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DHOBLEY, Somalia, Aug 16 (Reuters) - From a cluster of tents in southern
Somalia's arid wastelands, Sheikh Ahmed Madobe commands a militia battling to
repel Islamist rebels from the border of his country's anxious neighbour, Kenya.
Alongside Somali government troops, Madobe's Raskamboni fighters -- some of them
look more like teenage boys -- police an uneasy peace in Dhobley, a windswept,
dusty town just a few kilometres from Kenya's eastern frontier.
East Africa's biggest economy has long cast a wary eye at Somalia, and is
struggling to secure a porous border with its lawless neighbour that stretches
hundreds of kilometres through deserted wilderness.
Keen to avoid a spillover of violence by al Qaeda-trained foreign jihadists
seeking haven in Somalia as well as al Shabaab rebels entrenched in the south,
Nairobi wants to create a buffer zone.
Kenya has already trained thousands of newly recruited Somali soldiers to man
the frontier. It also provides logistical and intelligence support to Somali
government troops.
"Dhobley is the first area we secured, pushing out al Shabaab. We expect in the
coming days to push them out of the region," said the soft-faced Sheikh Dahir,
one of Madobe's lieutenants.
Madobe was a senior member of an Islamist administration routed from power by
Ethiopian forces in late 2006, early 2007. He later turned his guns on his
former allies to side with the U.N.-backed government.
Dhobley's buildings carry the pock-marked scars of intense gunbattles in April
this year when Raskamboni and government forces regained control of the town
from the al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab group.
Another fighter says Kenya provided weaponry.
"They (Kenya) help with many things including guns and bullets. Without that
support, how could we have beaten them?," said a Raskamboni intelligence
officer, Major Abdikadir Bashir.
After al Shabaab withdrew from Mogadishu earlier this month, plagued by deep
rifts among senior commanders and financial difficulties, Dhobley's
pro-government combatants are itching to take the fight to insurgent forces
nearby.
The gunmen traipse around the drought-ravaged scrub in their box-fresh uniforms,
wrapped in belts of high calibre bullets waiting, they say, for the order to
push into al Shabaab-controlled territory where Islamist units are now hunkered
down in the surrounding countryside.
The Somali militias' enthusiasm to fight al Shabaab is welcomed by Nairobi,
which has had to contend with threats by the Islamist rebels that they would
attack Kenyan targets.
"Kenya and its (regional) partners are interested in keeping al Shabaab at bay
so they can't ... reinforce their terrorist activities," said Kenyan government
spokesman Alfred Mutua.
PROTECTIVE SHIELD
Technically, the Kenyan-Somali border has been closed since 2007.
But the frontier sees plenty of activity, from an influx of famine-struck
refugees to the regular smuggling of contraband, highlighting Kenya's exposure
to infiltration by al Shabaab fighters.
Kenya is so worried by the anarchy in Somalia, where first warlords then
Islamist insurgents have stepped into a political vacuum, that it has even gone
so far as supporting -- quietly -- the birth of a semi-autonomous Somali
province dubbed 'Jubaland', comprised of the three Somali regions bordering
Kenya.
But Jubaland's status is far from clear.
Politicians from either side of the border named former Somali defence minister
Mohamed Abdi Mohamed as Jubaland's president. Mohamed, however, spends his time
in Nairobi and has shown no inclination to take up his post across the border.
Kenya's Mutua denied his government had been the driving force behind the
Jubaland project but said self-governed regions would help bring stability.
"'Jubaland' remains nothing more than a fantasy played out by ineffectual Somali
politicians marooned in Nairobi," said J Peter Pham, director of the think-tank
Atlantic Council.
Somalia's government has condemned the initiative, warning it would fracture
further the already chaotic country. "We have never supported it," government
spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman told Reuters in an email.
Ethiopia, a key regional player in efforts to stabilise the Horn of Africa,
fears a proliferation of self-governed regions in Somalia might encourage its
own ethnic Somali population to fight harder for autonomy.
Al Shabaab may have beaten a retreat from Mogadishu, but it remains a potent
force, analysts say, not least in its southern strongholds where the government
exercises no authority.
"Unless al Shabaab becomes significantly weaker in this region, I don't see any
force that has the military muscle to create this buffer zone," said David
Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia.
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