mogadishu before it was dislodged by AU forces. The country however remains a training ground for terrorists because the cash-strapped Somali government has little control beyond the capital of Mogadishu.
Kenya deployed its troops into Somalia in 2011 after a series of kidnappings of tourists and aid agency workers on Kenyan soil. Somali piracy had also increased the cost of transporting goods to and from Kenya.