Kenya sent extra troops to the Somali frontier, stepped up security checks and said on Wednesday it saw no reason for Somalis to flee, underlining fears about Somali Islamic militants slipping across the border after losing a power struggle.
Kenya stopped short of closing the 675km border after troops of Somalia’s transitional government and Ethiopian forces routed Islamic militiamen who had controlled most of southern Somalia.
Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement that neighbouring Kenya had a humanitarian obligation to take in civilians at risk.
”Anyone coming to the border has to be screened properly,” Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Raphael Tuju, told journalists in Kenya. ”There’s no reason at all to allow an influx of people unless there are women and children and it’s really, really obvious that they are in danger in their own country. At this particular time, we don’t see that danger.”
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has said he believes major fighting is over. But fighting in recent weeks has displaced hundreds, many of whom have headed toward Kenya, and the Islamic movement has declared itself unbowed. In the southern town of Jilib, a lone gunman shouting ”God is great” killed three Ethiopians, including a commanding officer, before another Ethiopian soldier killed him, witnesses said on Wednesday.
Government forces have captured two more southern towns from Islamic militants, and were moving to take a third, Defence Minister Colonel Barre ”Hirale” Aden Shire said in Kismayo. ”We are chasing Islamic courts militias, and we will catch them,” he said.
Three al-Qaeda suspects in the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in East Africa are believed to be leaders of the Somali Islamic movement. Islamic movement leaders deny having any links to al-Qaeda.
Peace plan
In Brussels on Wednesday, the European Union and Norway called on the government and Islamic militants to hold talks to forge a lasting peace plan that could be backed by African-led peacekeepers.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni planned to fly on Thursday to Ethiopia to meet Prime Minister Meles Zenawi about a peacekeeping mission. Uganda has said it has a 1 000-troop battalion ready to deploy in a few days. Nigeria also has promised troops.
Meles has said his forces cannot afford to stay for long.
Europe supports having African peacekeepers in Somalia. On Wednesday, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in Belgium that European nations are not keen to send soldiers to the country.
A UN peacekeeping force including American troops met disaster in Somalia in 1992, when fighters loyal to a clan leader shot down a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and battled US troops, killing 18.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki told his Somali counterpart on Tuesday that his country had strengthened patrols along the border, a statement from the presidential press service said. Even before the recent upsurge in fighting in Somalia, a US counterterrorism task force had been working with Kenyan and other nation’s forces to strengthen border control and regional cooperation.
A Kenyan police report seen by The Associated Press said that unidentified gunmen fired small arms at a Kenyan security helicopter on Wednesday from Ras Kamboni, a region at Somalia’s southernmost tip where remnants of the Somali Islamic movement were believed holed up. The report did not give further details.
Somali Defence Minister Shire said government troops had taken the southern town of Af Madow on Tuesday night, without fighting, and nearby Dhobley town on Wednesday afternoon.
”Now we are on our way toward Badade town,” Shire said at a meeting with clan elders in Kismayo. ”We are sure that the top leaders of the Islamic courts are part of the militias that left Dhobley on Wednesday.” He gave no details about the fighting.
A day earlier, four Ethiopian helicopters apparently mistook a Kenyan border post at Harehare for Dhobley and fired rockets at several small buildings, a security officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
There were no reports of casualties, the officer said, adding that Kenyan tanks had been sent to the area.
Refugees
About 4 000 Somalis were reportedly in the Dhobley area, unable to cross into Kenya, the UN’s humanitarian agency said.
The UNHCR expressed concern in a statement in Wednesday that Kenyan authorities may have forcibly returned Somalis from near Dhobley.
It said several trucks carrying Somalis were seen heading back toward Somalia on Wednesday morning, and that it believed they were among about 400 who had gathered near the Kenyan border town of Liboi.
The UNHCR’s Guterres acknowledged that governments have to ensure border security, but said ”Kenya also has a humanitarian obligation”.
”Most of those in Liboi are women and children, and they should not be sent back to a very uncertain situation,” he said.
Tuju said Kenya will enforce a tight screening process as long as the refugees waiting to cross are not in immediate danger.
The Islamic movement had filled a vacuum in a country that has been without an effective central government since clan-based warlords overthrew long-time dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The warlords then turned the country into a chaotic patchwork of armed, clan fiefdoms.
The transitional government was formed in 2004, after two years of talks in neighbouring Kenya. It has international recognition but little military strength, and was riven by clan politics. Two weeks ago it controlled only one town, central Baidoa, while the Islamic movement held the capital and much of southern Somalia.
Ethiopia sent at least 4 000 well-trained troops into Mogadishu on December 24, dramatically changing the government’s fortunes. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press writers Elizabeth A Kennedy, Mohamed Olad Hassan, Mohamed Sheikh Nor and Salad Duhul in Mogadishu, Nasteex Dahir Farah in Kismayo, David Ochami in Garissa, Kenya, and Godfrey Olukya in Kampala, Uganda, contributed to this report