Shabaab flee Kismayu for bushes

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Photo/FILE Kenyan troops celebrate after capturing Afmadow in May.  

By MURITHI MUTIGA mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted  Thursday, June 21  2012 at  23:30

IN SUMMARY

• Fall of Afmadow, a key logistical base and vital trading route, sent militants into a retreat

The fall of the key Al-Shabaab logistical base of Afmadow has sent the militant group into full-scale retreat ahead of an expected push by Kenyan and allied forces into the port city of Kismayu.

The remaining Al-Shabaab fighters have withdrawn to the town of Marka and the thick Coastal forests near Kismayu city, according to local officials.

Senior militant leaders, especially the foreign fighters who offered vital financial and logistical support to the group, are said to be heading further North to the area near Somaliland and Yemen.

The squeeze applied on Al-Shabaab by a combined force of Kenyan and Somali troops in the south has raised the question of whether the militant group will put up resistance in Kismayu at all, ravaged as they have been by recent battlefield losses, a trickle of defections and choked income lines resulting from the capture of key trading routes such as Afmadow.

The mood at the frontline is bullish. “It will not be difficult to capture Kismayu,” says Sheikh Ahmed Madobe, the leader of the Ras Kamboni Brigade militia, which has been fighting alongside the Kenyans.

“The most important thing to observe is that there has been no local resistance in the areas from which the Al-Shabaab have been driven out. It shows you the Al-Shabaab had lost the support of locals.

They are on the run, morale is low and it is only a matter of time before they are completely expelled from southern Somalia.”

Sheikh Madobe, one of the most powerful figures from the Mohamed Zuber sub-clan of the Ogaden, which occupies most of Gedo and Jubbaland near the Kenyan border, has emerged as a key Kenyan ally and powerbroker in the region of nearly 200,000 people, which has lived under Al-Shabaab for the last five years.

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The loss of Afmadow was important because the town is a key link point between a large number of towns in southern Somalia and is one of the most important trading routes for goods emerging from Kismayu, one of the remaining main sources of income for the militants.

Kenyan military officers have kept their cards close to their chests over when an assault on Kismayu might happen although both the Chief of Defence Forces Gen Julius Karangi and Prime Minister Raila Odinga have said the port city will fall by August.

Lt-Col Jeff Nyaga, the head of the forces at the forward operating base in Afmadow, said Kenya would continue to move at a pace that ensures they consolidate all the gains made and pacify fully the towns from which Al-Shabaab have been routed.

“Kismayu is important and we will move there. But the operation will be intelligence-driven. First, we have to make sure we have eliminated any threat from Al-Shabaab in the areas we have liberated.

When we are satisfied, then we will move forward. We are happy with what we have done so far. We have shown that we are capable of achieving our objectives with a small, lean force, with minimal casualties and without draining the exchequer,” Lt-Col Nyaga said.

Al-Shabaab are moving fast to stem a wave of defections that Somalia’s government spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman told AP had reached 500 fighters in under two weeks.

In an audio message on Al-Shabaab’s Radio Andalus released on Monday, its leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu al-Zubair, called on all Somali tribes to unite and fight what he termed the “ the foreign aggressors and their Somali helpers”.

That message is getting a forlorn response in areas such as Afmadow, where residents are picking the pieces after a long spell under Al-Shabaab’s authoritarian control.